In a Saturday matinee in Dallas, the Tampa Bay Lightning were thrashed by the Stars, 8-1.
Jason Robertson hit for a double in the win.
Jake Oettinger made 32 saves in the Dallas win
“It was a good 60 minutes and good start,” Dallas’ Jamie Benn said. “Our penalty kill did a great job. We gave up one, but that’s a great power play. We’ll take the two points.”
The Stars improved to 14-5-3.
Victor Hedman was the lone striker for Tampa Bay.
Hedman scored off the power play at 12:35 of the first stanza, after the Stars had taken a 3-0 lead.
Tyler Seguin scored 61 seconds into the game for a 1-0 lead to Dallas.
Robertson then hit for the first of his double with a goal at 6:28.
“It’s a little bit unfortunate, we score eight (goals) on [14 shots] in Carolina (in an 8-2 win Nov. 24), and then over the last three games or so, we’ve put a lot of rubber on net and can’t seem to find a way to bear down when we get chances,” Lightning’the s Austin Watson said. “It seems like what we do give up are some pretty Grade A, point-blank looks that end up in the back of our net.”
Jamie Benn scored at 7:39, off a breakaway, for a 3-0 lead for Dallas.
Mason Marchment hit for a goal at 3:42 of the middle frame for a 4-1 lead, and the rout was on.
“He’s always had that game, but hockey is confidence,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “It’s really tough as a coach to give players confidence. You can give them opportunity and you can recognize when they’re doing things well, which we try and do on a regular basis. But to really feel good out there, you have to get on a roll and stick with it. He’s a different player, obviously. I felt this year we would see this version of him. He had a tough year last year both on and off the ice at different moments, so just really good to see.”
Joe Pavelski pushed the lead to 5-1 off a power play strike at 12:25 of the second period.
Robertson collected his double at 14:23, off the power play, to balloon the advantage to 6-1 after two periods of play.extended the lead to 6-1 on the power play at 14:23
Tampa dropped to 10-10-5.
“In 82 games, there’s going to be some stinkers, when it feels like every shot’s going in the net (for the opponent) and every one you take is not,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Usually, you can just burn the tape and turn the page and move on to the next game. What makes it tough is three of the four where we feel for sure could have taken two of them, got points out of the last three. Then you don’t, and all of a sudden you’ve lost four in a row, so this one is much more of a stinger.”
Dallas piled on in the third with two more markers.
“If you want to be a Stanley Cup contender, you’ve got to have depth scoring,” Robertson said. “It’s great that a guy like [Steel], that has played so well, [was on the penalty kill for] some hard minutes, done a lot of great things, gets on the score sheet. It’s nice when your bottom six guys go out there and they can produce and score.”
Thomas Harley and Sam Steel scored scored in the third for the 8-1 final.
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 19 saves, surrendering six goals before getting the hook in the second intermission.
Jonas Johansson made seven saves in a mop up role.
“We’re not happy, obviously, but I think we can watch game tape and take some positives away,” Lightning defenseman Calvin de Haan said. “We’re doing some good things, we’re just not capitalizing offensively. It’s five guys out there — it’s not just our forwards, it’s everyone being a part of the offense. At the same time, we’ve got to find a way to keep the puck out of our net. Just seems like teams are playing a little opportunistic against us right now and pucks are going in. We’ve just got to stay positive and keep moving forward.”
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