Just a short little post this morning before a busy day, but I had to get these thoughts out while they’re fresh.

In the regular season, the Stars scored 170 goals at 5-on-5, good for exactly mid-pack: 16th in the league. Minnesota scored two fewer this year, coming in at 17th.

In the playoffs, Minnesota has again been mid-pack (when adjusting for games played per team), while Dallas has plummeted to the bottom of the pile. They simply can’t find the net, or even get pucks to the net, in last night’s case.

Shooting under 3% at 5-on-5 is laughably low, in the same way that sometimes you have to laugh at the absurdity of your own misfortune in order to avoid crying. And here’s where I think a distinction in terms would be helpful: the Stars are not a bad 5v5 offensive team this playoff run. They have, rather, been an abysmal finishing team at 5v5:

Jesper Wallstedt is going to finish the series with like a 98% save percentage at 5-on-5 at this rate, and I’m not sure he’s had to work particularly hard to do it, either. Dallas has either missed the net, had shots blocked, or failed to hit the spots of the net they hit so frequently in the regular season.

That’s really it, and I’m going to plant my flag there. Sure, Tyler Myers. Sure, Esa Lindell and Miro Heiskanen have lost their (heavy) minutes pretty consistently all series. Sure, Roope Hintz. You can go down the list of reasons for why the Wild have what feels like a commanding 3-2 lead in the series, but there is one overriding Reason: the offensively lethal Dallas Stars have lost their touch when the space has disappeared.

And no, this isn’t a Glen Gulutzan problem. I’ll plant another flag there. Because if you’ll recall last year against Edmonton, we were talking about this exact same phenomenon. The Oilers outscored the Stars 13-5 at five-on-five last year in the Conference final. At the time, it made sense to blame a rush-based offensive attack, and Gulutzan was brought in. He pledged to create more in-zone offensive looks and a stronger defensive structure. I’d argue both of those things have happened—though the overall offensive output has decreased at five-on-five as the defensive strengths improved—but in this series, they haven’t happened in the most meaningful way. Minnesota is up 11-3 in five-on-five scoring, and you know all about how they’ve done it.

What we should be talking about alongside all these things is what Minnesota has done well: they’ve ceded more shot attempts and expected goals and junk, and I’ll bet that the Stars have likely had more offensive zone time in Games 2-5 as well. But Minnesota, a bit like Dallas against Colorado last year, has figured out a gameplan.

They’re blocking shots and packing the house, getting to rebounds first and daring the Stars to get shots through traffic from up high. The shots aren’t getting through. And when they do, they’re getting stopped, fairly easily.

Wallstedt’s confidence has to be enormous right now, and it should be. He’s been the perfect goalie for the defensive structure Minnesota has played, while the Wild have capitalized on a lot of ugly chances for their own goals, but ugly in the sense that they’re feasting on leftovers and mistakes rather that cooking up a gourmet scoring chance.

I just can’t muster the energy to make this series about Jake Oettinger, except in the sense that he hasn’t scored a five-on-five goal for the Stars either. Add him to the list, I guess. It’s a long one, which is to say it’s everyone except Jason Robertson and the end boards.

It would be one thing if Dallas had gotten in as a wild card team with bottom-ten 5v5 offensive production, and this series were a further reflection of that. They haven’t, though. Instead, they’ve gotten a mix of bad luck and worse responsiveness to Minnesota’s defensive phalanx. The Wild have 92 blocks, which leads the playoffs. Dallas have 81, by the way.

As for unblocked shots, the Stars have put about 67% of their unblocked attempts on net, whereas the Wild have put about 75% of theirs on goal. NHL shot trajectory adjustments aside, that’s been a critical 8%, in this series. And last time I checked, 8% is a lot bigger than one degree.

• Yes, Michael Bunting needs to come in, both for political reasons and offensive ones.

• Heiskanen and Harley need to be paired up, and probably would have been stapled together earlier, if not for the Nils Lundkvist injury. Dallas is losing the strength-on-strength battle too frequently not to load up.

• I don’t actually think they need to go a full game with Robertson on the wing with Johnston and Rantanen, but sure, give it a go to start. Honestly, the issue in this series might just be that Rantanen has not been playing like he’s 100%, no matter what anyone says.

