Heika’s Take: Full team effort helps Stars roll in win over Blue Jackets

Stars coach Pete DeBoer has been searching for a complete game in the early season.

He got pretty close to it Monday night.

Dallas controlled most of the play and took a 5-3 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets to move to 5-1-1 on the year. It was a performance that included several smart plays, several determined plays, and several clutch plays.

“It’s a good feeling,” DeBoer said. “We talked about building our game and adding some layers to it and I thought tonight was the best it has looked. So hopefully that’s a good sign going forward here.”

The Stars finished with a 33-25 advantage in shots on goal, a 75-58 edge in shot attempts, and a 32-23 balance in the faceoff circle. They received goals from five different players on three different lines and had 10 players with at least one point.

“That’s the depth of our team,” said center Matt Duchene, who had nine shot attempts and scored his first goal of the season. “It was kind of all through the lineup. I think offensively it was our best game of the season for 60 minutes.”

The top line fed defenseman Thomas Harley on the rush 27 seconds into the game for a huge 1-0 lead, and then tallied the tying goal when Roope Hintz deflected in a shot early in the second period to make it 2-2. Jason Robertson had pretty assists on each goal. Hintz tallied the 250th point in his career, doing so in the fewest number of games (318) by any player since the team moved to Texas in 1993. Robertson now has 240 points in 217 games, so he’ll be breaking that record soon, but the chemistry of the linemates continues to be impressive.

And chemistry seems to be spreading. The Duchene, Mason Marchment, Tyler Seguin line had a goal taken away because of a coach’s challenge for offsides, but they fought back and Duchene was able to pound in a rebound off a shot from Ryan Suter a few minutes later. That was a huge moment for a lot of reasons, but mostly for the team’s confidence.

“The first one is always the hardest one to get in the season, and I’m pretty sure I showed you guys that,” Duchene said with a smile reflecting the relief from his frustration. “It was nice to get that one.”

Dallas then added two more goals from the line of Jamie Benn, Wyatt Johnston and Evgenii Dadonov for the final score. The 5-3 difference didn’t really reflect the Stars’ level of play, as Columbus goalie Elvis Merzļikins held his team in the contest.

“In this league you can get caught up in production and wins and losses, but the process is the most important thing,” Duchene said. “You can win games and your process is no good and you can lose games when your process is good, but eventually it rights itself. I think this team is so mature in the way it carries itself. I’ve been really impressed being a part of it and watching it. There’s never any panic, it’s just even keeled, good or bad.”

That’s important. DeBoer is in his second year after taking Dallas to the Western Conference Final last season, and he said he likes what he is seeing in a process that has been somewhat complicated and a little different than last year. He said he reassembled the lines in hopes of finding chemistry that could stick, and for one game, it looked good.

“When you reflect upon our start, we’ve played seven games in probably three and a half weeks, so it’s been a slow start,” DeBoer said. “So I want to make sure I give enough runway to combinations and power play and that we’re not overreacting. I want to show some patience and that’s why we went back to it. I thought Duchene was the best player on the ice tonight and that line was really good.”

And as the team embarks on a three-game road trip through Western Canada, the challenges will get bigger and the need to build will be more intense.

“We have such a deep team and they showed that tonight,” said Oettinger. “It was a great team win, one of our best games of the year.”

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.