Originally Posted by bondon

Was so upset watching this game...really thought this was a great opportunity for the Stars to break out and score a bunch of goals considering the insane advantage they were given in the first period where they spent most of it on the PP.

Felt bad for Lehtonen too. The guy made some truly incredible saves in this game. He was hung out to dry pretty badly by his team IMO.

Originally Posted by NoWayOut

All the bad passes, turnovers, and inability to get the puck into the offensive zone and cycle it to create shooting lanes is killing them. They either turn the puck over or they just shoot into a wall of humanity. Gotta shoot where they ain't if your gonna score son.

Yeah Lehtonen and Nilstorp have been men alone on an island when they're in there. Something positive, albeit tiny, is that the last two games they have finally held the opposition to less than 30 shots-on-goal. But still the shots they are allowing are quality shots, and there's only so much any goalie can do in those situations. Plus once again those turnovers all too often hang Kari out to dry.

Originally Posted by PrairieDog

Interested to see how Oleksiak fares - any ideas about his potential point production? Decent numbers in the AHL this season, and he's been touted as having some offensive potential. Any chance he becomes a 35 pt mutli-cat guy?

Originally Posted by NoWayOut

I'm going to switch up the format for these recaps. Doing away with those novel-length writeups and use more of a bullet point type of presentation. So, onward and upward....

-The same recurring issues struck again. Turnovers, bad passes, too many penalties, and defense that looks lost at times. All these things spelled loss once again. The first three can be worked out relatively easily and quickly. The other, well that's going to be a work in progress.

-At one point the defense looked like spectators. Zetts brings the puck into the Dallas zone and four, count 'em four, Stars converged on him. The same thing happened last Tuesday as well. I believe it was Ralph Strangis that opined then that they looked like they wanted front row seats to watch Zetts play. As he also correctly pointed out, great as Zetterberg is, guys there are four other Red Wings on the ice with him, you might want to pay attention to them also. They didn't learn, they did it again last night.

-Tonight's 4-1 loss was the first game all season that wasn't decided by one goal, one way or the other.

-Though they did surrender a goal, the penalty kill continues to look good. On the season they rank 11th in the league at 82.9%. And frankly they should be better than that, they've looked better then that, but they just keep getting put in such bad spots with huge clusters of penalties.

-Speaking of the penalty kill, if your reading this Angus, is it me, or do the Stars seem to be creating better scoring chances shorthanded than when they're on the power play?

-And now that we've broached the subject of the power play. It's early in the going but they currently rank 21st at 16%, versus last season's 30th and 13.5%.

-Loui Eriksson continues his Motown magic with his eighth career goal in 14 games at the Joe. All told #21 has 13 points in those games. Simple plan, when in Detroit just give Loui the damn puck! Well they did tonight, unfortunately he wasn't enough, so maybe something more sophisticated is called for.

That's it for now. I may toss up some more thoughts later, as I'm sure they'll come to me after a couple of beers.