This back-to-back issue has got to be a curse maybe? Somebody did something, said something, and the offended party hit the Stars with some old fashioned hoodoo? Answers are as hard to find as the wins themselves.
Here's Mike Heika's take on this problem...
http://starsblog.dallasnews.com/2013...to-backs.html/
One quote in there stood out above everything else. It was this...
Quote:
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“We were soft in the beginning, soft with our sticks, soft with our plays. We weren’t ready,” said Gulutzan. “I thought they played a solid game, but I didn’t think they came guns a blazing. I thought we were just soft.”
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So is this a coaching issue, or a player issue? You have the coach here saying they weren't ready, well that's your job as coach to have them ready. But there's also the point that quite a few of these guys are vets, they know what needs to be done to be ready. This is likely as not the old saying that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
But no matter what the answers to this are, they aren't going to come easy, something this broken is always tough to fix. But they have to come before this team can truly be a playoff contender. The Stars missed the playoffs by six points last season, and just improving to .500 in those back-to-backs last season would have been enough to get them over that hump. This season you can't afford these types of things if you have any hope of extending your season.
In other news Jamie Oleksiak was sent back down to Austin. No word on who will be recalled but speculation is Jordie Benn will be the one. I'm kind of surprised that it was the Big Rig and not Larsen that was sent down. Since no call-up has been announced it may mean whoever it is won't join the team until they return from Vancouver.
