Tyler Seguin's new locations, geographically and on the ice, are suiting him well so far with the Dallas Stars. Seguin dominated the Winnipeg Jets on Friday with his first two goals for the Stars, part of a career-high four-point game and a 4-1 win at MTS Centre. The Stars acquired Seguin from the Boston Bruins in July in a trade that also brought Rich Peverley to Dallas. New Stars coach Lindy Ruff has returned Seguin to his natural center role on the team's top line with captain Jamie Benn and Peverley. Seguin, the second pick in the 2010 NHL Draft, left Boston after three seasons when he visited the Stanley Cup Final twice and won a championship as a Bruins rookie in 2011. Peverley missed the Stars' training camp, preseason and first game with an irregular heartbeat.
"Great start," Seguin said of the
Stars' effort, which came after a six-day break in the schedule. "I
think we were really excited to play. It felt like we had had two or
three training camps thus far."
"For [Seguin's] confidence to get on the
board with a couple of goals, for [Benn] to grab one, and I think
that [Peverley] on the right side did a nice job, that line had to
have a really good feeling by the end of the night," Ruff
said.
Dallas (2-1-0) showed no rust and cruised to a 3-0
first-period lead on goals from Seguin, Alex
Chiasson and Benn. Chiasson, playing on the second line with Cody
Eakin and Ray
Whitney, has nine goals in his first 10 NHL games. Kari
Lehtonen, who had played one game against the team that selected
him second in the 2002 NHL Draft, made his second start of the season
and stopped all 21 shots he faced. He exited late in the second
period with a lower-body injury. Dan
Ellis finished up with 22 saves, allowing a third-period goal to
Blake Wheeler.
After the game, Ruff said Lehtonen is day-to-day. It is expected
Ellis will start Saturday night against the Minnesota Wild. Dallas,
which opened its road schedule and played its first Central Division
game since NHL realignment, will play four of its next five games on
the road. Ruff put his team through two particularly rigorous
practice sessions this week to offset any potential effects of the
six-day break.
"[The break is] something that we talked
about," Ruff said. "We had to stay sharp all week,
and we covered almost every aspect of the game. I thought that the
first couple of shifts were rusty, but after that we started to skate
well. … I always think that big layoffs are an unknown. I'd like to
stand here and [say] that I knew that we were going to be ready. But
you never know. You try to do the right things. You try to put in the
compete drills to simulate some game stuff."
Ondrej
Pavelec started in net for Winnipeg (2-3-0), allowed four goals
on the Stars' first 18 shots, and finished with 27 saves. Winnipeg,
which has lost three consecutive games after a 2-0-0 start, continues
a six-game homestand Sunday against the New Jersey Devils.
"I thought we made some mistakes in the
first period," Jets coach Claude Noel said, "and
with those kinds of mistakes, we can't expect that our goaltending's
going to save us like it has in the previous games. I thought that
the mistakes we made were correctable mistakes. We should have been
smarter, and we should have been better in those areas."
Chiasson sliced off the right boards after taking
a pass from Seguin at the top of the right circle and stuffed a shot
through Pavelec's pads at 9:33 of the first period. Seguin made it
2-0, 2:26 later when he sped across the Winnipeg blue line before
taking a rolling puck and hammering a long shot over Pavelec's glove.
Benn made the lead 3-0 late in the first period after Pavelec failed
to secure a hard Seguin shot. Benn scooped up the loose puck and
tucked it around Pavelec at 16:53. Early in the second, on the power
play after Winnipeg's Grant
Clitsome went off for interference, Seguin positioned himself in
the left circle, took a feed from Benn and unleashed a heavy shot
that slipped past Pavelec for a 4-0 game. Wheeler ended the combined
shutout bid 5:35 into the third period. He collected the rebound of a
Dustin
Byfuglien shot at the edge of the Dallas crease and flicked it
past Ellis. Tobias
Enstrom assisted on the goal and has an assist in each of the
Jets' five games. Winnipeg took 44 shots on goal against Dallas one
night after managing 15 against Minnesota in a 2-1 loss. The Jets
controlled much of the second half of the game against the Stars. The
Jets will return to practice Saturday morning before meeting New
Jersey, and there will be plenty of work to do.
"I saw different things from a coaching
standpoint that for me [showed] we just played with a lot more vim
and vigor, if you will," Noel said. "If we had a
game like [Thursday] again [Friday], that would be a really big
concern of mine, because we were really empty [Thursday]. We had no
emotion [Thursday]. At least we had emotion in the game and were
trying to get this thing [corrected]."
"We just made a few mistakes that ended up
costing us," Wheeler said. "You blink your eye, and
it's 3-0 going on 4-0. Like I said, it snowballed a little bit out of
control and that was the disappointing part, we weren't able to put a
stop to it in time to get ourselves back in the game."
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