Burnside: Five takeaways from Stars' 6-0 loss to Vancouver

The Dallas Stars saw their impressive five-game winning streak come to a shuddering halt Sunday afternoon as they were whipped 6-0 by the Vancouver Canucks.
Here are some offerings and laments on a day that offered terrific opportunity, but ended up reminding us that there's still lots of work to be done.

1. Killer instinct? Not so much on this day

In running their win streak to five games, the Stars came up with wins over top-end teams like Pittsburgh, besting divisional opponents Chicago and Minnesota, and taking care of business against non-playoff teams like Arizona and the Rangers.
Vancouver, losers of four straight heading into Sunday, certainly qualified as a team against whom the Stars should have been able to take care of, had they brought the same level of commitment to the proceedings. But it didn't turn out that way as the Canucks took advantage of one of the most disappointing periods of hockey the Stars have turned in this season to blow this one open early. The Stars gave up three goals in the first 13:27 of the game, including a wraparound by Reid Boucher after stealing the puck from Dan Hamhuis just 2:11 into the game.
Adding to the discouragement of coming up so flat against a team that had 22 fewer points in the standings coming into the day is that it follows a trend of soft play heading into breaks. And out of breaks, for that matter. Dallas was beaten handily by Toronto and Los Angeles heading into and coming out of the All-Star break. Same thing after the bye week and coming out of the holiday break as the Stars were no match for Colorado or Minnesota, respectively.
Now, the Stars are off until Friday when they'll host the St. Louis Blues before heading to the West Coast next week for three games at Anaheim, Los Angeles and San Jose.
"It's obviously a tough way to end a good stretch of hockey that we've played," said Dallas veteran Jason Spezza, who believed he had scored on a wraparound of his own in the first period and the Canucks up just 1-0. The play was reviewed, but there wasn't enough evidence to award the Stars what could have been a critical goal.
"I think you just recognize what happened tonight -- what we need to do better. Just take it and learn from it and move forward. We've got a week now to practice and recover and get ready and a big stretch of hockey coming up," Spezza said. "I think we've played good hockey. We've found our identity as a team. We know what we have to do. We know we're doing well when we're winning games.
"Tonight, we just didn't do it. It's our job to just grab it and get back to it this week in practice. And we'll have some good practices and we'll be ready to go for the next day."

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2. Ready or not?

The Canucks scored their first two goals on unassisted efforts by Boucher and Jake Virtanen on defensive breakdowns.
The second goal came after a Mattias Janmark miscue just inside the Vancouver blue line allowed Virtanen to race in alone on Ben Bishop, tucking the puck between his pads. Less than two minutes later, Thomas Vanek blasted one past Bishop, coming down the right side after the Stars turned the puck over deep in the Canucks zone.
If this was just a one-off thing -- a blip on the radar -- then maybe you'd be more tempted to give the Stars, who are still 11-4-1 in their last 16 games, a break. But they have been courting disaster for some time now with their inability to seize control of games, at least early on.
Sunday marked the seventh time in the last eight games that the Stars have given up the first goal. That's not a blip on the radar. That's a trend, even if it's a trend that doesn't seem as concerning to others as it does to us.
"I think a good start to every game is obviously what we want, and we don't want to be giving up the first goal every game, but it's going to happen once in a while," offered captain Jamie Benn. "Hopefully, we can turn that around and start playing with the lead earlier in the game."
Others were more philosophical on the issue of falling behind.
"You can't look into it too much, it's a long season. Stretches where you score the first goal a bunch, or where they score," Bishop said. "You got to look at the bigger picture. It was a good run there, five games in a row. Obviously not our best effort there tonight -- one of those things we're you've got to put it in the rear-view mirror and get ready for the next game."
Stars head coach Ken Hitchcock said he wasn't as worried about the trend of giving up first goals as he was about the team's lack of sound positional play.
"The concern, for me, is the odd-man rushes. And when you're at 70 or 80 percent, you just can't give them up," Hitchcock said. "We're giving up more, which is a recipe for disaster. We tried to put the brakes on it and weren't able to, so now, we've paid the price and this should get everybody's attention.
"We'll get back to work on Tuesday, and work really hard Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and get ready for the game."

