In St Louis Tuesday night, the Dallas’ captain, Jamie Benn, picked up the offense in scoring a hat trick to lead the Stars to a 4-1 win over the Blues.
“I’ve had two [goals] pretty early in other games,” Benn said. “It’s a nice little relief [to finally get the hat trick].
“Trying to help this team win; crucial time right now. I put pressure on myself to step my game up and do whatever it takes to help this team win. It’s that time of year right now. All that matters is the two points.”
The third star of the game, Jason Spezza, had three assists on the night, all on Benn’s goals.
“Our focus coming into tonight was to have a little more energy, especially to start the game,” Spezza said. “I thought it was a good start tonight, we brought the urgency we talked about. We did a good job executing. That’s the difference sometimes.”
Benn scored twice in the first period and the Stars built a 3-0 lead through the opening twenty minutes when Cody Eakin added a goal.
“I thought we played a real good game, jumped on them early,” Stars coach Lindy Ruff said. “The structure of our game was great. I really thought that was probably one of our better all-around games of the year. We didn’t get trapped in our own end very often, I thought we played the game real quick and we won the special teams battle.”
The slow start cost the Blues any traction in the game and Dallas maintained their push throughout the game.
“I think this is a team that wasn’t ready to compete,” Hitchcock said. “Weren’t ready from the start. That wasn’t the problem in Florida [a 2-1 shootout victory on Sunday]. We weren’t ready at the end in Florida … troubling. It would be troubling to not come back and be ready to play, especially … Dallas has had the advantage on us the last two games early in the game and we’ve had to mount comebacks in the games to be competitive. It’s concerning.”
In Toronto, the Maple Leafs continued their almost comical spiral out of control and out of any contention in the eastern conference with a 3-2 loss to the Florida Panthers.
The Leafs outshot Florida, 29-17, but had little luck in getting anything in the net.
“We know what the standings are all about, but we’re trying not to look at it too much,” Panthers goalie Roberto Luongo said. “We’re just focusing on our job. There’s a lot of road ahead of us and we don’t want to think about the big picture now. We just want to keep getting better as a team. It’s exciting, though, to be a part of the playoff race now, that’s for sure.”
The Panthers are just two points back of the Boston Bruins for the final wild card spot but had lost three of four entering action Tuesday.
“I don’t know if we were struggling,” Florida center Dave Bolland said. “We had a few losses, but I thought we played pretty good against [the Nashville Predators, a 3-2 shootout loss Feb. 8] and [St. Louis Blues, a 2-1 shootout loss Sunday] and we didn’t get any bounces. Tonight we did the right things. We kept the puck moving north and we won the game.”
The Maple Leafs had newly acquired Olli Jokinen in the lineup. He was picked up from Nashville and reports are that the Leafs have assured him he would be moved before the March 2 deadline.
“The one thing I have noticed here being here the past two days is a lot of negative energy around here,” Jokinen said. “As a team we’ve got to find a way to bring the positive energy. You’ve got to have pride. Once we put the jersey on, you’ve got to find a way to play for the logo.”
Something we have said here for many months, there is no pride in the sweater in Toronto.
In Nashville, Craig Smith potted two goals for the Predators and Pekka Rinne made 42 saves to lift Nashville to a relatively easy 5-1 win over the San Jose Sharks.
“Pekka is unreal,” Smith said. “He stays with it. I think the whistle blew, and he stayed with it even after [Sharks forward Joe Pavelski] shot it. That’s nothing new to anybody else here. He’s a competitor, and he wants to win on every shot.”
San Jose is now 1-4- in their six and have not been competitive in many of those losses.
“[Rinne] was very tough to beat, obviously,” Sharks coach Todd McLellan said. “He stood his ground and played a tremendous game. The number of saves he made on the power play where we had a chance maybe to crawl back into the game, he did an exceptional job.”
The Sharks had a 1-0 lead in the game on a goal from Matt Irwin early in the first.
“Offensively, we created a number of chances, maybe more than we have in a long time against a pretty good defensive team,” McLellan said. “That’s a positive, but they didn’t go in. We’ve still got to clean up a lot of things defensively.”
The Predators’ balanced team effort was highlighted Tuesday as they excelled at every position and every opportunity in the game.
“We had a good balance tonight, I thought, and contributions from the lines,” Predators coach Peter Laviolette said. “I thought the second period, we really got going more with our game and [were] able to come out and play a little bit more aggressive. You see some goals as a result from that.”
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