• Is it a coincidence that the one star player snubbed from Olympic participation has looked the freshest for Dallas in this series?

• Is it ironic that the Stars are looking at an outcome where Jason Robertson has increased his value through his playoff performance while the team at the same time could be facing playoff disappointment? I don’t think anyone would have thought those two were likely to converge, going into this series.

• Tyler Myers makes good plays that remind you of the fact that he’s Tyler Myers, but the mistakes have overshadowed everything in this series for him, and that’s a shame. I still think he’ll be a positive addition next season, but I do wonder if the Stars would benefit from trying Lyubushkin with Lindell and Petrovic with Bichsel in Game 6, if only to mix things up.

• But I used the word “wonder” there intentionally because, in all honesty, the Stars could execute this exact same gameplan and get two more goals with just a tad more finishing precision, and we’re having an entirely different conversation. Only Game 1 has really been a blowout in this series, even if the two straight wins by Minnesota make it feel like a lifetime since the Stars were the more confident team. They’re that close, even if it feels a mile away right now. Elimination games will mess with your head that way.
  

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It's no good if the pain doesn't make you feel like you earned it
And I probably deserved it

Let’s start off with what you’re seething about: at five-on-five tonight, Dallas out-attempted Minnesota 52 to 33. In all situations, the Stars attempted 66 shots to Minnesota’s 49 after being tied 40-40 through two periods. That sounds pretty good, right?

In fact, Dallas had 15 scoring chances to Minnesota’s two in the third period. That is a large margin! It did not end up reflecting the final score, or even the third-period score. The only goal Dallas did muster in the third period was a tricky Jason Robertson shot that banked in off a defenseman.

Minnesota won the most important battle tonight and got the result. That’s quite literally all that matters in the playoffs, and it was the same thing we all harped on before the game: Dallas would need to reverse their troublingly low conversion rate of scoring chances at 5-on-5 to win the series. Tonight, they just kicked that same trend down the road again. They will not be able to do so another time.

“We missed the net too on a few that could have turned into something a little better,” Gulutzan said afterwards. “That was one of the big things I noticed, is that we did kind of get to the interior with some attempts. Some got blocked, and some we plain old missed. This time of the year, you need to be dialed in there and get some of those.”

Mikko Rantanen echoed the same thing: Dallas had some puck possession and zone time, but they got a lot of good shots missed and blocked, and that can win or lose a game. Tonight, it did exactly that.

“It’s really not that frustrating,” said Jamie Benn tonight. “We knew it was going to be a long series. We knew it was going to be a tight series. We feel we could be up 3-2 in the series, but we’re not. That’s just hockey. We get to go on the road and win one game. That’s all it is. We’ve been a great road team all year. We’ll go up there and try to win a game.”

Benn might be the only person in Dallas who doesn’t feel frustrated. Even Miro Heiskanen’s discontent was evident when he slammed the puck back into the net after Kaprizov’s empty-net goal to finish the game. When Heiskanen is off-kilter, you know things are truly amiss.

Losing Arttu Hyry early in the second period didn’t help, either. The Stars were already playing without Nils Lundkvist, and losing one of the more positive players in their bottom-six less than halfway through the game only contributed to a lineup that was already fighting it a bit.

“I thought, as a whole, we gave up too many unforced errors,” Gulutzan said. “Even coming down into the second goal, which was a PK goal, before that we took the Too Many Men [penalty]. We needed to have that puck deep, too. It cost us on a line change on a clear possession. So we need to clear up the puck play that we are inflicting a little bit on ourselves. And I think almost all three goals looked that way.”

I’ve learned over the year that fans very much enjoy blaming one or two players after a loss, rather than spreading it around. I think that’s because it’s easier to fix one or two spots in the roster rather than admitting a more widespread flaw. If Tyler Myers’ turnover on the first goal and loss of position on the McCarron goal were the only issue for Dallas tonight, then you can make him a scapegoat and wish for an easy replacement that doesn’t seem readily available.

I don’t think it’s as simple as that tonight, though. Jake Oettinger made some huge saves, but he also let in a Matt Boldy shot from distance on the kill that the Stars simply haven’t been scoring themselves in this series. Mikko Rantanen has generated a lot of scoring chances in this series and even gotten a goal himself, but his line has consistently been outscored in this series. At even-strength, the superstar winger has been on the ice for zero Dallas Stars goals, and four Minnesota Wild goes. In a single series, that is always going to be the title of the book regardless of the twists in each chapter.

