The Dallas Stars finished 23rd in the NHL last season with a 15.9% power-play conversion rate. After trading for Jason Spezza and signing Ales Hemsky, head coach Lindy Ruff likes their chances of turning things around in 2014-15.
“With the pieces we have, we should have a really good first unit,” Ruff told the Dallas Morning News. “We can’t do what we did last year. We started out at 4.3 percent at home for two months, and you can’t recover from that. We became too fancy a power play at home, not enough pucks to the net and not enough second opportunities. We really improved that in the second half, but to be consistent, we have to get off to a lot better start.”
The question now is where everyone fits. Spezza and Tyler Seguin, for example, both like to play off the left half wall. One solution would be to shift one of them to the point. Jamie Benn and Hemsky are also expected to be on the top unit, but the latter brings them up to three righties, so either Alex Goligoski and Trevor Daley will probably round out the unit and setting up shop at the right point.
Whatever the Stars decide to do, this is the type of problem Ruff likes to have.
“It’s fun pushing the pieces around,” Ruff said.
