The Dallas Stars will be out to start another winning streak on Tuesday night when they complete a five-game road trip against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Stars had their seven-game winning streak and nine-game points streak end with a 3-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators on Sunday night. They scored the first goal and Ottawa scored the next three.
“I liked our first period, thought we played really well,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “I thought they upped their intensity and physicality in the second, and I thought we didn’t go with them.”
Sunday’s game saw Jason Robertson and Evgenii Dadonov notch their 11th and 12th goals of the season, respectively, but the defense faltered a bit. During the Stars’ winning streak, which began Dec. 29, they held their opponents to two goals or fewer six times.
Dallas forward Wyatt Johnston gave a frank assessment of his team’s performance against the Senators.
“They came out playing better than we did,” Johnston said. “A little bit of everything, winning more battles, some turnovers for us. Such a hard league to win in and you need to show up every period, especially the starts of periods because that’s when you can really grab momentum.”
The Maple Leafs know they must play with more energy than they did in a 3-0 loss to the travel-weary Vancouver Canucks on Saturday. The opener of a three-game homestand ended with boos from the crowd.
“I didn’t think we played with enough pace in the game,” Toronto coach Craig Berube said. “We didn’t obviously generate enough. We obviously have to generate more than we did, power plays included.”
Toronto was 0-for-3 on the power play and seldom threatened, taking a total of only two shots on goal with the man advantage.
“There’s a lot of movement. A lot of nothing going on, I guess,” Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews said. “And I just think we can do a better job of simplifying it. More shots to the net, and then letting things open up from there.”
The Maple Leafs have lost two straight after their five-game winning streak ended with a 6-3 road loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday.
They worked on their power play, which is ranked 19th in the league (20.6 percent), before their regular practice on Monday.
The Canucks were coming off a 2-0 loss to the Hurricanes on Friday and they did not reach Toronto until early Saturday afternoon because of weather delays. Yet they were the livelier team on Saturday, although Toronto’s Mitchell Marner seemed satisfied with his side’s effort.
“I liked it,” Marner said. “I thought we played well, I really did. The last couple of games, we’ve been giving up plays to teams that aren’t missing on them. I thought we were good, five-man tight in our zone, thought we went through the neutral zone as a unit.”
Maple Leafs defenseman Chris Tanev disagreed.
“Not good enough. (The Canucks) outworked us, outcompeted us and that’s why they won,” Tanev said. “We’re not worried about them, we need to play our game better. That’s why we lost. We’re not connected as five. We’re not helping support each other, and that’s where they took advantage of us and scored some goals.”
The Maple Leafs won the first meeting of the season, 5-3, on Dec. 18 at Dallas.
–Field Level Media
