Dallas finally looked like itself Monday night, and that was the biggest takeaway from a 5-0 win over San Jose.
After being shut out by St. Louis and scoring just once in Nashville, the Stars had spent the opening stretch of the season looking stuck between ideas.
Glen Gulutzan felt the group was trying to be too perfect offensively, and against the Sharks, Dallas stripped things down. The result was a game built on traffic, puck battles and time spent in the offensive zone instead of endless searching for the ideal chance.
Miro Heiskanen summed up the shift in plain language in “Heika’s Take”:
“Right when the puck dropped we were ready to go, ready to battle.”
San Jose was also without Macklin Celebrini, who was scratched with a lower-body injury after taking part in warmups, but Dallas did far more than just take advantage of a weakened lineup. The Stars controlled the game territorially and turned it into the kind of comfortable night they badly needed after the first two games.
That doesn’t erase the issues from the opening weekend. It does, however, give Dallas something real to point to after roughly 120 minutes of hockey that had raised plenty of alarms.
One win changes the conversation. At the very least, it suggests the offense wasn’t broken beyond repair.
Around the Central, the results kept coming. Utah stayed perfect at 3-0-0 with a 5-3 win over New Jersey, getting a three-point night from Nick Schmaltz and three assists from Mikhail Sergachev.
Buffalo erased a two-goal Minnesota lead and then won 3-2 in overtime on an Owen Power goal. Chicago knocked off St.
Louis 4-2, denying the club that shut out Dallas on opening night a second Central win in four days. Toronto beat Nashville 5-4 in overtime after the Predators blew a 3-0 lead, with Auston Matthews scoring the winner.
Tonight’s Central matchup is Colorado at Winnipeg at 6:30 p.m. CT. Colorado is 2-0-0, while Winnipeg enters at 2-0-1.
Elsewhere, Dylan Larkin returned in Detroit after requesting a trade this summer and was booed every time he touched the puck. That didn’t stop him from scoring and adding an assist in a 5-3 Red Wings win, and he was named the game’s first star.
As for Mikko Rantanen, his first goal of the season came on a sequence that included popping the puck into the air, getting around a defender, regaining control and ripping it past Yaroslav Askarov.
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