In Nashville, the Predators’ elation of the two-game sweep in the Global Series last week fizzled on home ice n a 4-1 loss to the Dallas Stars on Thursday night.
Peter DeBoer won his debut as the Stars’ new bench boss.
“If you were going to draw it up, that’s probably what it would look like,” DeBoer said. “Tough building against a real good team. I thought we had a team effort. There was no passengers tonight. I thought everybody contributed.”
Dallas’ Mason Marchment struck for a double in the first period and 2-0 lead after 20 minutes.
“I don’t think it could have went better,” Marchment said of his Dallas debut. “We got a big win, and I couldn’t have asked for a better start.”
Jake Oettinger made 30 saves in the Stars win.
“I didn’t see the usual juice and spark that we play with,” Predators coach John Hynes said. “I thought the guys put the effort in, but we just didn’t have the same juice that we normally would be able to play with. I thought we were sporadic. There were certain times in the game where you could see we had it, but it was very inconsistent.
“I thought our execution wasn’t where it needed to be today.”
Joe Pavelski pushed the lead to 3-0 in the third period for Dallas.
The Stars made it 4-0 in the fifth minute of the third period off a strike from Wyatt Johnston.
“It was a lot of fun,” Johnson. “It’s just kind of a lifelong dream kind of come true. It was great, first of all, to get the win and it was just so much fun. It’s hard to put it into words really. It’s just surreal.”
The Preds finally got on the board with a goal from Ryan Johansen just 31 seconds after the Stars took the 4-0 lead.
Juuse Saros made 25 saves in the Predators loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.