Heika's Take: Stars take baby steps despite loss to Ottawa

KANATA, Ontario --Three games into the 2021-22 NHL season, the Stars are swerving all over the road.
They've had great periods, horrible periods, and a couple that were kind of good. The result is a 1-2-0 start after a 3-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators Sunday at Canadian Tire Centre.

On a positive note, their last period was one of their better ones. Dallas outshot Ottawa 13-5 in the third period Sunday and Joe Pavelski came up with his first goal of the season. And while the Stars weren't able to get the game to overtime, they did at least look a lot more like their old selves.

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"I thought our second period was better than the first and the third was better than the second," Stars head coach Rick Bowness said. "A couple of the guys we needed to get going got going. That started in the second period."
While Pavelski added there was a different feel on the ice.
"We've had good periods," Pavelski said. "We've had periods to forget a little bit and learn from. So, there's pieces there, but we're still building to that 60-minute game, that team win, what Dallas Stars hockey is about. We've got to get there soon."

Dallas finishes its four-game road trip Tuesday in Pittsburgh, and it would be really nice to come out of these first four games with a .500 record. That said, the real key is to start playing the game the way this team is supposed to play. The top players have been struggling early in the season, and Bowness has been shuffling lines and looking for chemistry, so getting a little more juice from players like Pavelski, Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin and Alexander Radulov was a good thing.
Seguin missed all but three games last season recovering from a hip injury, so he was excited to get into camp as a healthy skater. Throughout preseason, he, Radulov and Benn looked great. But ever since the real games started, they just haven't found a groove.
"I thought there might be an adjustment period," Seguin said of shaking off the regular season rust. "I didn't want one, but it seems in the first few games there has been. The game has kind of picked up, and it's been all road games. I think everyone might be thinking a bit too much, but I thought tonight was back to the basics. We saw that in the second and third, and that's something to build off."
The players said they didn't want to fall back on excuses, but they recognized that teams who are playing their first home game have had extra energy. Opponents at home have been playing hard and not thinking too much. The Stars, on the other hand, have been playing cautious and wading in.
"Going into these buildings early in the season when people are excited to play at home, we've got to go in and do a job and stay committed to the process," Pavelski said. "It's very important."
The Stars found their jump midway through the game and carried it into the third period. Once they started playing aggressively and snapping the puck around, everything seemed to fall into place.
"I think we started playing with a little jam," Benn said. "When you play with a little jam, you get into a little more, and that's what we have to do, play with emotion and get on the attack a little more."

Benn tried to fire up the team with a fight two minutes into the game, and it worked briefly. Michael Raffl scored off a nice pass from Radulov and Dallas had a 1-0 lead 4:34 into the game. However, Ottawa bounced back and tied the game 50 seconds later, and Dallas was fighting momentum for the next half hour.
Chris Tierney drove the net hard and had a puck deflect off him for a power-play goal midway through the second period, and the score stayed that way until Tierney scored again with the man advantage with just a minute left in the frame.
It was a dagger of sorts, and while Pavelski brought the differential to one goal in the third period, the Stars simply couldn't convert some great chances.
That was a problem last season, and it continues to be a problem this year. The Stars have just six goals, none from Benn, Seguin or Radulov. In fact, Seguin has no points and just four shots on goal.

"It's frustrating," Seguin said. "I don't think it's too early to say your best players have got to be your best players. Pavs got one tonight, but it's on us. That was our message going into the game, and I thought we did a lot better job competing. But we get paid to produce, and we haven't found that yet."
The hope is they can build on a nice third period when they face the Penguins. If they do, then they can keep taking baby steps. If not, it'll only be natural to start thinking too much and putting pressure on.
"We've got some guys trying to find their game, we've got guys frustrated with their game," Bowness said. "We're just going to have to play our way through it."
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.