Minnesota won two games after Dallas won two, and now the Stars will have to turn the trick a second time starting up north on Thursday. Tonight’s game was not the sort of 60-minute affair that inspires a whole lot of hope in the Stars’ ability to do so.

For some decent stretches in this game, the Stars had life and puck possession. But with the overriding narrative of their impotence at five-a-side, that possession began to feel like a bit of a self-own. They were creating chances—lots of them!—but not the sorts of chances they needed to win against this team.

The California Kingsnake is known to be largely immune to rattlesnake venom, hence its royal title. But something you might not know about said monarch serpent is that it is vulnerable to other types of venom, including that of certain ring-necked snakes which is largely only dangerous to reptiles.

Even the mighty tend to have a weakness, and Minnesota has gained the upper hand in this series through what looks like a thoroughly repeatable formula: weather Dallas’s chance-creation, and strike when the mistakes come. Tonight, each strike was laced with lethal venom, while Dallas couldn’t land the killer blow (or missed it entirely).

The chance I come back to was right after Arttu Hyry left the game. The top line had the puck in the Minnesota zone, and they generated two great chances: a low-to-high shot for Thomas Harley, and a backhand in front for Johnston right afterwards. Here they are:

How many times do you see those chances go in? Tons, right? But one thudded too-low into Wallstedt’s pad, while Johnston atypically put his quick backhand move wide of the far post. If I had told you there was a giant puck magnet buried beneath the ice somewhere, you wouldn’t dismiss the possibility immediately.

If you’re Glen Gulutzan, you can fixate on a lot of things in this game that Dallas can do better. But man, when you look at all the times they got right up to the brink of finishing the job only to not, it’s kind of mind-boggling. Here you have one of the teams with the most lethal finishing ability all season, suddenly not finishing anything at even-strength. You can call it regression or whatever, but it really isn’t anything other than lack of execution. When you combine that with the mistakes made on the goals Dallas gave up, you wind up with a team whose flaws wound up being greater than the sum of their virtues. In 50 games this regular season, that didn’t wind up being the case. For three of the last five, however, it’s been exactly that.

The good news is the Stars have other players to fill in, and I’d take a wild guess and say that Michael Bunting will find his way back into the lineup for Game 6, with Justin Hryckowian likely moving back down to center the third line.

“We’ve got guys ready to play. They’ve worked hard and wanted to get an opportunity,” Gulutzan said in reference to shaking things up. “So if we’ve got an injury with Artie [Hyry], we’re gonna shuffle. We’re gonna have to shuffle lines. We’ve already been shuffling, right? Because we don’t have Roope, so we’ve shuffled things around. In-game, we did again in the third period with some lines, and we were forced to today because we lost a player early. So we were shuffling the deck a little bit, and usually we’ve had great success with that. Tonight, we just couldn’t convert on some of the looks.”

If Dallas can’t start converting by Thursday, they won’t have any more tonights left.

Highlights and the Lowdown

Once again, Gulutzan put the Duchene line out to start up against the Boldy line, and we began the game with the two best lines in the series to that point.

Both sides made some forays into the others’ zone, and traffic at the net was the clear goal for Dallas. Jamie Benn was set up for a dangerous one-timer in the slot that whistled past the net, possibly ticking off a player on its way in.

But Minnesota would get on the board first after Myers tried a slap of a breakout pass that went right to Minnesota, and it was fed right back down to Kaprizov all alone at the net. Oettinger made a huge stop one-on-one, but Kaprizov got the rebound and fed it over to Zuccarello, who was open on the back door, and he put it in past a sprawling Myers to make it 1-0.

After some good bounce back by Dallas, a Quinn Hughes turnover along the wall led to a Bobby Brink slashing penalty, and Dallas’s power play had a chance to even the score nine minutes into the game. And tie it they would.

I’m not sure what else there is to say about the Dallas power play at this point. After Mikko Rantanen and Matt Duchene pulled at the seams of the PK box, a simple exchange up high set up Miro Heiskanen for a one-timer with the highway open, and he put the puck past a not-quite-set Wallstedt to make it 1-1 with their fourth power play goal in as many chances over the last couple of games.

