First Shift 🏒
This has been a challenging season for the Stars’ penalty kill.
The team under assistant coach Alain Nasreddine for the previous three seasons ranked second in the NHL at 82.5 percent. This season, still under Nasreddine with a new coaching staff, it has slipped to 13th. What’s worse, it seems to have its hands full with the Minnesota Wild right now.
Dallas allowed Minnesota to go 2-for-4 on the power play in a Game 1 that the Wild won 6-1 on Saturday. That followed a three-goal performance by the Wild on the man advantage a few weeks earlier against the Stars.
“We have to be better,” said Stars coach Glen Gulutzan.
Part of the reason the Stars are down this year is also part of the reason they are so encouraged. Dallas started the year 28th in the league at 70.4 percent through the first month. Since then, they are third best at 82.4 percent.
“We always came back during the season,” said penalty killer Radek Faksa. “We had a tough start on the PK. The first 10 games of the season, we were in last place, and then we came back.”
The unit has seen small changes from last season, but it has remained mostly intact. Esa Lindell still leads the way and the forward group still gets minutes from Oskar Bäck, Colin Blackwell and Sam Steel. New faces this year include Faksa, who was with St. Louis last season, and Justin Hryckowian, who moved up from the minors. Cody Ceci is gone on defense and Wyatt Johnston has seen his minutes diminish so he can concentrate on the power play, but a lot of the pieces are the same.
“We talk a lot and we take a lot of pride in it,” said Lindell, who is among the NHL leaders in shorthanded time on ice in his career. “It’s a big part of the game, it can win a lot of games.”
That’s why it’s so important to get it together in this series. Minnesota ranks third in power play success rate at 25.2 percent. Quinn Hughes ranks third in power play assists at 32 this season and Kirill Kaprizov ranks fourth in power play goals at 19. They are a dangerous team, and deep. Joel Eriksson Ek had two power play goals in Game 1.
“We know what the mistakes are,” Faksa said. “We need to learn from that.”
On both goals, the Stars got spread out and Minnesota was able to find seams in the penalty kill. Gulutzan said the team will analyze and improve.
“Just don’t let that puck come from that low to high area,” he said. “The spread beat us twice. That’s something we have to make sure we adjust to. When the puck goes below the goal line, you don’t want it to come out into the slot. If you muddle up the slot, you can get them stalled.”
Goalie Jake Oettinger said he too can be better, and Gulutzan said the entire Game 1 loss was a “team loss.” That can actually be a good sign as the team looks to make improvements for Game 2.
“To a guy, all 20 skaters, I don’t think we were the best versions of ourselves,” Gulutzan said. “Outside of maybe one or two guys, I thought that our group as a whole was not as good as it needed to be.”
