Maybe all the Stars needed was to sleep in their own beds for a night or two.
The Stars jumped all over the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday to the tune of a 3-0 blowout at American Airlines Center, snapping a streak of two straight losses and seven in their last nine games.
It was the first game back in the confines of their home arena after a road trip that saw the Stars travel from New York to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia to Boston, with Dallas winning just one of those games.
In front of a packed house on Thursday, the Stars took control early against a Winnipeg group that was the first team out of the Western Conference playoff picture entering the night.
Matt Duchene got the scoring started quickly with his 16th goal of the year, a power play goal that Duchene banked off of Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck’s hip and into the back of the net.
It was the 37th time the Stars have cashed in on the power play at home this season, a number that tops the rest of the NHL. It also broke a troubling trend for the Stars, who hadn’t netted the first goal of the game in any of their last six matchups.
Just under 90 seconds later the Stars added to the lead, with Finnish rookie Arttu Hyry tallying his second goal in three games, also the second of his NHL career. Hyry scored the Stars’ only goal in an overtime matchup against Philadelphia on Sunday and notched another big one Thursday.
Adam Erne added a tip-in goal for the Stars’ third early in the second period to provide a 3-0 cushion, and Dallas cruised from that point.
And then, of course, there was Stars goalie Jake Oettinger, who almost casually blanked the Jets for his third shutout of the season. The Stars largely kept Oettinger clean, the 27-year-old having faced just 12 shots on goal at the 10-minute mark of the third period. In a callback to the two sides’ second-round matchup in last year’s playoffs, the Stars goalie received “Otter’s better!” chants from the home crowd during the third period as he held up opposite the three-time Vezina Trophy winner Hellebuyck.
The win doesn’t do much in the way of the Western Conference standings for the Stars — with six games remaining in the regular season after Thursday’s win, Dallas is sandwiched between first-place Colorado and third-place Minnesota with quite a bit of space on either side. They’re a virtual lock to remain in second and draw the Wild in the first round of the playoffs.
What the win over Winnipeg does do, however, is get this squad back to playing at a level that it should be six games before the playoffs, one that head coach Glen Gulutzan was very clear they were not playing after a 6-3 loss to Boston on Tuesday.
If Dallas takes the ice at the same speed they did on Thursday come their pending first-round matchup with the Wild, it’ll be hard for Gulutzan to find any complaints.