Dallas fed off that goal with a couple more strong shifts, and Minnesota suddenly had trouble clearing their zone. Dallas generated pressure consistently for the next few minutes, and though it only infrequently led to pucks actually getting put on net.

When Minnesota finally did get some pressure with six minutes to go, it was of the dangerous sort, with Hughes and Boldy circling the net a couple of times, and with more gusto when Heiskanen lost his stick. But after a couple of blocks and saves, Dallas was able to clear to survive.

A Robertson/Johnston rush would nearly give them the lead, and Robertson’s eventual shot through the bodies was barely caught up to by Wallstedt, and the rebound lay dangerously close to the crease, but without being put home. And in the end of it all, Lian Bichsel wound up taking an interference penalty that I assumed was for Robertson’s stick tripping a player, only to find out that Bichsel had interfered with someone. Please let me know if you can enlighten me with the details of this infraction.

Matt Boldy would score with 13 seconds left in the period after getting alone down low and trying a jam play that went in on the third try. But lo, Dallas opted to challenge for goaltender interference after Boldy’s stick pushed Oettinger’s right pad back, and after a couple of minutes, the goalie interference roulette wheel landed on “NO GOAL,” and the Stars were exceedingly fortunate to have made it to the intermission with a tie score.

Dallas nearly scored right after an icing in the first minute when a point shot caught Wallstedt unawares. The puck lay loose near the crease, and a scrambling Wallstedt was replaced in net by a desperate Faber (who saved a goal), but Mavrik Bourque and company couldn’t find the handle to stash the loose puck, and Minnesota survived.

Heiskanen drew a tripping penalty by beating his man in the neutral zone shortly after that, and the Stars had their second power play four minutes into the second period. But despite a couple of dangerous Almosts, Dallas couldn’t go five for five, and the Wild got back to level with the score still 1-1, and they began to get their looks again. Nick Foligno even got a shot from the slot by himself with 12:11 left, but Oettinger’s glove hand won the duel.

At the other end, the Johnston line got a glorious chance after a smart Harley pinch started a good O-zone set, but Johnston’s backhand move all alone went just wide of the far post on the best chance of the lot. A flubbed Duchene pass at his blue line then put Myers in a spot where it was a choice between allowing a Matt Boldy breakaway or taking a penalty, and Myers opted to head to the box by taking an interference penalty.

This kill was the Jake Oettinger Show, and he was called upon to star. Despite a thoroughly revitalized Minnesota power play that created more than a couple of dangerous looks, the Stars killed off the chance, and Myers’ choice was vindicated.

However, the Stars would cause their own problems late in the second period with another penalty, as a needless too-many-men offense gave Matt Boldy another chance to score a last-minute goal. And this time he did so, getting open in the circle a minute into the power play and firing a puck far side past Oettinger with 31 seconds to go to score Minnesota’s first power play goal by the top unit since Game 1.

With Dallas on their heels, Minnesota nearly scored another, but Oettinger came up with a huge stick-to-glove save on a Hartman rebound chance in the final seconds of the period, and Dallas went down the tunnel for the second intermission. Problem was, there would be 1.4 seconds of time put back on the clock, and we had to wait a minute or two for Gulutzan, Oettinger, and company to jog back to the bench to take a final faceoff before the real second intermission arrived, which it did in due course.

Shots on goal were 25-11 Minnesota, though shot attempts were 40-38 for Dallas.

Worse, Arttu Hyry was lost for the game with an undisclosed lower-body injury, which meant Dallas once again had to finish a game with fewer than 18 skaters. In a pivotal Game 5, the Stars had 20 minutes to get back into a game that Minnesota looked in danger of grabbing outright.

Minnesota, for its part, had played without Jonas Brodin since early in the second as well, and he was likewise announced as done for the night.

The third period was a cagey one to start, and Minnesota was looking to counterattack more than force the issue, preferring to keep the interior of the ice protected in their own end at the expense of blue line turnovers. And through six minutes, the strategy was working perfectly, with Dallas not having put a single shot on goal.

