Why are the Stars off to a slow start?

If you had have asked people to name their Stanley Cup favorites heading into the 2026-27 NHL season, most would have had the Dallas Stars among their handful of contenders. After all, this is a team boasting proven, star-level talent such as forwards Mikko Rantanen, Jason Robertson, and defenseman Miro Heiskanen, among others. Dallas hasn’t finished lower than second in the competitive Central Division since 2022.

This season, however, at least to start, has not gone as the Stars would have hoped. They dropped their season opener to the St. Louis Blues by a score of 4-0 at home, and followed that up with a 2-1 road loss to the Nashville Predators. Dallas bounced back to a degree on Monday, shutting out the San Jose Sharks, who were missing superstar Macklin Celebrini, by a score of 5-0.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton were joined by Steve Peters to discuss the Stars’ underwhelming start.

Tyler Yaremchuk: What have you made of Dallas in the early going this year?

Steve Peters: Dallas really got off to a slow start last year. We talked about injuries with that team, and at the end of the season they kind of fizzled out without (Roope) Hintz. They didn’t play fast enough in the way they wanted to play. I thought they looked slow early in this season, too. But I’ll tell you what, that line with Robertson, and they pushed Jamie Benn up to that first line to tell him to put his money where his mouth is after he got pretty vocal after game two, and he was really good in their most recent game. Robertson and Benn had a good connection, they ended up getting two goals as a tandem. I think that is going to be huge is they can get Robertson going again on this Dallas Stars team.

But this is a team, are they deep enough? Can they stay healthy? The back end, Heiskanen’s leading the way again. But Dallas only goes as far as (goaltender Jake) Oettinger can take them. That’s been the case for year after year for this team. They’ve only given up two 5-on-5 goals through three games. I know their record might not show that, but they’ve given up two empty netters against St. Louis and two shorties after that, and then the shutout in game three. I think their ability to defend has been up and down like a roller coaster over the last tw0 seasons. They have to defend in front of the net, in front of Oettinger a little bit better, but he has started off just like you want. He’s got a 1.01 goals-against average and .943 save percentage. I like this Dallas Stars team if they can get their pace up.

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Thursday’s episode here…