Stars Edge Blues
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ST. LOUIS — After his team finished its morning skate on Saturday, Dallas coach Lindy Ruff made a prediction about what kind of game the Stars would play Saturday night against the St. Louis Blues.
“You will see some pretty loose plays,” Ruff said. “You’re going to see maybe some bigger mistakes.”
The reason behind Ruff’s prediction, and a similar one from Blues coach Ken Hitchcock, was the fact that both teams were coming off the three-day NHL Christmas break — and the Stars also had to wake up early and fly to St. Louis on Saturday morning.
Luckily for Ruff’s team, however, it was the Blues who made the mistakes, leading to two easy goals and two power-play goals by the Stars in their 4-3 victory.
It was the first win for the Stars in 11 games this season against Central Division opponents; they had gone 0-7-3 in the first 10 division games. The loss extended the Blues’ winless streak to four games (0-3-1), their longest of the season.
The Blues gift-wrapped the first two Dallas goals in the first period. Goalie Jake Allen mishandled the puck behind his net and left the net open for left wing Travis Moen to score just 2:08 into the game, and a turnover by defenseman Petteri Lindbohm in his zone set up a goal from left wing Ryan Garbutt at 14:46 of the period.
With the game tied at 2 in the second period, the Stars took advantage of Blues penalties and
got power-play goals from defensemen Trevor Daley and Jason Demers. Goalie Keri Lehtonen stopped 11 of 12 shots in the third period, allowing only a goal from center David Backes, to secure the win.
“Any time you get to play a team like St. Louis, it’s a measuring stick for us,” Daley said. “We see where we’re at. We dug ourselves a hole and we’re trying to get out of it. Beating teams like St. Louis is a good feeling. We need wins; we need points. That’s what we’re looking at. It doesn’t matter who it’s against.”
Killing penalties has been a problem for the Blues during their winless streak, and Hitchcock admitted his team can’t expect to win until that area of its game improves.
The Blues have allowed 10 power-play goals in 32 chances in their last six games. They were called for four minor penalties in a 14-minute stretch in the second period Saturday, which kept some players on the ice too long and kept others from getting on the ice.
“The penalties are stick fouls and that’s a little bit frustrating,” Hitchcock said. “Quite frankly, we’re not getting the job done. That’s everybody — the goalie, the PK guys, the faceoffs.
“We’ve been very successful here doing it for a few years, but we’re not getting the job done right now. We’ve taken a lot of reaching penalties the last two games.
“When you are chasing hockey games, that’s losing hockey. Chasing games is not winning hockey. You can’t win like that. Our sense of urgency in our own zone has to increase a lot. We’re going to have to dial it up a lot better.
Defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, who scored one of the first two St. Louis goals along with right wing Vladimir Tarasenko, agreed with his coach.
“We’re taking a lot of penalties right now, penalties that don’t need to be taken,” Pietrangelo said. “Those penalties that are being taken, we have to find a way to start killing penalties because it’s losing games for us where usually it’s winning games for us. So we have to get that back on track.”
