Reese Eager to Work With Dallas Goaltenders - Hockeybuzz.com (blog)
The good news about last season's Dallas Stars was that the team had no trouble scoring goals. The team turned over too many pucks, was prone to coverage breakdowns and got into stretches where. When everything clicked -- as it did late in the season -- Dallas carried that over into a 200-foot game. For example, the Stars seemed more prone than average to weak-side breakdowns that led to backdoor goals. In the meantime, Stars starting goaltender Kari Lehtonen had an inconsistent season by his standards after arguably being the team's most consistently reliable player (when healthy) the previous four seasons. At times, Lehtonen seemed to round into his accustomed form but could not sustain it for as long as he did in previous years. On a full-season basis, Lehtonen did come up with saves at crucial times in 2014-15 as regularly as he did in previous campaigns. There were a few too many games where he let stoppable shots beat him (especially to the short side) or he took himself out of position on critical goals. At times, especially in the first half of the season, the big Finn seemed to try to overcompensate for loose play in front of him and he went through stretches where he got out of rhythm himself. In the meantime, Dallas continued to struggle to find reliable backup goaltending to Lehtonen. Source: www.hockeybuzz.com
