The bad news is that the Stars are 18-17-6 at mid-season. The good news is that they have another 40 games to get into the playoffs.
Mike Heika has an interesting analysis:
"The Stars rank in the bottom third of many statistical categories.
To Tippett, the biggest surprise is that the Stars, who never ranked below sixth in goals against average in his six previous seasons, are 27th at 3.28 goals per game.
"If you would have said that in the summer," Tippett said, "I simply wouldn't have believed it.""
Heika gives the front office a very bad D-plus grade. The Sean Avery incident hurt the team.
I can't disagree with Heika a lot. However, we should consider the loss of Brendan Murrow.
This is a different team without Murrow and it shows every night.
On the positive side, and there is always a positive side, the young forwards show a lot of promise:
"Young forwards such as Loui Eriksson (21 goals), James Neal (13 goals, left) and Fabian Brunnstrom (10) have filled in nicely after the team lost Niklas Hagman, Antti Miettinen and Stu Barnes. "
Again, they have another 40 games to qualify. As everybody knows, anything can happen once you start playing in the post season.
