The Dallas Stars finally found the pace Glen Gulutzan said had been missing, then watched that progress vanish in one untidy change of possession. St. Louis beat Dallas 4-0 in Friday’s regular-season opener at American Airlines Center, and Dalibor Dvorsky’s second-period goal remains the clearest explanation for why the Stars’ best stretch never became a serious comeback.
Dallas trailed 11-7 in shots after the first period. In the second, the Stars owned a 10-5 advantage. That is a meaningful correction in the flow of a game, even if it is not proof of territorial control or superior chance quality.
Gulutzan’s diagnosis that his team found its legs was supported by the volume. The troubling part was a retrieval that ended with a second St. Louis goal.
The middle-period clock read 13:05 when Jake Oettinger left the puck for Nils Lundkvist behind the Dallas net. Pius Suter reached it first, moved it to Philip Broberg and then saw Broberg feed Dvorsky for an open-goal finish. Oettinger was trying to return to the crease when he tripped over Roope Hintz and fell.
The play was over quickly, but it contained the central problem: Dallas did not secure the puck after the goaltender’s decision to leave it, and St. Louis converted the resulting possession before the Stars could reset.
That is a more useful reading than simply pinning the goal on Oettinger. His choice began the danger, and Dvorsky’s goal counts against him. Yet the mistake became costly because the players in front of him did not win the puck back once Suter got there first.
The collision with Hintz made the finish more awkward, but it came after the turnover had already put the Blues in control of the sequence. Pressure is a team activity; so is ending it safely.
St. Louis deserves credit for recognizing the opening. The Blues did not need a barrage to protect their lead. Joel Hofer stopped all 25 Dallas shots, including four on the power play, for his ninth NHL shutout.
Dallas’ second-period push therefore produced activity without the one thing that gives activity consequence: a goal. Hofer’s clean work was not passive luck, either. He and the Blues penalty kill kept four Dallas power plays from changing the game.
The special-teams arithmetic deserves precision. Dallas went 0-for-4 and had 8:40 of power-play time; St. Louis also went 0-for-4. In the third period, an apparent Adam Jiricek power-play goal was overturned after Dallas successfully challenged for offside.
That kept the deficit at 2-0. Dallas then had another chance after Brandon Carlo’s major and Thomas Harley’s simultaneous minor: two minutes of four-on-four first, followed by nearly three minutes of Stars power-play time. It went unused.
