Heika's Take: Don't throw out the good

Both the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild have been struggling to score lately, with each team in the bottom five in goals per game since Jan. 1.
When the two squads met in St. Paul on Friday night, it was no surprise the score was 1-1 after 60 minutes. It was also no surprise a hungry Wild team won in a shootout to break out of their slump, while the Stars fell for the 12th time in overtime/shootout, the most in the league.
And while Dallas continues to battle to score goals and has one of the worst power plays in the league since Jan. 1, coach Pete DeBoer said he wanted to look at the positives after the game.

"We played a hell of a road game against a tough, desperate team," DeBoer said. "We didn't get the extra point, but you can't throw out all the good work we did and that's the story. There's a lot of good stuff there. We battled hard against a real desperate team. I mean, that team needs to win that game, and I thought we had lots of chances and fought back. A lot of good stuff."
Minnesota entered the game in a 1-4-1 slump and is trying to fix some things at home. The win was huge, as it pushed the Wild to 29-21-5, and keeps them in the second wildcard spot. Dallas is 2-1-5 in its past eight games, but picks up a point, moves to 30-14-12, and stays in first place in the Western Conference.
"It was a hard-fought game," DeBoer said. "That team hasn't won and they're at home and they have to win that game tonight, so we knew we were going to face a real desperate team," DeBoer said. "They came with a lot of juice, and I thought for a road game in a tough building like this, we battled really hard all night."
The game was tight, as Minnesota had a 32-30 edge in shots on goal and Dallas had a 68-55 advantage in shot attempts. The Wild cashed in on one of two power plays, while the Stars did not score on their four attempts. Dallas is now scoreless for its last 18 and since Jan. 1 is 9.8 percent on the man advantage. That's third worst in the league for that time frame.
Forward Tyler Seguin said the team could use some of its talented tippers like Joe Pavelski, Jamie Benn and Mason Marchment to make things harder for the goalies.
"We're trying to make too many passes when we should just be shooting the puck," Seguin said. "We've got guys like Pavs and Jamie, Mush and myself, where the last couple of years we're pretty good at tipping pucks, but right now we're just not getting the looks."
Dallas had the second hottest power play in the league before Jan. 1 at 28.8 percent, so they know they can score with the man advantage. Likewise, they also were the third highest scoring team in the league at 3.61 goals per game on New Year's Day and since then they rank 28th in scoring at 2.50 goals per game.
"We played pretty well, we just didn't score," said defenseman Miro Heiskanen.
He said the same solution for the lack of five-on-five scoring will likely work for the power play.
"Maybe a little more patience and our execution has to be a little better," Heiskanen said. "We need to try to keep it simple. We know how good our power play is when we do the right thing. We just need one bounce maybe and it gets a little easier. But just try to move the puck quickly and try to keep it simple and shoot a lot of pucks."
In a word, they could become more desperate. It seemed to work for Minnesota on Friday.
Dallas returns home and plays Columbus at American Airlines Center at 5 p.m. on Saturday, so they don't have a lot of time to think. But maybe that's good for a frustrated team.
Seguin and Marchment combined for 10 shot attempts, and their line looked dangerous for much ­of the night. However, they couldn't beat Minnesota goalie Filip Gustavsson, who was just a notch better than Jake Oettinger in the shootout. While Seguin said he could see the "chances" as uplifting, he needs to see goals.
"Just sitting here, talking about getting chances, it definitely gets frustrating," he said. "Once we start scoring goals as a line, I'll say we're on the upswing."
Oettinger was also flummoxed. He was fantastic for 65 minutes and stopped the first two shootout attempts. When Jason Robertson scored for Dallas, all Oettinger needed to do was stop Frédérick Gaudreau, and he had the win. But Gaudreau and Matt Boldy scored for Minnesota and Seguin and Wyatt Johnston were stopped for Dallas, adding another "loss" to the books.
"I had the chance to end the game in the shootout, and I didn't do it," Oettinger said.
Still, the big goalie who was playing his hometown in front of friends and family received great praise from his coach and teammates. It was the kind of night where they were going to celebrate the positives and look forward.
"It was a great game," Oettinger said. "Gus is a great goalie, and he made some good saves. It felt like a playoff game. They're a great team over there, and they're going to be tough to beat in a seven-game series."
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 Twitter @MikeHeika.