After an icing, Gulutzan put Robertson out with Rantanen and Johnston in an effort to generate something, and it did just that, with Rantanen firing a puck five-hole on Wallstedt that the Wild’s goaltender smartly stopped. It was Dallas’s first shot on goal of the period, seven minutes in.

Then came what felt like a dagger, as Myers and Lindell found themselves on the wrong side of the puck after a center-ice faceoff. After Lindell got caught up the boards on a failed dump-in, Myers couldn’t close on Trenin at the blue line before the puck was fed to the middle, and it found McCarron all alone. He went five-hole as Oettinger tried a poke check, and the puck slipped under the pad to make it 3-1.

Dallas got a power play a minute later when Oskar Bäck was brought down, but the glimmer of light was snuffed out, with Dallas looking, quite frankly, a bit worn out. A Jamie Benn rebound attempt with nine minutes to go nearly got them back within one, but Wallstedt was where he needed to be, and the puck stayed out.

Gulutzan tried different combinations to find a spark, including Duchene with Rantanen, and Dallas found a bit of life as we approached five minutes to go. Benn and Hartman then got Involved in the offensive zone, and Benn more or less mugged Hartman. Somehow, both players were sent off, with Benn getting a cross-checking minor and Hartman an unsportsmanlike for, presumably, being Ryan Hartman. That made it 4-on-4, and Gulutzan pulled Oettinger for the extra attacker to make it 5-on-4 with an empty net.

For 1:51, it didn’t work, and Dallas nearly conceded a goal. But with nine seconds left in the 4-on-4, Jason Robertson made a move that put Zach Bogosian on the ice, and then he banked a shot off Jared Spurgeon at the crease and into the net to make it 3-2.

Dallas had some life, and a quick tip play at the back door nearly tied it up right after that, only for the puck to get missed on its way to the top of the crease. Gulutzan then pulled Oettinger with an offensive-zone faceoff about three minutes to go, and the Stars couldn’t capitalize before Kaprizov got a pass in the neutral zone and held off a desperate takeaway attempt from Heiskanen to find the empty net with one hand, salting away the game with a 4-2 goal.

Dallas would get another power play with about a minute left when Duchene’s stick was splintered by Spurgeon, but it was only cosmetic, and not even that. Minnesota would end the night with that 4-2 lead, and a 3-2 series advantage heading back home.

Lineups

Dallas rolled out these lines:

Hryckowian-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Steel-Hyry-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Myers
Bichsel-Lyubushkin

Oettinger

Minnesota compiled the below groupings:

Kaprizov-Hartman-Zuccarello
Johansson-Eriksson Ek-Boldy
Tarasenko-McCarron-Brink
M. Foligno-N. Foligno-Trenin

Hughes-Faber
Brodin-Spurgeon
Middleton-Bogosian

Wallstedt

After-AfterThoughts

• Minnesota’s getting both Trenin and Zuccarello back felt a bit like Colorado getting Gabriel Landeskog back midway through last year’s series, no? Smaller scale, obviously, but their absence was certainly felt. Zuccarello’s return clearly got the power play more dangerous chances, even when they weren’t scoring.

• John Hynes didn’t have an update on Jonas Brodin, though he did leave the arena in a walking boot, whether for precautionary reasons or otherwise.

• Glen Gulutzan didn’t have a full update on Arttu Hyry, but he did say the forward is “highly unlikely” for Game 6. That means the Stars will be without Hintz, Seguin, Bastian, Hyry, and (potentially) Lundkvist for their first elimination game of the series.

• Ilya Lyubushkin was a little overactive at times, but I thought he did his job well enough in fill-in duty tonight, playing 12:30 on a third pairing.

  • I still think Lyubushkin could be a useful player to take some of the PK load off Heiskanen at times, but the Stars leaned almost entirely on Harley, Heiskanen, and Lindell on the kill, so that doesn’t seem likely to happen.

• Tyler Myers was the only Stars player to be -2 tonight. He was asked to step up and play a bigger role than usual, and it didn’t go particularly well.

• Miro Heiskanen played 28:22 tonight, more than anyone else on either team. He’s not been the problem for Dallas, but he and Robertson just haven’t gotten enough help in this series.

