‘Left A Point Out There’: Dallas Stars Return To Tight-Checking Identity In 2-1 Shootout Loss To Columbus Blue Jackets

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Two nights after a 6-5 win at Washington, the Dallas Stars allowed one goal in 65 minutes Thursday and still lost. The Columbus Blue Jackets won 2-1 in a shootout at Nationwide Arena.

Zach Werenski tied it with 3:14 left in regulation, wiping out a 1-0 lead from Mikko Rantanen’s goal 6:27 into the third period.

Stars coach Glen Gulutzan was not happy about leaving without the extra point. Thursday was also the second meeting between the teams in six days.

“We played them twice here in the last week and they’ve played some good hockey,” Gulutzan said. “So, it was a good hockey game, tight-checking and it was back to our identity.”

On Tuesday in Washington, Jason Robertson scored a natural hat trick, the seventh hat trick of his career. Jake Oettinger allowed five goals on 25 shots in that game.

Glen Gulutzan Points To The Defense After 6-5 Win In Washington

Columbus finished with 30 shots Thursday. Dallas blocked 19, won 67% of the faceoffs, and killed both Columbus power plays.

The Stars had allowed five goals in each of their two losses before this trip, 5-1 to New Jersey on Oct. 27 and 5-2 to Montreal on Oct. 29. Through 16 games, Dallas has allowed 36 goals and killed 47 of 52 penalties, a 90.4% rate.

Gulutzan played Thursday without Miro Heiskanen, who has an upper-body injury, and with rookie Trey Taylor in his second NHL game. He named Taylor when he talked about how few chances Dallas allowed.

“I thought our defense all played well,” Gulutzan explained. “When you give up that few of chances and you’ve got a young guy in [Trey Taylor], he played well. We’re not happy with the result and not getting the extra point, but our game looked better.”

Casey DeSmith made 29 saves on 30 shots. He saw the group follow through on what it had talked about cleaning up.

“I thought we did a lot of good things, we defended well,” DeSmith said. “There were a lot of things we talked about doing a better job, and I thought we did that tonight.”

Rantanen scored the Stars’ only goal, his third in three games.

“Today, we played a pretty good 60,” Rantanen said.

Columbus goalie Cam Talbot stopped 31 of 32 shots. Dallas outshot Columbus 32-30.

Stars Leave Columbus With One Point Before Homestand

Werenski scored on a backhand over DeSmith’s left pad after skating in from the left faceoff circle. Columbus had trailed for a little over 10 minutes, and Werenski credited his team for staying with it against Dallas.

“We stuck with it for 60 minutes,” Werenski said. “It’s a really good hockey team over there. We just kept coming and playing our game, it’s 1-0 but I liked our bounce back.”

Overtime was scoreless. Valeri Nichushkin and Kent Johnson scored in the shootout, and Talbot stopped Robertson and Tyler Seguin. Dallas fell to 1-2 in shootouts this season.

Rantanen did not shoot in the tiebreaker and put the result down to chance.

“Shootout is always a coin toss,” Rantanen explained. “It could go either way.”

Tyler Myers played 19:50 and blocked 5 shots. He expects the group to go back over the game, even one it mostly liked.

“We did a lot of good things,” Myers said. “We still left a point out there, so there’s always room to get better.”

Dallas fell to 9-5-2 and sits third in the Central Division with 20 points. Myers liked a lot of what he saw from the group in Columbus.

“We’ll take a look and see how we can get better,” Myers explained. “There were a lot of good things, a lot of good to take from it.”

Forward Sam Steel missed Thursday’s game for personal reasons and should return Saturday, which will mean more line changes. Gulutzan said Friday the forwards have had to adjust all season.

“We haven’t had a lot of consistency with the lines because guys are coming in and going out,” Gulutzan said. “But we’ve got to plug and play and just move forward. We pride ourselves on all guys doing the things that need to be done … the non-negotiable.”

Dallas opens a four-game homestand against the San Jose Sharks at 7 p.m. CT on Saturday at American Airlines Center. Winnipeg visits Thursday, followed by Buffalo on Nov. 14 and Florida on Nov. 15.