The season opener was a letdown for both the Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators.
The good news for at least one of those clubs is their disappointment will be put in the past when the sides meet Saturday night in Nashville.
Dallas arrives with less time to let the loss fester in the collective brain, arriving in Music City, U.S.A., one night after a 4-0 home defeat at the hands of the St. Louis Blues.
The result snapped a streak of winning six consecutive season openers for a Stars team that is pegged as a Stanley Cup contender.
“We got some looks on the power play but didn’t get a lot of looks 5-on-5,” Dallas coach Glen Gulutzan said. “We’ve got to get a little greasier in those hard areas. The start to an 84-game season is a little chaotic, and we’ve got to get our sea legs here, get to the right areas a little quicker.”
Although the score makes it appear the clash was one-sided against the Stars, it was a 2-0 game late in the third period before the Blues scored a pair of empty-net goals.
That said, the Stars know they were far from their best.
“We’ve got to do a better job with being prepared,” forward Tyler Seguin, who played his first game since Dec. 2, told the Dallas Morning News. “It’s not preseason anymore. But I don’t know. It’s one game.”
The Stars dodged what could have been a big injury. Early in the third period, top-line forward Roope Hintz was on the receiving end of a knee-on-knee hit from Brandon Carlo — for which the St. Louis defenseman was assessed a major penalty and a game misconduct. Hintz went to the dressing room in discomfort but returned to action.
The Predators will be looking to rebound after dropping a 3-1 game to the visiting Minnesota Wild in their season opener on Thursday.
Nashville, which has struggled out of the gates the past handful of seasons, fell behind by two goals in the first period and was not able to recover.
“We got into penalty trouble, and it’s kind of rinse and repeat from last year, where we kill the momentum of the game,” veteran forward Steven Stamkos told the team’s website after practicing on Friday. “Then, we kind of got behind the eight ball and chasing after that, and then we were just a little sloppy with the puck.”
Nashville has posted a losing record through the opening month in four consecutive seasons, and the Predators missed the playoffs in three of those campaigns.
That said, the general belief was that the Predators’ struggles against the Wild were not caused by a lack of effort. Coach Andrew Brunette said it was a case of players “hoping for things to happen instead of making things happen.”
“We came out with a lot of urgency and a lot of energy, just made some mistakes,” said captain Roman Josi said, who scored Nashville’s lone goal.
“I thought the urgency was there. … We played hard, and I thought the first two periods, we had a lot of good moments.”
On Friday, Nashville assigned defenseman Ryan Ufko to AHL Milwaukee. The Predators were carrying three extra defensemen, and Ilya Lyubushkin likely will draw into the lineup.