  • With that said, Heiskanen also has zero goals for during his even-strength ice time in this series. That shouldn’t be possible in five games when he’s averaging almost 30 minutes a night. With apologies to Jamie Benn, I do think there is frustration bubbling under the surface for this team. If they can’t score first in Minnesota to get their collective tails up, Game 6 could be a tough one.

• I don’t love that Matt Boldy power play goal. No two ways about it. You just need a save there, and Oettinger couldn’t make it.

  

  

  Oettinger’s blocker side has been an issue a couple of times in this series. Not as big an issue of Dallas’s lack of even-strength offense, which is the main culprit—but an issue, still.
  
  

  Stars Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. Our readers have scored zero 5-on-5 goals in this series, to my knowledge.

As we suspected, Ilya Lyubushkin will indeed be drawing in for Nils Lundkvist in Game 5. Dallas’s forwards will remain the same from Game 4, while Minnesota looks like they’ll be getting back one or both of Mats Zuccarello and Yakov Trenin.

Both teams held technically optional morning skates, and while most players1 still participated, no lines or pairings were run. John Hynes officially termed both Trenin and Zuccarello as “game-time decisions” this morning, but Zuccarello reportedly was a power play participant in practice yesterday for Minnesota. Everything thus far indicates he’ll be in the lineup tonight, likely back with Ryan Hartman and Kirill Kaprizov.

Where Lyubushkin will play is less clear, though I’m inclined to stick with my guess from yesterday that he’ll be with Lian Bichsel on the third pairing, while Tyler Myers will move up next to Thomas Harley.

As for Lundkvist’s facial laceration and potential return, we did get a bit more detail today from Glen Gulutzan when he was asked whether Lundkvist’s return is just about when the cut heals, or whether there was something else the team is waiting for before he can play.

“There is a little bit of something else going on,” Gulutzan answered. “We’ll wait and see how that transpires. It was a very deep cut, so we’ve gotta see how that transpires.”

What that “something else” could be, only the Stars know, and they’re not telling. But given the force of the skate into Lundkvist’s face, a variety of things could be involved. As of now, the Stars will hold out hope that he can return for Game 6, or Game 7 at the latest (should it be necessary).

Roope Hintz sounds increasingly likely to miss the first round altogether, which Gulutzan all but acknowledged this morning when confirming Hintz would be out for Game 6 on Thursday.

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After splitting the first four games of the series, Dallas still has home-ice advantage over the Minnesota Wild. Having the last change might prove to be especially crucial in Game 5, as the Stars will be without Nils Lundkvist, who suffered a “deep facial laceration” in Game 4.

That laceration came on a violent play that somehow didn’t put Lundkvist in the hospital. A sprawling Michael McCarron’s right skate caught Lundkvist’s cheek with force after McCarron was tripped, and although Lundkvist was able to get up and leave the ice under his own power, Glen Gulutzan confirmed after practice today that Lundkvist would not be available for Game 5 on Tuesday.

“Nils, you won’t see Nils in the game tomorrow,” Gulutzan said. “We should see him before the series is over, but you won’t see him tomorrow.”

That was somewhat surprisingly good news, given the nature of the injury to Lundkvist. Considering how hard the skate blade hit his cheek, you wondered at the time whether Lundkvist would need not only stitches, but perhaps some cheek bone repair. (Viewer discretion advised.)

But no, Gulutzan said, Lundkvist didn’t even need to go to the hospital. Instead, he’s likely to factor into Game 6 or 7 (if necessary) later this week. All things considered, that’s very encouraging news for Lundkvist.

Another defenseman absent from practice today was Miro Heiskanen, though Gulutzan confirmed that it was just a maintenance day for Heiskanen. The Stars’ top defenseman will indeed be in the lineup Tuesday night, while Roope Hintz remains on the shelf.

Gulutzan said Hintz is skating on his own, but the center did not practice with the team today, which indicates he may still be a little ways from a potential return.

“Roope’s continued skating,” Gulutzan said without elaboration.

As for a potential Game 5 lineup, practice didn’t offer any obvious clues, at least up at forward. Gulutzan said a decision about who replaces Lundkvist tomorrow will be made by the coaching staff Monday night, and we’ll touch on what might go into that decision in a moment.

Up front, the four forward lines that showed up during drills today were the same as in Game 4, while Michael Bunting skated on a fifth line with Nathan Bastian and Adam Erne. Gulutzan praised Bunting’s attitude after four straight playoff scratches, also acknowledging how tough it is for players who aren’t playing right now.

