Heika’s Take: Stars fall in late-game collapse against Avalanche

The Stars did a lot of good things Saturday night.

Then they did a few bad things.

And then the whole thing just fell apart.

Dallas took a 3-0 lead against the Colorado Avalanche and then allowed six unanswered goals in a 6-3 loss. In doing so, they saw an end to their four-game winning streak and also saw their lead in the Central Division shrink to one point. It was a rough night that the team is hoping can eventually turn into something good.

“It was a good learning lesson for us,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “It’s good that it’s early in the year and not in the playoffs.”

The Stars are off to a great start in the standings, but haven’t been consistently good yet. They sit 11-4-1, one point ahead of the 11-5-0 Avalanche. They were trending toward strong play in recent games and got off to one of their best starts of the season on Saturday night. Tyler Seguin scored 10 minutes in, Joe Pavelski added a power play goal in the first period, and then Seguin scored his second of the game to put Dallas up 3-0 just 2:12 into the second period.

For most at American Airlines Center, it seemed like a sure win was coming.

But then Dallas flubbed a 5-on-3 advantage that lasted more than a minute, and Colorado came back and scored a nice transition goal. The Stars challenged for goaltender interference on that play and lost the challenge. While Dallas killed the ensuing penalty, there still was a feeling of lost momentum.

“When you play really good teams, you’ve got to limit all of those mistakes,” DeBoer said. “Poor penalties, puck management, poor challenge on the coach’s part. You’ve got to do everything right against good teams or they make you pay.”

And while there wasn’t a real feeling of “quicksand” for the Stars, it was clear the Avalanche were feeding off the energy. Colorado finished with a 15-5 advantage in shots on goal in the third period and a 24-11 edge in shot attempts. And most of the traction for Dallas in keeping those numbers even somewhat close came after Colorado took a 5-3 lead at the 14:43 mark of the third.

Before that, it really was lopsided.

“It just got away from us a little bit,” said Pavelski. “It shows you just how fine a line it is when it’s going good and it turns the other way. It’s a lesson early on that we can learn from.”

Pavelski said the Stars were getting in on the forecheck early in the game and creating both puck possession and scoring chances. Past the midway point, Dallas didn’t get the puck deep and often was turned away with little time in the offensive zone. Was that because they were sitting on a lead? Or was it because Colorado got desperate?

It was probably a little of both.

The Avalanche got the transition goal from Miles Wood, and then scored on a power play to make it 3-2 heading into the second intermission. And while the game was there for the Stars to take hold of, it seemed Colorado was empowered by small things like the 5-on-3 kill and the failed challenge.

“It felt like they turned it up a notch in the third,” said captain Jamie Benn.” I think we let them hang around for too long, and they’re a good team. Those guys know how to win.”

Now, the Stars have to react and do so quickly. They play host to the New York Rangers (12-2-1) on Monday and the Vegas Golden Knights (13-3-2) on Wednesday.

“We don’t want to let things linger, we want to get after it,” Pavelski said. “No one is happy with it, we have that understanding. We’ve got two good teams coming and we’ll put our focus on the Rangers right now.”

And to do that, they have to understand what they did wrong . . . and what they did right.

“You can’t just walk out of the rink with a bad taste in your mouth because of the result,” DeBoer said. “I think you have to look at it realistically.”

“Honestly, I feel better coming out of this game because of how we played for long stretches of the game against a really good team,” he added. “I thought we really controlled the play for long periods of time. We’ve got to learn to handle those momentum swings better, learn to play with a lead better, learn to push back in the third instead of sag. But we definitely showed that we can play with the Colorado Avalanche, so that’s a good thing. We just have things we have to clean up.”

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on Twitter @MikeHeika.