Just when you thought you’d figured out the Stars, maybe you haven’t.
The Stars completed a perfect four-game road trip through the Eastern Conference on Tuesday night, beating the Devils 5-1 in a game that lacked even that much drama.
The team that lost seven straight road games just ripped off four straight away from Dallas. The team that seemed to be sinking down the Western Conference standings comes back to Texas in a playoff spot. The team that couldn’t score any goals averaged 4.5 a night across the last four games.
“Just finding ways to win,” Stars defenseman Ryan Suter said. “Like I said, they weren’t that pretty, but we found a way to win.”
Joe Pavelski led the Stars on Tuesday night with two goals and two assists. Roope Hintz had one goal and one assist for the fourth straight game. Jacob Peterson scored goals in consecutive games for the first time in his NHL career. Jani Hakanpää scored his second empty-net goal of the season.
Braden Holtby made 36 saves to earn the win.
“People after that Montreal game wrote us off,” Stars coach Rick Bowness said before the game. “It was one game and you move on. We had to start winning on the road. There’s no way we’re making the playoffs without starting to win on the road. It’s coming at a perfect time.”
Of course, there are qualifiers that follow the team’s longest road win streak since 2019. Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia and New Jersey are all out of playoff positions in the very divided East.
The Flyers entered Tuesday on a 12-game losing streak. The Devils have now lost five of their last six games. The Sabres and Red Wings are in different points of their respective rebuilds.
The Stars should have succeeded on this road trip. But results aren’t guaranteed in the NHL, and execution is still necessary to yank points out of games. When the Stars need execution, they know where to turn: their top line.
The Dallas top line of Jason Robertson, Hintz and Pavelski was again excellent on Tuesday night, scoring 14 seconds into the first period (Pavelski from the slot after a successful forecheck) and 15 seconds into the second period (Hintz on the rush). It was the eighth time this season the line has scored in the first two minutes of the game, and they’ve earned their Minutemen moniker.
Pavelski also added a signature tipped goal on Miro Heiskanen’s point shot.
The night capped an enormously productive road trip for the top line. Pavelski (three goals, seven assists), Hintz (four goals, four assists) and Robertson (three goals, four assists) combined for 10 of the Stars’ 18 goals on the road trip. Entering this trip, they’d scored 11 goals on the road.
Perhaps not much has changed for the Stars in the past week. Maybe it’s just as simple as their top line has learned how to take its game on the road with them. Sure, it’s faced lesser competition on this trip, but it left shredded defenses in its wake.
Should the top line remain stellar on the road, it’s a huge development for the Stars. It means their road game would more closely resemble their home game, and that’s something that Dallas will need to make a playoff push — and to succeed in the postseason as well.
Who knows what follows after this road trip?
The Stars won seven straight. Then lost five in a row. They won four straight. Then lost three in a row. Now comes a four-game win streak.
“We’ve been pretty streaky and we want to focus on getting rid of that,” Holtby said. “We won this game and we move on to the next one. It doesn’t matter what the previous games were. Win, loss, whatever, doesn’t matter. Half-hour after this one, we move forward to the next.
“Have to get a bit more of that mentality instead of being kind of streaky. We’re happy we’re winning right now, but we’re making sure we’re not satisfied. Want to play even better next game.”
Three players out: Forwards Radek Faksa (non-COVID illness) and Michael Raffl (lower-body) each missed their second straight game on Tuesday, and the Stars were also without defenseman John Klingberg.
Klingberg was ruled out with an upper-body injury, and Andrej Sekera drew into the lineup on the blue line. Sekera played with Joel Hanley on the third pair while Jani Hakanpää elevated to play with Esa Lindell on the second pair.
Faksa is the seventh Stars player to miss a game due to an illness. Raffl has not played since he blocked a Marc Staal shot with his right foot during the second period Friday night in Detroit.