3. Woulda, coulda, shoulda

With all due respect to the Canucks, there's a reason they're once again outside the playoff discussion -- they're simply not a good team.
Not yet they're not.
They have good young talent in All-Star Game MVP and Rookie of the Year candidate Brock Boeser, who returned to the Vancouver lineup after missing a game with a hand injury and had an assist on Sunday. Bo Horvat is a good, young prospect (he scored his 13th goal on Sunday), and the Sedin twins, Henrik and Daniel, are still useful players.
But this is a team in transition. And maybe that's why Sunday's loss carries a little extra sting.
Had the Stars taken care of business, they would have moved into third place in the Central Division for the first time since Nov. 5 as St. Louis was dumped 4-1 by Pittsburgh, the team the Stars clipped in a shootout in Dallas on Friday. And with Winnipeg losing to the Rangers, the Stars missed an opportunity to pull to within one point of second place in the Central.
Even when you're rolling, no team wins them all. In fact, Hitchcock noted that Boston, one of the best, hottest teams in the NHL, lost Saturday to lowly Buffalo. Stuff happens. And this happened to the Stars.
"We talked about owning your game and taking accountability," Vancouver head coach Travis Green, in his first season as an NHL head coach, said. "What was nice about this game was the last couple days, that really came from within our group and our leadership group taking a big part of responsibility as far as making sure they were ready to play today. That's a big step."
The positive thing for Dallas is that they've showed a nice resiliency this season. In fact, the five-game win streak came on the heels of those two disappointing losses bookending the All-Star weekend.
Still, when opportunity knocks in the Central, it's more than a little disappointing not to have answered.

4. A short afternoon for Bishop

So much of the narrative of the Stars' strong play over the past two months has been driven by the strong play of Bishop and backup Kari Lehtonen.
Bishop was coming off a terrific performance against Chicago on Thursday, when Dallas edged the Blackhawks 4-2 and swept the four-game season series from the perpetual playoff contenders. Lehtonen was excellent the following night against Pittsburgh in a come-from-behind shootout win as the Stars moved into fifth overall in the league in goals allowed per game.
Pretty heady stuff.
But Bishop's afternoon ended prematurely after Bo Horvat beat him from the slot on the power play to make it 4-0 Vancouver just 4:41 into the second. His line? Four goals on 20 shots.
"I think it was kind of a tale of two teams, a team that's won five in a row and a team that's lost four or five in a row, and they came out hard. And once we got behind the eight ball there, kind of tough to get things rolling," Bishop said. "Got to give credit to them, They came out and they played really well in that first period and they took it to us, and you can't take anybody lightly in this league."
Lehtonen mopped up and allowed two goals on 21 shots.
Have to imagine that Bishop will return to the net on Friday against St. Louis.
"I think we know what we've done after these last couple breaks," he said. "I think we're going to talk about it and we're not going to let that happen again. But at the same time, we'll get some rest here and catch our breath."

5. Putting this one to bed

When it rains, it pours. But the Stars didn't help themselves on lots of fronts, including discipline. They only gave up one power-play goal, but they gave Vancouver six opportunities with the man advantage, including a four-minute double-minor for high-sticking assessed toTyler Pitlick.
The Stars had just one power play of their own on the day, a reflection of how much they chased this game.
The lone bright spot for the Stars? How about the faceoffs, where they, again, were excellent winning 43 of 73 or 59 percent of draws. Not that it did much in the way of helping to generate offense, but still, there you have it.
Martin Hanzal, who returned to the lineup after missing Friday's win over Pittsburgh with a sore knee, Tyler Seguin and Spezza led the way, going 31 and 17 on the dots.
The Stars lead the NHL in faceoff winning percentage at 53.3 percent on the season.
This story was not subject to approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club. You can follow Scott on Twitter at @OvertimeScottB, and listen to his Burnside Chats podcast here.