Heika’s Take: Stars fizzle after strong start, drop to Canucks in first loss of season

Glen Gulutzan said on Thursday morning that the NHL is becoming more like the NBA – a game of runs that have to be managed.

On Thursday night, the new Stars coach looked like a prophet.

Dallas started the game with some dominant play and took an early 2-0 lead. But then the Vancouver Canucks came storming back with four goals in the second period en route to a 5-3 victory at American Airlines Center.

Self-inflicted wounds were a big part of the meltdown, but just as important was the Stars’ inability to control momentum and stop the bleeding.

“Our challenge is to manage the game when we’re up,” Gulutzan said. “It’s these leads where we tend to flatline. You’ve got to keep playing and push back when their push is on.”

The Stars had a 5-1 lead on Winnipeg in their season opener, but got loose on the power play and allowed two shorthanded goals in an eventual 5-4 victory. Against Minnesota on Tuesday, they had a 3-0 lead before allowing two power play goals in the third to make things tighter than they had to be. On Thursday, Dallas was very good in the first 20 minutes, controlling play and getting big goals from Mavrik Bourque and Mikko Rantanen.

Everything looked great as the Stars were on a power play to start the second period and had an 18-6 advantage in shots on goal for the game. But then, after the Canucks finished the kill, Evander Kane lobbed a bouncing puck into the neutral zone and Thomas Harley made a bad play on it. Filip Chytil walked around Harley and slipped the puck past Casey DeSmith in net.

That was a huge play in a game where the Canucks had nothing going.

“I made an all-or-nothing play in the neutral zone, and they got past us and they just built off of that,” Harley said.

It was a good teaching moment. As it was against Winnipeg and Minnesota, the Stars didn’t need to be making “all-or-nothing” plays at that stage of the game.

“We’re not managing it good enough,” Gulutzan said. “If you look at the goals, in my opinion, there’s some risk to them and we got counter-punched where we could be a little bit more conservative…conservative is the wrong word, simple in those situations.”

There is a long-standing debate in the NHL that you don’t want to take your foot off the gas or sit on a lead, and Gulutzan said finding the right mindset is a challenge. He said his players need to be just as mentally intense in making their plays, but they also need to understand that a smart play isn’t sitting on a lead.

“You don’t need to pile on, you can chip away,” the coach said. “Usually what happens if you play a simple game, they take risks.”

Once the Canucks got life, they didn’t back off. Dallas took a hooking penalty two minutes later, and Brock Boeser scored on the power play. Then, Harley got caught on a bad read and Max Sasson went in alone to make it 3-2.

The score stayed that way for eight more minutes. Then, Colin Blackwell made a bad turnover in his own end that Conor Garland turned into an unassisted goal late in the second to push the Vancouver lead to 4-2.

That would stand up as the game-winning goal that dropped Dallas to 3-1-0 on the season.

Now, as they head to St. Louis for a one-game road trip on Saturday, the team has to get back to basics again.

“It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but I think we have to do a better job of weathering the storm,” Harley said.

Because the league really is turning into a sport where there are more runs that have to be managed.

“We’re early in the season, you get feeling good early and you think everything has got to be nice…it doesn’t,” Gulutzan said. “Usually veteran teams settle into that game a lot quicker than younger teams, but everybody is in it right now, so we’ve got to get out of it quick.”

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.