Heika’s Take: Stars still "not good enough” in lopsided loss to Canadiens

The Stars were better Thursday, but still not good enough.

Coming off its worst game of the season, Dallas fixed a few key issues against the Montreal Canadiens at American Airlines Center. But, at the end of the night, they had a 5-2 loss and a two-game losing streak to show for it.

That is concerning.

“Not near good enough,” Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said. “You could still see in the first period a lot of residual from the game prior. Blue line was a major obstacle early. We didn't execute, poor execution by the forwards and D. Trying to dump it in and we can't even dump it in. That's execution.”

For the second consecutive game, Dallas was held under 20 shots on goal – 18 on Tuesday and 19 on Thursday. They did hold Montreal to 21 and won the battle of special teams – killing four penalties and scoring once on the power play. Still, they allowed the Canadiens to post a 3-1 lead in the first period and played from behind the entire night.

“Obviously, you don’t want to be down 3-1 going into the second period,” Stars forward Wyatt Johnston said. “I think the message is just stick with it. We’re a great team when we’re playing our game, and when we’re kind of rolling over teams and setting each other up. That’s kind of the key to do that and stay with that as long as we can.”

Dallas falls to 7-5-1 on the year and 3-2-0 on a six-game homestand. While it would be easy to say the Stars have lost energy by spending too much time at home – or from missing key injured players in Matt Duchene, Esa Lindell, Radek Faksa, Oskar Bäck and Kyle Capobianco – the players said they can’t think that way.

“Good teams got to reset and go at it again,” said forward Mikko Rantanen, who had two assists and probably could have had more. “Down two, we’ve got to generate more. We have to push harder. Too many penalties.”

The Stars were chasing the game, and that led to the time in the penalty box. That said, this squad was the model of detailed play and was leading the NHL in GAA before allowing 13 goals in the past three games.

“We gave up a couple of easy ones again,” Rantanen said. “We’ve got to find a way to not give up those easy ones.”

The first step is taking care of the puck, Gulutzan said. Dallas was on the wrong side of shot attempts (45-38) despite dominating the faceoff circle, and that’s likely because of their 17 giveaways.

“Our puck play is atrocious,” Gulutzan said. “The first (goal) was a shot that shouldn't have even been in our zone. Then, there is a little loose coverage and they're open on the side of the net. You keep putting yourself in those situations. You frustrate yourself and then bad things happen.”

So the way to get out is to play smarter, take care of the puck, and build from the defensive base. That will be key Saturday against Columbus on the homestand finale and then heading on the road after that.

“It was better, but it still was not as good as we want to be,” Johnston said. “There’s no easy game in this league. Every team is so good. You’re playing against the best team, the best players in the world, so you’ve got to bring it every night. When you don’t play as well as you need to, you don’t get the results.”

Which has been abundantly clear in the past two outings.

“I'm honestly not thinking it's an effort thing,” Gulutzan said. “You can say maybe you're lacking a little confidence and you're a little tentative, but the only way to get it is to dig in. You can't hand somebody confidence, you've got to put in the work. You've got to be focused and we need to bear down.”

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.