First Shift 🏒
Benn was talking about the frustration of starting slowly in the goal scoring department, and found an amusing silver lining.
The home fans were booing the power play, and the captain said the team needed that.
“I heard the boo birds on the power play. It was awesome,” Benn said with a smile. “Our fans are passionate, that’s why they’re the best. They’ve watched a lot of hockey over the last few years, so they can have their opinions.”
Bottom line, the Stars know what they have to do, and they know the first two games of the season were unacceptable. When Dallas scored one goal and went 0-for-5 on the man advantage, there was real concern. So, players worked individually – and as a team – and put five goals up against San Jose on Monday. Five different players scored – including Benn, Robertson, Joel Kiviranta and Rantanen -and the good vibes were everywhere.
“For all of our guys, Miro, Robo, Rants, Benny…it feels good to get a goal or a couple of assists,” coach Glen Gulutzan said. “It feels good, it helps. I think down the line, you can start feeling good about your game and that will help us.”
The Stars learned some valuable lessons on Monday. Start on time, stay consistent, fire more pucks at the net, get more bodies at the net. When you play from ahead, it really does affect your performance.
“We’ve been talking through it,” said Robertson. “Everyone in the room knows what we need to do.”
So do it again Thursday in Buffalo.
“You want to build off of it, for sure,” Gulutzan said. “We want to clean up some things and keep pushing. We don’t have to sacrifice any defense to get more offense, so we need to just clean up the things we can clean up.”
Defenseman Miro Heiskanen has two goals, and he said that is important.
“It gives us confidence,” Heiskanen said. “You start to build on that and get better each game.”
