CALGARY, Alberta_It was a scrambly day for the Dallas Stars Thursday.
Coming off their worst loss of the season with no practice on Wednesday because of a league-mandated day off, Dallas took on the struggling Calgary Flames to see which team was most cursed.
And, as one would expect, the result was a very scrambly game.
Jamie Benn broke out of his goal-scoring slump with two goals and the Stars stopped the bleeding of a three-game losing streak by taking a 4-2 win at Scotiabank Saddledome.
"We have to find ways to get points, these games aren't going to be works of art," Stars coach Lindy Ruff said. "It's a good bounce back game. That room was hurting after the Winnipeg game, and you have to give them a lot of credit for bouncing back."
The win was far from pretty, but it was definitely needed. Dallas moves to 5-6-3 (13 points) as this five-game road trip heads to Edmonton for a game Friday. Calgary drops to 5-9-1 (11 points) and continues to slip backward. The breath of positive air was big for a Stars team that is missing six forwards because of injury or illness and doesn't want to get too far out of the race before some of those players return.
Jason Spezza (lower body) is listed as day to day. Patrick Sharp (concussion) joined the team on the road trip and might be able to play Sunday at Vancouver. Cody Eakin (knee) is skating in Texas, and is closing in on a return to play. So the Stars are definitely scrambling to hold things together.
Ruff dug about as deep as the team's bag of tricks would allow. He took rookie Esa Lindell off the first defense pairing and out of the game. He gave Jamie Oleksiak his first start since Oct. 20. And he juggled all of his forward lines and inserted Justin Dowling for a memorable night playing in his hometown.
It was a lot to digest, but all of that worked early on, as Dallas made a couple of smart plays and took a 2-0 lead in the first period. Radek Faksa won a battle on the boards and fed a pass out to Lauri Korpikoski. The veteran forward the Stars picked up before the season pumped in his second goal of the year, and Dallas had a 1-0 lead.
Faksa then made a nice pass to John Klingberg to start a play in transition and Klingberg deftly floated to the right boards to pull the Flames out of position. That opened up the center of the ice, and Benn filled in nicely, floating in for a backhand goal, and breaking a nine-game goal drought.
"I thought that was the best game he has played in a while," Ruff said. "He came out physical, he was skating through people and in the end he had a couple of opportunities to score."
Dallas' defense then started to struggle. Stephen Johns had a giveaway behind the net that led to a Johnny Gaudreau goal, and then Gaudreau scored a second goal just minutes later when the Stars started running around in their own zone again.
It was somewhat emblematic of this recent slump. Ruff benched Johns for about 11 minutes, and the Stars struggled to find their bearings. Then, in the third period, Benn came through again.
This time, the Stars went back to something a little less scrambled, as Ruff reunited Benn and Seguin on the power play, and the two clicked. Seguin skated out from behind the net and found Benn in the slot, and Benn pumped in the game-winner with 13 minutes to go.
"It seems I have one of these (slumps) every year, and you just have to work your way through it," Benn said. "Those were two nice passes."
As fate would have it, the rest of the game was a scramble ... but a scramble the Stars found a way to win.
