The Dallas Stars enter Thursday’s road game against the Ottawa Senators on their second three-game losing streak of the season, but the team is not panicking about its recent results.
After all, the Stars are still on top of the Central Division by two points over the Colorado Avalanche and have faced some of the NHL’s elite teams over the recent stretch, including the Boston Bruins and the New York Rangers — two of the top three teams in the Eastern Conference.
“I think you have to look at the games and the process more than the results, as hard as that is,” Dallas head coach Pete DeBoer told the media in Ottawa on Thursday. “We could’ve won both those games. We played well enough in Boston, and we should’ve won, and we played well enough in New York for stretches that we could’ve won.”
Dallas played Boston and New York in back-to-back games on Monday and Tuesday, making for a busy week with just a day off before playing Ottawa. During those games, the Stars ran into exceptional goalies, as Boston’s Jeremy Swayman and New York’s Igor Shesterkin combined for 84 saves and were each named the “First Star” of their respective matchups.
“Two pretty elite goaltending performances from those guys,” DeBoer said. “Sometimes you just have to tip your cap and move on.”
While he obviously would rather have the end result be more wins, DeBoer understands that sometimes you just get beat, even on a good night.
“You’re going to go through periods during the season where you just don’t find a way to get those points,” DeBoer explained. “You’ve got to keep perspective. You’re looking at how you’re playing, and I think we’ve played some pretty solid hockey.”
Although it has been a short tenure, losing streaks of this nature have not been typical for the Stars under DeBoer, as the team has been great at responding to adversity. Since he took over as the team’s head coach, Dallas has lost three or more games in a row just three other times, and only once did the total ever surpass three.
“It’s just what we have here,” forward Roope Hintz told the media. “We compete hard and try to play our best game. Of course, sometimes you lose the game, and there’s OTs and shootouts, but I think the biggest thing is just to not think too much about how many you’ve lost or anything like that.”
