BOSTON -- The beauty of real, actual, NHL games is that once you start playing them, you get answers to questions you've been pondering all summer.
The problem with real, actual, NHL games is once you start playing them, you might not like those answers.
Heika's Take: 'The effort was there, but we weren't making plays'
The season is still early, and it's apparent the Stars are still trying to find their game
The Stars on Saturday continued to struggle with possession, passing and chemistry, getting outshot 40-28 in a 3-1 loss to the Boston Bruins. Yes, they received stellar netminding again, as Braden Holtby surrendered just two goals and kept Dallas in the game until the final two minutes, but the Stars started slow, looked sloppy, and were outmatched by the hungry Bruins.
"We were waiting to see how they were going to play instead of taking the play to them, simple as that," Stars head coach Rick Bowness said. "Disappointing."
While the Stars (1-1-0) filled in a lot of holes over the summer, they also created some challenges. By adding Ryan Suter, Luke Glendening, Jani Hakanpää, Michael Raffl and Jacob Peterson, there are new faces who have to blend in. In addition, Tyler Seguin and Alexander Radulov each are returning after missing most of last season with injuries, so there are growing pains there. And finally, the team is without Jason Robertson (upper body), John Klingberg (lower body) and Blake Comeau (upper body), so those losses must be accounted for.
It's a lot to mix in. Still, that's the job, and the Stars know that.
"I don't want to make an excuse like chemistry," said Glendening, who scored the team's only goal. "I think some of it as whole is we just need to work harder. We'll continue to get better."
To do that, they have to learn to play together and get better timing.
"Guys are trying to figure out their place," said Suter. "It takes time, but at the end of the day, we've got to find a way. The guys want to win. It's early, we'll get there. It's definitely a process. You've got some new guys learning new systems and that's a really good team over there. They were juiced up and ready to go for their home opener."
The Bruins were playing their first game of the season and came out hard. The Stars players and coaches said they expected that push, but when they got on the ice, they struggled to handle the intensity of the game. Boston was able to hem the Stars in their own zone, and that created a bit of panic.
"The effort was there, but we weren't making plays," Suter said. "We were turning pucks over, we were kind of under pressure to get it to the neutral zone, we'd change and then they'd come right at us. It was tough sledding tonight."
Bowness said the team hasn't looked crisp so far. They were outshot by the Rangers and spent a lot of time in their own zone, so this was a bit of a repeat performance. While Dallas gave up fewer scoring chances of the high-quality type, they nonetheless spent too much time in their own zone.
"We're not handling the puck the way we should," Bowness said. "We've got passes we're not handling, and that I don't understand. They're tape-to-tape and it's bouncing over our stick, and it disrupts the flow of our offense when that happens. You've got to be able to handle the pass, and we're not."
Some of the team's best players have been their worst offenders. Seguin and Radulov look rusty, while Jamie Benn and Joe Pavelski also aren't the beacons of calm they've been in the past. Combine that with missing Klingberg, and there are a lot of places where the team could get better.
"It's not one person, it's everyone," Bowness said, adding that the team has to get things fixed quickly with a game at Ottawa Sunday. "We're expecting to go out there and dictate the game to them."
The Stars had long stretches of similar play but were able to fight through it and take a 3-2 overtime win against the Rangers Thursday. In that game, goalies Holtby and Anton Khudobin combined to keep Dallas in the game. Holtby grabbed the whole game on Saturday and was again outstanding.
That was another question from the summer. Could Holtby bounce back after a rough year with the Canucks led to a buyout in Vancouver? Could Khudobin get back to the player who posted a .930 save percentage in 2019-20 and helped the Stars get to the Stanley Cup Final? So far, the answer there has been very positive.
"It's been outstanding," Glendening said of the goaltending. "They've made great saves, kept us in games. Holts was a huge reason we were in the game tonight."
Because he was, the Stars were only down 1-0 in the second period. Then, when the Glendening line with Tanner Kero and Joel Kiviranta put together a great shift, Glendening found himself open in the slot, and he tied the game with one flick of his wrist.
Boston eventually came up with the game-winning goal in the third period and added an empty-netter, but Holtby gave Dallas a chance to win or at least get to overtime, just as the team had done Thursday.
"I told them after the game, you're keeping us in these games, we'll get to our game soon," Suter said. "It's important to have that 1-2 back there, they're both great guys and they're competitors and they're fun to play in front of. It's nice to have that when you don't have it in the first period, they keep you in the game, and they let you get to your game. To have those guys bail us out, that's huge."
And if that answer continues to be in the positive, it seems like the other questions can be answered in time.
"We'll keep getting better, but it wasn't great tonight," Glendening said.
And sometimes that's the hard reality you have to face when you start playing real, actual, NHL games.
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.
Mike Heikais a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on Twitter @MikeHeika.
