Dallas won 36 of 58 faceoffs Friday night, a 62.1% share. It also won the second-period shot count 10-5. The Stars still opened the regular season with a 4-0 loss to the St. Louis Blues at American Airlines Center, because possession begins with a restart and ends with a puck in the net.
Winning the draw is valuable precisely because of what should come next. Dallas repeatedly obtained that first step, and the second-period shot count offered an encouraging response to a poor start. Hofer still had the final say on every puck that reached him. Possession’s opening transaction was favorable; the return stayed at zero.
The middle period offered Dallas its best argument against writing off the night as a flat performance. After St. Louis took a 1-0 lead on Mason McTavish’s rebound 1:34 into the game, Dallas generated 10 shots to the Blues’ five in the second.
Coach Glen Gulutzan said Dallas found its legs in that period, a reasonable reading of a frame in which the Stars had their clearest statistical advantage.
Then the game turned on a sequence that made the margin for offensive failure smaller still.
At 13:05, Jake Oettinger left the puck behind the Dallas net for Nils Lundkvist. Pius Suter won the retrieval, moved it to Philip Broberg and set up a rapid attack toward the exposed crease. Oettinger stumbled while getting back into position after Roope Hintz’s movement in the area, and Broberg fed Dalibor Dvorsky for the finish.
The goal belongs on Oettinger’s ledger, as it should. It was also a defensive breakdown that involved more than one decision. The goalie’s puck play started the trouble; the lost retrieval and the scramble afterward turned it into a goal.
Dallas had just spent much of the period building a response, and one failed possession erased the practical benefit of that work before the Stars had scored to make it matter.
Joel Hofer handled the rest. The St. Louis goalie stopped all 25 Dallas shots, including four on the power play. Dallas went 0-for-4 with the man advantage, while the Blues also finished 0-for-4.
The Stars had 8:40 of power-play time, but the result was still a shutout. Faceoff wins gave Dallas more opportunities to begin with the puck; they did not guarantee a finish, and the final scoring line is the cleanest measure of what those opportunities became.
