Stars Drop First Match Up Against Colorado

The Dallas Stars are taking on Divisional rival, Colorado Avalanche, in a home-away back-to-back. While it is early in the season, these four points are huge when it gets down to the wire and these teams have been battling for the one and two spot in the last several years.

Earlier in the day, it was announced that Cale Makar would be out for the game, due to his wife giving birth to twins, which sounded like it gave the struggling Stars offense an edge. However, right at game time, th Stars had an announcment of their own with Wyatt Johnston missing his first ever NHL game due to illness. With Joel Kiviranta injured, the Stars slotted Kyle Capobianco in as a forward. 

With Johnston out, the Stars had to shuffle the forward lines a bit more, slotting Justin Hryckowian in with Sam Steel and Mikko Rantanen. In the first half of the first frame, the Stars locked it down on defense, but struggled to put much offense together. Colorado would strike first on a fluttering puck from Artturi Lehkonen. Rantanen made it his mission to take down many of his old teammates, including Nathan MacKinnon and Josh Manson.

Tensions continued to rise as Radek Faksa made a hit and Fedor Svechkov took exception and they both dropped the gloves. Svechkov would get an additional two minutes for instigating and a ten minute misconduct. Dallas got their first shot at the power-play and with under a minute left, Tyler Seguin banked one in off of Lehkonen, making it even at 1. 

The second period did not start out well for the Stars, as they were starting to give up some good chances and were not as controlled with the puck, leading to more chaos. It was not long before the Avalanche capitalized on the sloppy play when Martin Necas cleaned up the rebound to give Colorado the lead. A few minutes later, a fight breaks out and to almost everyone's surprise, it was Roope Hintz and MacKinnon. This would be Hintz's first NHL fight and he would leave MacKinnon badly bloodied and heading to the locker room for repairs. 

As soon as MacKinnon returned to the bench, the Stars had their worst sequence of the game. Capobianco, who only had 2:59 minutes total of ice time for the night, was called for cross-checking and sends the Avalanche to the power-play. With 26 seconds left on the power-play, Radek Faksa gets called for tripping, giving the Avalanche a 5-on-3 power-play. Colorado, even with a struggling power-play, would not miss out on opportunity like that and once again Necas found the back of the net, making it 3-1. 

In the final frame, the gloves stayed on and the Stars tried their best to push back. The Avalanche would have one more shot at the power-play, to which the Stars held them off the score sheet. At just over three minutes into the period, Hintz cuts the lead in half on a pass from Tyler Seguin from behind the net. However, they were held without a shot on goal for nearly the whole period until they pulled the goalie and had an extra skater on the ice. The Stars were not able to make anything happen with the extra help, dropping the first two points of the head-to-head face-off to the Avalanche. 

After the game, the theme of the talks were that the Stars were not poised enough, they were rushing chances and head coach, Glen Gulutzan, attributed some of that to not being able to get in a rythym thus far this season. Hintz was not able to meet with media after the game due to being evaluated by doctors. Gulutzan did state that Johnston would not be traveling with the team to Colorado.

The Stars will get their chance at quick redemption when they take on the Avalanche tonight at Ball Arena in Denver.

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