Blue Jackets top Stars in Benn’s season debut

Jamie Benn made his 2013 season debut and Jaromir Jagr returned to the Dallas Stars’ lineup on Monday, but they couldn’t stop the team from dropping its third game in a row.

The Columbus Blue Jackets bottled the Stars up for the most part, winning 2-1. Benn was pretty quiet for much of the evening, although he did collect a secondary assist and was thrown out of the contest with four seconds left.

On the bright side, conditioning didn’t seem like a huge issue for the 23-year-old forward, as he logged more than 20 minutes, winning 12 out of 22 faceoffs and firing two shots on goal.

Jagr logged 17:46 of ice time but only managed one shot on goal. The 40-year-old future Hall of Famer hasn’t managed a point since his explosive two-goal, two-assist game on opening night.

Instead of getting an offensive boost, the Stars depended on Kari Lehtonen, who kept Dallas in the game even as Columbus out-shot the Stars 17-5 in the second period. Lehtonen, 29, made one of the highlights of the night with this save:

His effort fell short, though, leaving the Stars with just one point in their last three games and an overall record of 2-3-1.

Tuesday won’t be easy, either. They were already scheduled to face the Red Wings on a back-to-back, but things have gotten worse as the Dallas Morning News’ Mike Heika reports that the team won’t fly to Detroit until tomorrow morning.

At least Benn is back, though.