Heika’s Take: Trends hold true as surging Lightning knock off stumbling Stars

The Dallas Stars and Tampa Bay Lightning have similar records.

How they have arrived at this place, however, has been quite different.

Then again, maybe it hasn’t.

Tampa Bay took a 4-1 win over Dallas on Sunday at American Airlines Center to run its current point streak to 12-0-1 and put its overall record at 30-13-4, second-best in the league. Dallas is 2-6-4 over its past 12 games and falls to 27-13-9, which still is the fourth-best record in the NHL.

And that’s the irony of this moment.

Earlier in the season, Tampa Bay was in a 2-6-1 slump and probably would have lost a game like this. Earlier in the season, Dallas was on a 14-1-2 heater and probably would have found a way to win this game.

“I think it’s just the story of they’re 12-0-1 and they just stayed with their game more than we did,” said Stars coach Glen Gulutzan. “I think all night they won more battles, especially in the second half, and they stayed with their game more than we did.”

You can do that when you’re winning. You don’t think as much, you play with confidence, you get that goal at that moment. Gulutzan has seen it this year. It was a wonderful run through the first 35 games and it gave the lads in Victory Green a fluffy pillow to rest on during the dog days of hockey.

But now that reality has returned and the wolf is knocking on the door, the coach and his troops need to find a way to shake this mess and get back to a more consistent brand of hockey.

“Did I ever think that we were a .750 team for the whole season? No, I did not,” Gulutzan said of the fact the Stars were off to a fantastic start. “We are certainly regressing to the mean, but we’re better than what we’re playing right now. We need to get back to that.”

Dallas started the game well, outshooting Tampa Bay 9-5 in the first period and getting a 1-0 lead on a strong shift from Justin Hryckowian, Mavrik Bourque and Oskar Bäck. The Que-Back line cycled well, got the puck to the net and Bäck tapped it in for his fourth goal of the season.

But the Lightning came back with a hustle goal of their own, and the first period ended at 1-1.

That’s when the “return to mean” stuff started to happen. The Lightning had a 15-9 advantage in shots on goal in the second period and scored twice off of Dallas mistakes. Tampa Bay got Jake Oettinger out of position on a goal-mouth scramble midway through the period to take a 2-1 lead, and then basically put the game away 19 minutes into the second.

The Lightning got numbers in the neutral zone and then Dallas didn’t help Oettinger out much with rebounds, and it was 3-1 heading into the third period.

The Stars mustered only two third period shots on goal, which said a lot about the Lightning confidence and the Stars frustration.

“They are obviously a good team, so give them credit,” said Hryckowian. “It was a good push, and they probably stuck to their gameplan a little longer than we did.”

But hearing that against different teams in different buildings on different nights does beg the question of: How are the Stars going to shake this trend?

“It’s gone on too long, but there’s no break,” Gulutzan said, referencing a home game against Boston on Tuesday. “For us, they are all going to be like this, and they were when we were just winning them. We’ve got to find a different mindset to stay with it longer.”

And that has been the key for years. It’s not what the other team does, it’s what the Stars do. Now, can Dallas learn from Tampa Bay and what it is doing right now? Sure, why not, but it has to return to a more familiar game, a more Victory Green game.

“We just have to move forward,” said defenseman Miro Heiskanen. “If we clean up those mistakes, then I think we are fine but we just have to play a little harder and want it a little bit more right now. We know we have a great group of guys here and we can turn it around for sure.”

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.