‘I was concerned from Day 1’

After firing out of the gate with three straight wins to start their season, the Dallas Stars are now winless in their last four.

And if you ask their head coach, he doesn’t sound totally surprised.

Stars coach Glen Gulutzan made his weekly appearance on “The Hardline” on Sportsradio 96.7 FM/1310 The Ticket (KTCK-AM) and discussed his team’s losing streak, and the first-year Stars coach made it sound like he had a feeling his group was going to be hitting some speed bumps with the way they’ve played through the season’s first seven games. Gulutzan admitted his team’s been slogging through a bit of what he called “clunkiness” so far.

Dallas recently broke its pointless streak, at least, in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Kings on Thursday. It was a game in which, on the plus side, Gulutzan attested that the level of play had improved and that he saw some positive signs, especially on the power play.

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But there’s still plenty to fix, and Gulutzan elaborated on his team’s early struggles and where he needs them to go from here.

See what he said below. (Click here to listen to the full interview.)

Dallas Stars center Tyler Seguin skates by his bench after scoring a goal against the...

Question: “Can you guys at the NHL level, you’ve seen a million games, can you get a sense that something like this is coming? Within a three-game losing streak, were there any signs it was heading in this direction, or last night after the game were you going ‘What’s going on, this isn’t the way we looked last week?’”

Gulutzan: “No, I would say the opposite, to be honest with you. I was concerned from Day 1, just on how quickly we were getting to where we wanted to be. There are certain things that we’ve implemented that have caught hold, and we’re good at them. And there are certain things that haven’t caught hold. So for me, basically after the Colorado game, I had some concerns. Not that I could see it coming, but I knew that there was a lot of work to do.

“Y’know, I’ve seen this before. I’ve actually been involved with this a few times. New system, new coach, new start of the year. Feeling out the boundaries of the new systems … there’s always some clunkiness. We’re in the clunky phase. And we’ve got a few things, I always like to refer to it as the ”Big 4″ in winning, in the keys to winning. Your power play, your penalty kill, your goaltending and your five-on-five play, those are the Big 4. And you need at least three of the four to be good. You get four outta four, you’re great. Right now, our penalty kill is taking water, our five-on-five play is not good enough, and that’s why [we’re hovering] around .500.”

Click here to listen to the full interview.

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