Six Things the Dallas Stars Can Change after a Game 1 Blowout

And the solution will have to come from inside the (healthy) roster

Glen Gulutzan reiterated today what he said after the game last night: nobody on the Stars thinks they played their best game last night in a 6-1 loss to Minnesota on home ice.

Playoff series are (usually) long and complicated, with momentum going both ways at different times. Game 1 history aside, the Stars know that the best thing they can do is to write off Saturday’s loss as an uncharacteristic fluke and put forth a much better effort on Monday night.

But if effort were all that was required, hockey would be a very different sport. In a playoff series, there are big-picture strategies and shift-to-shift tactics for teams to employ against one another, and the Stars have a few things that we already know they’ll be looking to change up tomorrow night.

In fact, I came away from today’s optional practice with five things I expect the Stars to change. And everyone on the internet knows that when you have five things to talk about, you’re supposed to turn them into a list. So, let’s do that.

1. Get Healthier

This is both the simplest and the hardest thing for Dallas to accomplish.

Today, Glen Gulutzan confirmed that Roope Hintz isn’t even skating on his own yet, let alone practicing with the team. So unless something changes dramatically in the near future, it’s getting tougher and tougher to see how Hintz would end up being well enough to play at any point in this series.

On the other hand, Gulutzan said that Mikko Rantanen is no longer dealing with the injury that he suffered at the Olympics. When asked whether Rantanen was 100% yet, Gulutzan responded with this: “He is now.”

Still, Rantanen didn’t really seem to look like Mikko Rantanen until the second half of the game, but that’s kind of par for the course with number 96 at any given time. He doesn’t have to dictate every shift he plays, but the Stars will hope he can find a way to impact the game before the only way to do so is being a comeback hero.

As for the rest of the lineup, Gulutzan said yesterday that Heiskanen’s situation is such that the Stars’ top defenseman probably will get a little more comfortable each time he skates. The hope will be, like in last year’s playoff run, that Heiskanen looks more like himself as the series progresses.

Sam Steel and Radek Faksa both skated in practice today as well, so their respective recoveries look to be going as smoothly as they can be. And for what it’s worth Gulutzan confirmed today that the Stars made it through Game 1 without suffering any further injuries.

There’s no question that Minnesota is the healthier of the two teams right now, but if Dallas can close that gap even a little bit by just getting the already-active players a bit healthier, it could improve their chances in this series significantly.

2. More Active Defensemen

While Glen Gulutzan was careful to say that he never uses another team’s players as examples with which to motivate his own guys, it was pretty clear last night that Quinn Hughes was making some big-time plays, whereas Miro Heiskanen didn’t quite have the same impact. Both players were less than 100%, for different reasons, but Heiskanen wasn’t quite able to do what Hughes did.

What Gulutzan did say today, however, was that he challenged all of his defense to do a little bit more than they did last night.

“I’ve challenged all of our D to use their legs a little bit more,” Gulutzan said today. “But that didn’t start happening almost until the middle of the second period. And you could see when we skated. You could see Nils [Lundkvist] made some great plays skating up the ice. So we do have to get our transition and our legs moving a little bit more back there.”