It would be understandable if the Dallas Stars had come out flat tonight.
After all, the American Airlines Center only hosts 18,532 at maximum capacity. When you compare that to the 85,000-plus that filled the Cotton Bowl, more than 60,000 of which were there to cheer on the hometown hockey team, it could be a bit of an emotional let down coming back to the smaller venue.
“The crowd was good tonight. It was fun. We love playing here,” Joe Pavelski said after the game. “But, I mean, that Cotton Bowl was something else.