The Stars have become a great road team.
Not just good…great.
A Dallas team that struggled earlier away from home and started the season 4-12-1 on the road is now 18-16-2. That happens because of a 14-4-1 run, including 6-1-0 in the past seven road games and 3-0 on this current road trip.
Dallas has a chance to close out the four-game trip with a win at Seattle Sunday, and that would be a nice bookend to a four-game road sweep that started the turnaround back in January.
That's a pretty high incentive for the players.
"It's a big trip for us right now," defenseman Jani Hakanpää said. "If we can go home with four wins, it would be huge. We've just got to go one moment at a time, and hopefully, we get the job done."
The road sweep in January came against Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia and New Jersey. This current trip includes wins over Anaheim (twice) and San Jose. None of those teams are expected to make the playoffs, so the Stars are winning the games they're supposed to win.
Sunday in Seattle, the Stars will meet an expansion team 31st in points and points percentage. The Kraken are 29th in scoring at 2.59 goals per game, 27th in goals against at 3.53, 29th on the power play (14.8 percent) and 29th on the penalty kill (73.9 percent).
When Dallas plays Tuesday at American Airlines Center, it'll start a stretch run of 10-of-14 games at home. It's a packed schedule and there are some playoff teams involved, but the Stars are 21-9-1 at home, so the thought is they can play some good hockey and get into the playoffs.
"It's just the situation that's in front of us," forward Joe Pavelski said. "We're playing hockey games, whether you're at home or on the road, we need wins. You've got to keep winning and guys have done a good job buying into that, playing hard and finding a lot of good, quality wins."
