Through 15 games the Dallas Stars rank fourth in the NHL in first period goal differential, with a plus-8 having outscored opponents 16-8 in the opening frame.
Only the Washington Capitals (plus-11), Carolina Hurricanes (plus-10), and Ottawa Senators (plus-9) have been better statistically in the opening period.
It’s also kind of comical that the Stars are that high on that list, because earlier this week they were only plus-1 in first period goal differential before the outbursts against the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins.
With two big swings, the Stars jumped from a league average starting team to one of the best.
Which, today, brings up a question of what’s sustainable and what should be expected going forward.
Both anecdotally and analytically the Stars first period has been their worst in recent seasons. During the 2023-24 season Dallas outscored opponents by 13 in the opening frame, and then had margins of plus-26 and plus-22 in the second and third respectively.
When the Stars have struggled, it often begins with a slow start in the first period, and there have been some playoff duds in recent years where Dallas has seemingly been run out of the game early by the opponent.
More recently, last Saturday against the Winnipeg Jets, a slow start by Dallas doomed them in a playoff-style matchup in November.
So it’s not a change in the climate, but the first period weather has at least turned positive for Dallas recently.
And it all connects right now to the play of Mason Marchment, who’s been playing some of his best hockey since signing with the Stars before the 2022-23 season.
There was a five-point first period against Pittsburgh, tying a franchise record, and then on Thursday the forward was the early spark against Boston, shoveling a one-handed pass to Matt Duchene for a 1-0 lead 69 seconds into the game.
Marchment isn’t going to keep scoring at this pace, but the other parts of his game fit in well to what the Stars need for more consistent opening periods.
We used the words quite a bit on the postgame show last night: maturity and consistency.
And right now we’ve seen Marchment add some calm to the chaos. In the past, whether it was penalties or mistakes, Marchment would often have topsy-turvy shifts where the good would be instantly canceled out by the negative. That’s changed this season, and as my co-host Craig Ludwig pointed out on the show last night, Marchment has built a natural chemistry with Duchene and Tyler Seguin to turn the good into great.
Marchment also takes the pressure off of Stars captain Jamie Benn to be the physical catalyst. For a long time with the Stars, Benn has been asked to be the physical edge, this is both a side effect of roster construction and his leadership style — he’s very much a “watch as I do, not as a I say,” captain.
There have been other chaotic energizers for the Stars in the past, Alexander Radulov comes to mind, but few that checked the same boxes Benn did. Marchment tried to be that guy in the past for Dallas, but there was a natural delay in his fit on the Stars, especially in Year 1 when he made the move from the Florida Panthers.
It’s far from a long-term answer, because the Stars have struggled with slow starts for a long, long time. But maybe, the Stars have the internal energizer they needed now to build some normalcy into better first periods. The point totals and goals for Marchment might not be sustainable, but maybe the rest is. And if that’s the case, the Stars might have fixed an issue that’s plagued them for a while.
