Stars Daily November 3: Concerning numbers after the road trip

The Dallas Stars return home from a five-game road trip this weekend, a stretch where they went 2-3-0 and lost to the Winnipeg Jets in disappointing fashion on Thursday.

First the good news: no one in the Central Division has separated themselves from the pack yet. Yes, the St. Louis Blues have a slight lead on everyone in the standings, but after that the rest of the division is playing close to .500 hockey.

If Thanksgiving is the early cutoff to be in the playoff race, all seven teams in the division are still in the hunt.

The bad news is the Stars have some concerning trends to reverse if they want to be one of those teams actually battling for a playoff spot.

— The Stars forwards have scored 28 goals this season. Twenty-two have come from the grouping of Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Alexander Radulov, and Mattias Janmark. Good for that group of players, but the rest of the forwards can’t be limited to six goals in 13 games.

— The Stars are 1-4 against the Central Division. Still time to make up for this, but dropping points in those head-to-head matchups will be the difference as the team.

— The shot totals are dropping. In their first six games the Stars had more shots than their opponent and had at least 31 shots in each game. It was a stretch where Dallas averaged 36.6 shots per games. In the seven games since the Stars have been outshot six times and have averaged 28.71 shots per game.

— Martin Hanzal has one goal and it was an empty netter.

— According to Hockey Reference, the Stars have had the NHL’s worst strength of schedule so far. Essentially much bigger tests are coming, while teams with more difficult schedule in the central have more of an excuse based on their opponents.

Here is where that stands amongst Central Division teams:

Blues 4th
Avalanche 13th
Predators 15th
Wild 19th
Jets 21st
Blackhawks 29th
Stars 31st

Now, some good news before closing this out. The Stars are still in the middle of the Central Division race and these are just numbers on a page. There is still a lot of hockey to be played, and the Stars just need to be better at it.

Housekeeping Notes

— The mailbag comes out later today, should be published in about an hour or so.

Today’s Schedule

The Stars are scheduled to meet as a team in Frisco at 1 p.m. There may or may not be practice.