Saturday Dallas Stars Roundup: Heiskanen Back, Duchene at RW, Road Trip Particulars, and Why Sam Steel Is Sticking on the Top Line

Hear us out for a second

Miro Heiskanen skates at practice on Saturday in Frisco

Dallas will be getting a boost after losing the final two games of their six-game road trip. That boost is Miro Heiskanen, who returned to Texas out of being away from the team for family-related reasons.

Glen Gulutzan said today that Heiskanen actually skated Friday as well, so his participation in practice on Saturday marked the second time in as many days that Heiskanen was back in hockey mode after dealing with an undisclosed personal matter.

Dallas played a lot better in Utah on Thursday, but they ultimately fell 2-1 after losing faceoff after faceoff in key spots, including in the final three minutes with an extra attacker on the ice and Utah being unable to change after an icing.

That was a tough loss to end a tough road trip, but lest you think going 2-5-4 over their last 11 games is causing a scramble in Dallas to make changes to the Stars’ approach, Glen Gulutzan says not so much.

“It’s not about adjustments right now. It’s about us starting to stack,” Gulutzan said. “Stacking good days, good plays, good games, back to back to back. And stacking the ingredients that need to be in every game in order to give yourself a chance to win, especially when things are so tight: Discipline, penalties, power play being good, your PK being good, your goaltending being good. Your shots, you know, you’re generating 5-on-5 offense.”

The lack of that offense sunk them in Utah, when the Stars only scored a power play goal. But Gulutzan pointed to how Dallas also scored a lot of 5-on-5 goals in San Jose, so it’s been a streaky thing for the team, hence the refrain about consistency.

“You need those things to stack together, and that’s where we’re keeping our focus,” Gulutzan said. “Right now, it’s honestly not about a lot of adjustments. There’s not a lot of teams making adjustments right now. Everybody’s trying to find their game within their structure. That’s what we’re trying to do right now, is just make sure that we’re pushing on all cylinders.”

Gulutzan said he’s been part of winning streaks and losing streaks over the years, and the key isn’t just pulling out of the skids or riding the wave as long as you can: It’s being as honest as you can about your team, both in the good and the bad.

“What I have learned is you’ve got to manage those ebbs and flows. They’re in every season. But you gotta be honest with what makes your team successful, and why you’re not successful. And those are the honest conversations that we’ve had here. Who we are, and making sure we’re sticking to our identity, and what’s helping us win, and what’s helping us not win.”

A big talking point has been special teams, as well it should be. Since Christmas, the Stars rank 28th on the penalty kill and 29th on the power play. And when you don’t have special teams papering over hiccups at 5-on-5, the margin for error disappears: as Dallas has found in recent one-goal losses to Anaheim and Utah, as well as overtime losses to San Jose, Montreal, and Detroit.

“We’ve talked about penalties in San Jose,” Gulutzan said, “We talked about defending in LA. We talked about trying to stack it up in Anaheim, which didn’t happen. Then tried to regroup and reset in Utah, and I thought we just came up a little short. I think Utah was better than us that game in a lot of facets, but you could see the compete and the battle in the last [game], so I’m just waiting for…everything’s gotta come together. Our speciality teams, our discipline, our everything.”

A significant piece of the special teams discussion is Mikko Rantanen, who tends to both draw and take the most penalties on the team. But Gulutzan says that Rantanen’s demeanor with the officials is actually a lot more positive than the raw penalty minutes might indicate.

“Yeah, he’s really good with the way he interacts [with the officials],” Gulutzan said. “He runs hot, but the officials like him. You can tell. You have to be on the ice to see that. He gets hot, but he’s a reasonable guy.”

Still, Gulutzan did acknowledge that the coaching staff and Rantanen have had discussions about his high penalty minutes this season compared to prior seasons. Gulutzan pointed to stick fouls in particular like hooks and slashes as plays that every player is responsible to “clean up,” Rantanen included.

As far as the team as a whole, Gulutzan also added that the Stars’ shots on goal disparity isn’t really a focus for the team at this point of the season.

“Not anymore,” Gulutzan said. “We are where we are. We’ve had this when we were 17 and 5, and we have this now. It is kind of who we are. Do we wanna create more [shots] in the bottom [of the lineup]? Yep, we do. But it’s not really a conversation piece.”

Sam Steel and Matt Duchene Sticking in Top Six

In practice today, Dallas’s defense pairings rotated, so it was less clear which blue liner is likely to come out tomorrow when Miro Heiskanen returns to the lineup against Tampa Bay. The guess here is either Ilya Lyubushkin or Alex Petrovic, but we won’t know for sure until morning skate tomorrow around 12:45pm.

Up front, the Stars rolled the following forward lines at practice in Frisco, with Duchene looking likely to start a second straight game on the right wing of Roope Hintz:

Steel-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Hintz-Duchene
Bäck-Hryckowian-Bourque
Benn-Faksa-Blackwell

I had a chance to chat with Duchene after practice, and he said he’s feeling fully healthy again, and has for a while. That was good to hear given the long recovery from his concussion.