But the Stars defeated the Admirals five times in the regular season, losing only once.
“I know we’ve had some success against them in the regular season,” Stars’ Head Coach Glen Gulutzan said. “But this is the playoffs and all that goes out the window. We do have the mental ability to know we can win in their building.”
Both teams play a very similar defensive and disciplined style of hockey. The Stars had the fewest penalty minutes in the league and the Admirals were right behind them.
“As far as the matchup goes, offensively and defensively, they’re a good match for us,” Stars’ goaltender Richard Bachman said. “The biggest thing for us is that we’re playing solid defensively.”
The defense will be helped by the return from Dallas of Texas Stars’ Captain Brad Lukowich.
“Having the old guy back with all his experience is really good,” Stars’ defenseman Max Fortunus said. “He brings so much energy to the locker room. It’s a plus for us for sure.”
During the regular season, all but one game was decided by one goal and neither team scored more than three goals.
“These teams are evenly matched and we play similar systems,” Gulutzan said. “Whenever you have two teams that play similar defensive type games, you’re going to get low scoring games.”
As in most playoff series, one of the keys to success is how well the goaltenders step up. The Stars have two rookie goaltenders, led by Richard Bachman, who surprised a lot of people with his success during the regular season.
“We feel we have strong goaltending from both goaltenders,” Gulutzan said. “We have the fourth best goals against and third best save percentage goalie in Bachman. He’s a quiet competitor and that’s his greatest asset.”
“I feel good,” Bachman added. “It’s playoff time and you have a little more adrenalin going and it gives you a boost. Everyone feels rejuvenated.”
In addition to defense and goaltending, play by the special teams must be solid. That’s an area the Stars continuously work on and their hard work paid off over the last part of the season.
“Special teams are huge,” Gulutzan said. “Over the last ten games, our power play was at 25% and our penalty kill was over 90%. If you can get that one power play goal or one (extra) penalty kill, it can make all the difference.”
The Stars went to the Calder Cup finals in their inaugural season last year. But this is a new season with a lot of new players who will be drawing on the playoff experience of the “old-timers.”
“Being here last year was a great experience and we want to try to duplicate that,” forward Greg Rallo said. “But we have to take it one round at a time. One of the big keys (we told the new guys) coming into this is that it’s worth the battle. It’s worth it to have such a great time. The NHL wants guys that can perform in the playoffs. So it’s a chance for them to showcase what they can do.”
While it’s impossible to compare teams at this level from one year to the next, everyone is hopeful that last year’s successful run will somehow translate to this year’s team.
“Last year’s team had a great run and we talked about what we need to do to have success in the playoffs,” Gulutzan said. “Those ingredients don’t change from year to this year. This team is excited and players who weren’t here last year have heard about it and want to carve out their own niche. It’s up to the players now!”
Contact the writer at: mitch.cooper@prohockeynews.com
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