“He’s been really good as far as handling the frustration,” Gulutzan said of Bunting. “We’ve got four or five guys sitting out that all really, really want to play, and guys that have played in 50, 60 games for us that really want to play. That’s the hard part about the playoffs. Everybody wants to get in.”

On defense, at least one of Ilya Lyubushkin, Alex Petrovic, or Kyle Capobianco will do just that tomorrow. But at forward, it sounded a bit less likely that any new faces draw in tomorrow.

“All you can do is be ready when your number is called,” Gulutzan continued. “I mean, we were on the verge…probably eight minutes away from maybe winning three games in a row, which is hard to do in the playoffs. We’ve kind of gotten better since game one. So when we make lineup decisions like we are tonight, guys have to be ready. But [Bunting’s] been very good.”

Without Heiskanen or Lundkvist at practice today, the defense pairings rotated quite a bit. Here’s just a sampling of the many pairings that we saw:

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For hockey fans, the worst part of a playoff series is the day after a loss. Sure, you knew going in that playoff sweeps are rare, particularly when the two teams are evenly matched. Six-game series are common, and even likely in a lot of cases. That doesn’t stop you from questioning everything about a team the morning after their best proved not quite good enough.

Nearly all of a fan’s experience of a playoff series is dictated by the path to the elimination games. Unless it’s a sweep, every series will have that morning after, that 24 hours of listless discontent. The Stars’ five-game Western Conference final win over Vegas in the 2020 bubble is a prime example: the Stars scored nine goals in those five games to the Knights’ eight, and two of those wins came in overtime. A gentleman’s sweep? Perhaps, but those who watched it will remember how Vegas evened the series with a 3-0 shutout in Game 2, while Dallas never won a game by more than one goal.

Stars fans likewise know that winning the Cup in 1999 took six games, but a lot of stories since then suggest that it was basically a Game 7 when Brett Hull scored, because the team had been so depleted and banged-up by that point that they would, in all likelihood, not have been able to beat Dominik Hašek in a Game 7.

Right now, Dallas and Minnesota are tied 2-2 in their series. Nothing else matters except the wins you bank, and both teams have taken half the pie so far. You can try to squeeze meaning out of stats from those four games, and certainly that’s the best data we have to analyze.

Jesper Wallstedt has been fantastic, and the Wild’s top defense pairing and the Boldy/Eriksson Ek duo have looked nigh unstoppable. Likewise, Jake Oettinger has gotten stronger as the series has gone on, and Jason Robertson leads both teams with four goals in four games. Concerns about Miro Heiskanen’s health appear to be firmly in the past as well. Goals in the series are 14-11, and since Minnesota’s big win in Game 1, it’s been nothing but nail-biters.

Last year, the Stars were also tied 2-2 after four games in the first round. And for all the hand-wringing going on this week about Dallas’s even-strength scoring, I can tell you that it was even worse last year. After four games, Colorado had a 9-4 edge in even-strength scoring, and Dallas’s special teams edge looked precarious at best. Without Heiskanen or Robertson, the Stars had eked out two overtime wins, but Colorado had pounded them in Games 1 & 4 by a combined score of 9-1, including a 4-0 shutout in Game 4.

After four games, Gabriel Landeskog had just made an almost miraculous comeback after a years-long absence, and Mackenzie Blackwood had thoroughly outdueled Oettinger to that point. Any reasonable person would have concluded from the goal totals, the rosters, and most certainly the underlying metrics that Dallas had gotten lucky to still be in the series at all.

Then Dallas came back home for Game 5 and did this:

Wyatt Johnston scored a fluky goal from the side of the net—sound familiar?—and Thomas Harley doubled the lead in the final minute of the first period with a shot that bounced high and, well, flukily over Blackwood. Mikko Rantanen would also score for the first time in the series to make it 3-0.

But then Colorado woke up, and it was 3-2 midway through the second period after Nathan MacKinnon decided to be Nathan MacKinnon. All the momentum was going back to Colorado, and the Stars looked like a team that would have to hang on for dear life against an offensive powerhouse. You know how that usually goes.

