After the loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs Tuesday night, the Dallas Stars needed to tighten up in a few areas: winning one-on-one puck battles, aggression on both sides of the puck, and not letting the net-front battles get away from them.
At first it seemed that the Stars were in for more of the same kind of issues, as Anaheim jumped out to an early two-goal lead off some defensive miscues by the five-man units Dallas had on the ice. “I don’t think anyone liked how we played in the first period. I thought we were not playing enough with aggression in the tough areas like in net front in our d-zone,” head coach Jim Montgomery said after the game.