Stars must learn from tough loss, stop the bleeding quickly

PITTSBURGH -- Just about every fear Stars fans have been carrying since last year surfaced Wednesday in a 5-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
With No. 1 goalie Ben Bishop out with a lower-body injury, backup Anton Khudobin allowed five goals on 16 shots and was pulled in the second period. A similar scenario sunk the Stars last spring when Kari Lehtonen went 0-7-1 after Bishop suffered a knee injury.

With four blueline regulars injured and another (Julius Honka) sick, the Stars' group of inexperienced defenseman was roasted. With John Klingberg out at least five weeks with a broken hand, Stephen Johns not near to returning with neck and headache issues, and Marc Methot a permanent question mark with a lower-body injury, that group of inexperienced defensemen will likely have to continue to eat up important minutes.
And with head coach Jim Montgomery hoping his best players would respond to a challenge by going head-to-head with the likes of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and crew, the Stars were outplayed in that area, as well.
It was just one loss, but it brought up so many bad memories.
The Stars are in the middle of playing seven of eight games on the road. They get a day off for Thanksgiving, and then play back-to-back games at home against Ottawa on Friday and on the road at Colorado on Saturday. They will have to respond to this on the fly, and maybe that's a good thing.

"Everyone feels crappy right now," said Montgomery. "Everyone is competitive in that dressing room, and we feel bad and embarrassed about the way we played tonight."
Crosby had missed three games with an upper-body injury, but returned to the lineup Wednesday and had a goal and two assists. Montgomery said in the morning that he wanted his top line to play against Crosby and use that challenge as a test.
"He is the best player in the world," Montgomery said before the game. "I told our top line, 'Hopefully, I can get you guys out against him' because I want our best against the best."
It wasn't quite a head-to-head, but Crosby was dominant and the Stars' best players were not. Crosby set up Jake Guentzel on a one-timer 3:58 into the game (albeit against Radek Faksa's line). Alexander Radulov then took a hooking penalty in the offensive zone less than two minutes later, and Evgeni Malkin scored on the ensuing power play. And then Crosby drove around Esa Lindell and scored on his own rebound (against Jason Spezza's line).
"Their big guns were going, and made a difference," said Stars captain Jamie Benn. "You come into these games and want to shut the best in the world down, and it obviously didn't happen tonight."
The Stars' top players failed to take over at any point. In addition to the Radulov penalty, Tyler Seguin was unable to cash in on a breakaway in the second period.

Fifty seconds later, Pittsburgh scored.
Montgomery took a lot of the blame for not having the team prepared, but there were plenty of guilty parties. Khudobin had a chance to step up with Bishop injured. The top players had a chance to change the game for the positive and simply could nothing going. The veteran players had a chance to step up and carry more of the load.
It was a total failure.
"We're not skating, we're not together, the puck support isn't good enough, our timing and spacing, there's a lot of negatives," Montgomery said.
So how do they fix it? Montgomery is giving the team Thanksgiving off and wants them to clear their minds and get ready for Ottawa at home. The team has to take things one game at a time, so they can't look at the big picture the way fans do.
"We've just got to refocus and go win that (next) game," said center Jason Spezza. "We know it's a different style of game with some of the guys out, but we've had some success offensively with them in, so we need to find a way to get back to it."

Montgomery said that the absence of the veteran defensemen has made it more difficult to get the puck to the forwards. That could be one of the reasons the team had 17 shots on goal Monday and 19 on Wednesday. He said players like Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell are trying to learn, and that the trio of Gavin Bayreuther, Joel Hanley and Ben Gleason has tried to step up.
He said the coaches have to find a game plan that makes things work.
"A lot of the stuff we want to do, you need D-men who are comfortable hanging on to pucks, so that's what we're trying to teach," he said. "Klingberg, some of the things we want to do, he just does it naturally, because his instincts are so good, but even a guy like Miro or Esa, we have to teach them timing and spacing.
"It's a big key to being able to produce offense at the other end."
Still, there has to be an urgency to stop any negative momentum right now. They know what happened last year, but they weren't thinking about that Wednesday.
"Forget about it," said Benn of his plan. "Move on."
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.
Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on Twitter @MikeHeika,and listen to his podcast.