Heika’s Take: Bad bounces at bad times cost Stars in loss to wrap road trip

Sometimes, the hockey gods can be real jerks.

With the Stars determined to stop some downward momentum and finish off a six-game road trip in a good place – while giving a solid effort in the process – two goals beat them in a 2-1 loss to the Utah Mammoth on Thursday night.

The defeat runs their current slump to 2-5-4 since December 23.

“I thought we played pretty well,” said forward Matt Duchene. “The second goal was so fluky, goes straight up and goes in.”

That second goal ended up being the deciding tally, as John Marino flipped a puck on net from the right point, and it deflected off of Jake Oettinger high in the air before settling behind the goalie and in the net. It was a gut kick to a struggling Stars team that had just tied the game on a Mikko Rantanen power play goal, and it was just more salt to grind into the wound of allowing a goal with seven seconds left in the second period.

“We did a lot of good things this game,” said defenseman Thomas Harley. “It’s unfortunate we gave up that one at the end of the second, that was kind of a back-breaker.”

The two teams were tied 0-0 as Oettinger and Mammoth goalie Karel Vejmelka were engaged in a fantastic duel. Each faced 27 shots and Vejmelka made one more save.

The second period goal against Oettinger was both beautiful and unfortunate. Dallas had the puck deep in the offensive zone as the clock was ticking down, but Utah made a couple of nifty passes and was quickly all woolly-bully in transition. Marino made a centering pass while Nick Schmaltz was driving the net and Schmaltz made a perfect redirection to open the scoring.

“It’s disappointing,” said Stars captain Jamie Benn, who had a chance to break up the pass. “That gave them momentum. Up to that point, I thought we were playing a decent game. That can’t happen with a minute left in the second.”

But it did.

Was it the hockey gods going against the Stars, or did they indeed make too many mistakes at the wrong time(s)? On the second goal, Dallas lost the faceoff, something they did a lot on Thursday. The Stars won just 33 percent of the draws, a terrible night for a team that ranks eighth at 51.5 percent.

“It’s a tough league to win in and teams aren’t going to give you anything, so we have to be that much better,” Harley said. “You’ve got to bring your best every night and if you don’t, you’re not going to have very much success, and we didn’t have our best very often on this road trip.”

Dallas won a couple of nice games at Washington and at Los Angeles, but they didn’t even get the “loser’s point” in three of the games. Instead, Carolina smashed them, Anaheim made big plays at big moments, and Utah simply came up on the right side of a lot of coin flips.

And maybe that’s the lesson from the hockey gods – don’t leave these games up to chance.

“Our offense right now is a little dry, 5 on 5…That happens, you just have to work through it,” Duchene said. “I thought this was a much better game than some of our games on this road trip. But at the same time, you have to get results.”

The lads in Victory Green sit 27-12-9 on the season, still the second-best record in the league. That said, Minnesota is just two points back in the Central and Colorado is 11 points ahead. So there has been damage done during the slump.

“That’s just the way it goes right now,” Gulutzan said of the bad bounces. “The only thing you can do is keep grinding. We’ve got to just get a little rhythm going again like we did before Christmas. We still haven’t found it yet.”

And, with 34 games left in the season – and the Olympic break and trade deadline still ahead – there does seem to be time to woo the fates into better behavior.

“You always learn through adversity, and we’ve got a bit of that going right now,” Duchene said. “We just need to stay with it, keep improving our game and we’ll ascend from there.”

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 X @MikeHeika.