Red hot Wings put pressure on Stars

DETROIT – It wasn’t difficult to tell which team was coming off a four-overtime affair four days earlier – well, three if you take into consideration it ended Monday morning – and the team that enjoyed seven idle nights before Thursday’s opener of the Western Conference finals.

It was time for another clinic put on by the Detroit Red Wings, who executed the game plan to perfection in playing keep-away from the spent Dallas Stars.

Scoring two goals in each of the first two periods was enough for the hosts to cruise to a 4-1 victory, putting the onus on a third straight opponent to respond in Game 2 or face a two-game deficit going home. The difference this time for the Stars was their inability to generate anything approaching what they’ve shown in the playoffs to date.

“It is disappointing, but our top players look down tonight,” Stars coach Dave Tippett said. “We just didn’t skate, didn’t get to a level we needed to tonight.

“If we left our legs in Dallas, time will tell, but we better regroup (Friday) and come out with a much better Game 2,” he added.

Surprisingly, both Tippett and some players made mention of carryover effects from the Game 6 clincher against San Jose, a game that needed 69:03 of overtime to decide.

And facing a team such as the Wings, regardless of potential rust in their game, was just a bad matchup from the start. If Detroit is on its game, the Wings are going to skate hard, force mistakes with their pressure and basically play keep away with the puck. They did just that.

Tippett pointed to faceoff stats and taking penalties because players were behind, in addition to citing a less than stellar effort.

Mike Ribeiro, Brad Richards and Mike Modano, the team’s top three centers, were 13-29 on draws, while Detroit’s Henrik Zetterberg, Valtteri Filppula and Kris Draper were a combined 30-14. It’s a vicious cycle – lost draws lead to more Detroit possession, more Dallas chasing and eventually more penalties taken because the Stars were tired from the start.

It took all of 4 minutes, 19 seconds for the visitors to find themselves down two men for what would have been an extended portion of time had Brian Rafalski not converted just nine seconds into the five-on-three. Another power-play goal at 15:34 – this a Wings-record 12th in the playoffs by Johan Franzen – really all but sewed up the game even before the first intermission.

“We were anxious to play playoff hockey; there was a lot of focus on that,” Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom said. “The power play really meant a lot to the team, to score early like that.”

Despite winning for the seventh straight time in this postseason, and by a combined score of 30-11 no less, Detroit coach Mike Babcock and Lidstrom agreed complacency and overconfidence are the furthest thing from the team’s mind.

“I think scared is more the word,” Babcock said. “We’ve been here before and never got the job done. People don’t understand how hard it is to win and just how hard it is to be right here.

“We’d like to take the next step, but we know it’s going to be a huge battle,” he added. “Those wins that you have in the past don’t count for nothing. We have one right now, and we’ve got to find a way to get three more.”

“We wanted to get our legs going, skate right from the start,” Lidstrom said. “We talked a lot about getting our feet going, being ready to play.”

Games early in a playoff series offer snapshots of what teams feel will work against an opponent. And while the Stars have to find their game first, the Red Wings made hitting and putting traffic in front of Turco priorities.

It’s really surprising Anaheim and San Jose couldn’t do a better job of making Turco’s life more difficult. Of course in Tomas Holmstrom, Detroit has one of the best pests in front of the net, if not the best. But Franzen, another big body, was there, too. Babcock was smart enough not to put just one player in front of the hot Dallas goalie, but two.

“Turco is on fire; he’s playing real well in the playoffs,” Babcock said. “We can’t allow him to have space. If we do that, we have a chance to be successful in this series.”

When you think of Detroit, physical play isn’t at the top of the list. But that was another point of emphasis Thursday night.

Defensemen Niklas Kronwall and Brad Stuart led the hit parade, but Babcock is looking for much more.

“We’re going to have to be more physical up front,” he said. “We feel this series will get faster and faster.”

The Red Wings figure to hold up their end of the deal, but the Stars need to respond. It makes perfect sense they’ll come out better in Game 2, but Detroit doesn’t suffer a lot of letdowns. Dallas will have to come out a lot better and maybe have to deal with some adversity along the way.

“As a team we know we can play a lot better,” said Ribeiro, his team outshot 25-15. “We’ll regroup as a team with a better effort, better discipline and better one-on-one battles.”