The good times are rolling for the Dallas Stars.
Dallas has won 10 games in a row, a new franchise record, and appears to be rounding into form during the home stretch of the regular season. On top of the team’s recent heater, GM Jim Nill brought in some reinforcements at the trade deadline with the additions of defenseman Tyler Myers and left winger Michael Bunting.
Stars head coach Glen Gulutzan joined “The Hardline” on Sportsradio 96.7 FM/1310 The Ticket (KTCK-AM) and broke down the ingedients to Dallas’ recent success, which players have stepped up and how he plans to integrate the team’s trade acquisitions.
See the highlights of the conversation below, edited lightly for clarity.
Sports Roundup
After a couple of big trades for the team and the Stars on a franchise-record 10-game winning streak, things are looking rosy. How do you get the team to stay on track and keep its focus?
Glen Gulutzan: We’ve added a couple guys here in the last 48 hours. And it’s great, two quality people, two quality players. But you know what? We got a good thing going, and we just gotta integrate these guys into our game and our culture, and then try to keep this thing going as long as we can.
What do you like about your team’s game right now?
Gulutzan: It’s just such a complete game that we’re playing, and it’s not a one-off, it’s not a couple games, we’ve put together probably eight of our last 10 wins, eight in a row have been real solid performances from the goaltending to the back end to the forward group. I know we’re playing the way we want to play. And I think the guys are having a lot of fun doing it too. We’ve amped up some of the physicality here that we needed to amp up, just our details in our game. And you know what? One thing that’s probably overlooked a little bit, we’ve asked these guys to play with structure, but we also asked them to play with instinct, and we’re running that balance really well.
You’ve expressed your desire for this team to become more difficult to play against and now it’s becoming more obvious. It looks like a process there. It doesn’t happen overnight and it isn’t a light switch is it?
Gulutzan: No, it’s not. It’s got to almost come in, almost by osmosis and slowly, and you try to keep working on it until it becomes part of the fabric of your game. And the biggest thing that we have going on right now is that we’ve added this layer and and then we had a tough stretch coming out after Christmas and we all talked about growth and adversity, and how that’s cliche-ish, but that adversity there made us do some soul-searching and looking around and what we’ve added to our game since then. And then the best part of this is that the players could feel it, and the players can see tangible results. And now it is becoming second nature, because it’s almost one of those things you try it, and now you can’t live without it.
What do you see out of guys that come in after a trade that are excited to join a contender?
Gulutzan: You gotta be careful. Because sometimes those guys are happy to be here. They add energy. It kind of energizes the group. We’ve got to bring them in the right way too, especially when you have a team that’s going as good as we have too, because remember, they’re going to end up displacing somebody in a way, shape or form. So you run that balance of bringing them in stages, the right way, just like you would any guy that’s coming off injury or has been out for a prong period of time. That way you can get them in. They can get used to the way you want to play. And it’s almost the least disruption that it can become, because they can come in and play their game within what your group is doing,
The win streak has been impressive, but what’s most impressive is post-Olympic break, you’re doing it with your depth.
Gulutzan: We got some bad news out of the break, obviously, with [Mikko Rantanen] and [Radek Faksa]. But certainly our depth players have showed up and they’ve been waiting for probably a better opportunity most of the year. They prepared for their opportunity when it came. That’s what you’re selling as a coach, just be ready when your number’s called, and they’ve responded in a massive way. And it goes to show the character of those young men and the character of our group.
What’s been really impressive is the guys who are not a part of the Olympics come back ready to help and rested, and you come out of the break and here’s Matt Duchene, Wyatt Johnston and Jason Robertson and it looks like that’s exactly what happened.
Gulutzan: They were right and ready to go. Listen, we had three and possibly even four players that could have been on some of those teams, star players, and they didn’t get to go. And the beauty of it is when they came back, is we had some star players kind of rested up and they responded in such a tremendous way. It’s a big part of the winning streak as well.
Matt Duchene came out of the gates pretty slowly but he’s looked like himself so far in 2026. Is there anything to that story that the average viewer doesn’t notice?
Gulutzan: It was turning right before the break, but that injury that he had was very significant, and it’s not something you can just come back in. First of all, the league is heated up by the 30-40-game mark. Now you’re getting on a moving train. You’re not 100% healthy. I mean, you’re cleared, you’re healthy, but you’re not completely up to speed. It’s a significant injury, and it took him a while to get back on that moving train. And right before the break, he was doing it. And then I was hoping right when we did get the break, that was his catch-up time. He was getting up to speed before it, but now it put him on an equal platform. And he’s one of those guys I was speaking about is, he’s a star player who’s rested, 100% healthy. Now he’s joining the league on equal footing and you can see what he’s done.
The Avalanche come to town and it’s a wonderful rivalry, what does that mean to your group right now?
Gulutzan: It means a lot because we had a game in there to start the season, maybe the second game of the year, I believe. We won the game, but [goalie Jake Oettinger] won the game, and we weren’t happy about the way we played. We marked that date on the calendar and said: “Hey, by the time we play them in March, we need to be better.” They kind of dominated us. And so it’s kind of been a standard we’ve kind of looked at, at least in the coaching room, that let’s put in the work because March 6, we want to be better when we play them. Hey, they’re the class of the league right now. They really are. They’ve only lost 10 times. And we’re on a 10-game winning streak, so it’s going to be one heck of a game. But I’m as excited as anybody else to see it.
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