Stars take next step in return with positive first scrimmage

FRISCO, Texas --The Stars on Sunday took the next step in their preparation for the NHL's Return to Play, as they held their first intrasquad scrimmage.

Team defense looked better than team offense, but that's to be expected right now.

"I thought we moved the puck out of the zone, both ends, really well," said Stars interim coach Rick Bowness. "I liked the tempo, the guys are into it, they're working. There were a lot of good things. There were some turnovers at the blueline, little things like that that you can address. But for the most part, we were very happy."

Coaches divided the teams into squads that allowed for the top two power-play units to play together and most of the penalty killers to remain united. Still, neither team created many chances and neither team scored in the first 15 minutes of 5-on-5 play. While the Stars are pushing hard to create more offense after the coaching staff studied a lot of film over the four months away from play, they are more naturally gifted on the defensive side of the game.

"A big focus of our team this camp so far has been trying to create some more offense, trying to get our D more involved, trying to find ways we can produce more offensively. But that being said, we're not going to sacrifice our good defensive play for that," said forward Blake Comeau.

"That's a big part of our identity. We're tough to play against, we're very sound defensively, we don't give up a lot."

The Stars have been trying new lines in training camp and have been very consistent in letting them work together. Still, the power-play/penalty-kill split forced a couple of changes.

The top line with Denis Gurianov, Roope Hintz and Tyler Seguin remained the same, but Radek Faksa took Jason Dickinson's place and centered Jamie Benn and Corey Perry. Jason Robertson then took the place of Mattias Janmark on a line with Joe Pavelski and Alexander Radulov to complete the "Green" team's forwards. Miro Heiskanen was paired with John Klingberg on defense, along with Dillon Heatherington and Thomas Harley, and Joel Hanley with Gavin Bayreuther.

The top line on the "White" team was Dickinson taking Faksa's place centering Comeau and Andrew Cogliano. The second line had Janmark with Justin Dowling and Joel L'Esperance, and the third line was Ty Dellandrea centering Nick Caamano and Joel Kiviranta with Rhett Gardner as an extra forward.

The defense for White was the quintet of Esa Lindell, Jamie Oleksiak, Stephen Johns, Andrej Sekera and Taylor Fedun.

"It was fun, because that was the first time we've actually played since we started camp," Lindell said. "It was good to get the feeling. We're really comfortable and excited about our defense."

That defensive excitement continued in the second session. The Green team was given eight minutes of power play time and was able to score just once. Corey Perry looked to deflect a puck in with his skate (a play that might get waved off in a real game), but coaches counted the goal. Harley also scored in a three-on-three situation, and Dellandrea scored in a 6-on-5.

Other than that, the offense looked stymied.

Bowness was asked if any player stood out, and he said not really.

"You don't want to over-evaluate your first scrimmage," Bowness said. "We were looking for team play, we saw that; team structure, we saw that; O-zone time, we saw some improvement there. As far as individuals are concerned, everyone held their own out there."

That said, he plans to run scrimmages every day before the team heads to Edmonton July 26. The Stars will play Nashville in an exhibition game on July 30 and then will have round-robin games against Vegas (Aug. 3), Colorado (Aug. 5) and St. Louis (Aug. 9) as part of seeding the top four teams in the Western Conference. Once that's completed, they will find out who they play in the first round of the playoffs.

That means they have plenty of time to make adjustments and get the offense flowing.

"It's obviously a little bit of a crazy format, but we put ourselves in a good position where we can play for a No. 1 seed," Comeau said of the round-robin games. "We've had some really good pace to our camp so far, and it seems like guys are ready to go and that everybody came back in good condition and are excited to be back around each other."

He added that he believes the team is on pace to be where it needs to be because the defensive base is there.

"I think it's going to be the teams that come together the quickest and execute and stick to their game plan and play the way they can," Comeau said.

Photo credit: Jeff Toates / Dallas Stars

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

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