Throughout this season the Dallas Stars have been adamant that the 2016-17 season was in the past.
It might as well be the team motto, “this is a whole new year.” Whenever a media member asks a question referring to last season, players have gone back to that phrase and used it ad nauseam.
Actions also speak louder than words, and the Stars are starting to eliminate any reason to ask about last season.
The goaltending has been better, the special teams look crisp, and with a 5-4 win against the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday the Stars did something the 2015-16 team seemingly couldn’t do — win on the road.
It doesn’t matter that the win came against an Arizona team still looking for it’s first win. It also didn’t matter if it wasn’t pretty. It was still a big win for the Stars after they entered Thursday’s game 0-for-2 on the road, and after a 12-24-5 showing away from American Airlines Center last season, there wasn’t much proof that this really was a “whole new year” in an opposing building.
“I think it’s huge, we just found a way to win tonight,” Johns said. “This is a whole new year, I think everyone in this locker room nows that. We don’t really care what happened last year, it’s all about this year.”
Getting that first road win could be a nice confidence boost with the road-heavy schedule upcoming. After hosting the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, Dallas will take a five-game road trip where they’ll have to prove Thursday was the first step to continued road success.
Oleksiak struggles
Jamie Oleksiak re-entered the lineup on Thursday and played perhaps the worst game of his NHL career.
The final straw for Ken Hitchcock came on on Clayton Keller’s breakaway goal. After that turnover by Oleksiak he was benched for the rest of the game.
“He had some good shifts, then a couple tough ones at the end,” Hitchcock said. “It’s always the same thing. When you’ve got a lot of time, you don’t take time because something happens. It’s one of those things, it’s not a big deal.”
Hitchcock said it shouldn’t be difficult for a player to step into the lineup right away, like Oleksiak did on Thursday after sitting in back-to-back games.
“You come in you just breathe fire and you take the spot.” Hitchcock said. “That’s what we’re looking for. It has nothing to do with how apprehensive you are. You just roll up your sleeves and dig in. We’ll live with the mistakes, but what we want to see is strong emotion. We don’t care who is in. We want to see strong emotion from that player and the rest we’ll take care and teach through the mistakes.”
Oleksiak will likely be a scratch on Saturday in favor of Julius Honka, but we won’t know for sure until the morning skate (the Stars don’t practice Friday with a travel day).
Poke check
Ben Bishop’s numbers — 27 saves on 31 shots — don’t reflect his performance.
When the Stars acquired Bishop they were hoping for a goalie that made the big save when it was needed, and the goalie delivered against Arizona.
His poke check on Derek Stepan may be the save of the season so far, while he also made a breakaway save in the third period that could have been the difference after Arizona cut the lead to 5-4 in the final seconds.
Postgame video
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