20/20: Stars score thrice in first and Red Wings forgot how to defend the rush

First-period goals more than enough for the Stars in an admittedly weird game.

The Dallas Stars and the Detroit Red Wings played on Sunday night.

Since it was a meeting of the two teams I cover the closest, I figured it would be ideal to break out a 20/20, and celebrate the twice-annual Shap Shots bowl.

Here is the 20/20 from a game the Stars won 4-1.

1. This was one of those weird games, where the numbers at the end don’t really reflect the feeling in the building.

Detroit had a 33-26 edge in shots and a 33-23 edge in scoring chances. The expected goals were nearly identical according to Natural Stat Trick, 3.05-3.03 for Dallas.

If I only gave you those numbers, you’d think it was a close game.

But when one team scores thrice in the first period, takes a 3-0 lead, and than simply sits back and plays to the score, the underlying numbers don’t always tell the whole story.

2. One story that is wacky: the Red Wings haven’t won in Dallas since the 2015-16 season — an overtime win where Pavel Datsyuk scored for Detroit.

That streak is even more bizarre when you consider this normal cross-conference meeting was an inter-divisional one during the 2020-21 season (blame COVID) and Detroit still went 0-3-1 in Dallas that season.