Just two minutes after that MacKinnon goal, however, Wyatt Johnston scored a power play goal off a pass from Matt Duchene that exploited something in Blackwood’s game that we later found out Jeff Reese deserved credit for. A Mason Marchment tip of an Alex Petrovic shot two minutes after that restored the three-goal lead, and the Stars ended up coasting to a 6-2 win.

Rantanen would stay hot for the rest of the series, including a four-point second period in Game 6 and some notable accomplishment in Game 7 you may have heard of. By the time hats were covering the ice in celebration, Game 4 was a distant memory.

The lesson here isn’t that the Colorado series was a template for success. If the Stars play that kind of series with that roster ten times, I’m not sure they win it even twice. But they did win it once, and that does something for a team. As Glen Gulutzan has said, it’s best to stay neutral in the heat of a playoff series, and Jamie Benn’s Dallas Stars have learned this firsthand, again and again. The ride is never over until it stops.

Fans want to cling to hope, some numbers beyond 2-2 that will promise security and happiness. There is no such thing in the playoffs. Underlying numbers are great, but can you score that goal, or get that save? Sometimes, doing one allows for the other; not doing so can preclude the possibility entirely.

When pressed to predict this series a week or two ago, I responded that it felt like the sort of series where whoever wins Game 5 would win the whole thing. That’s patently speculative, because loads of teams win Game 5 and lose a series, including the same Colorado Avalanche in 1999, who racked up seven goals on Eddie Belfour and the Stars before a pair of 4-1 Stars defeats sent Colorado packing for what would not be the last time in a Stars/Avs playoff series.

The Wild are not the Avalanche. They’re not as deep, not as proven, and without absolutely any of Colorado’s recent or historical success in the postseason. But the lack of things to take for granted can also make a team more dangerous, and the Wild have looked the part. Where Dallas has struck in moments of greatest leverage, the Wild have found ways to make their own leverage, whether with a rookie goaltender, a depth forward, or an elite defenseman. A team without any real skins on the wall looks like they’re salivating for what, in Dallas, would be their biggest and sweetest trophy in recent memory. If this team beats Dallas, the city will never forget it. Don’t think this hasn’t crossed the mind of every player in that room.

For now, however, you’re stuck waiting for Game 5 in which absolutely anything could happen, just like anything could in what is now a necssary Game 6. But the team that walks out of this series alive will almost surely have very little to do with the teams we saw in these first four games. Great playoff series simply refuse to adhere to linear curves.

It’s kind of like that moment at the start of a shootout, you know? Whichever team you’re rooting for, you’re both excited and anxious, able to envision both success and failure as the shooter scoops up the puck at center ice and bears down on the goalie. There’s something romantic, I think, about that skate between the red line and the faceoff circles, those handful of seconds when both players are working through every combination of possibilities in their mind, while the rest of us can do nothing but sit and wait. Sometimes, a beautiful deke will draw a shout of joy, only for the goaltender to recover with a miraculous save. Until it’s all over with, nothing has been done at all, but we agonize regardless, because what else is there to do?

One of these teams will go out and win Game 5, and I genuinely have no clue which one that will be. It’s the best and the worst part of sports, that uncertainty. Liminal spaces aren’t mean for long stays, but thankfully there’s just one more day to go.

Midway through a series like this, everyone looks to define the processes for each team. “If Team A is going to win, they will have to do X,” and so on. And if you were to have said, going in, that Dallas would need to get big contributions on special teams, that would have been a thoroughly reasonable statement.

I’m not sure anyone expected things to be this drastically laid out, though. Goals are 14-11 in the series for the Wild, but 5-on-5 goals are a shocking 9-3 for the Wild. Marcus Foligno’s words earlier in the series might have been more bluster than anything, but his game-tying goal late in Game 4 certainly backed them up. And now Dallas is in the position of having to prove that Jason Robertson isn’t the only one capable of beating Jesper Wallstedt when both teams have the same number of skaters on the ice.

Glen Gulutzan said today that while a lot of it comes to puck luck that Minnesota has gotten and Dallas hasn’t—which the underlying numbers kind of back up—it’s also up to the Stars to make their own luck, which starts by winning battles in and around the crease. And thus far, both teams have been largely kept out of the blue paint, as you can see here:

That’s why deflection goals like Wyatt Johnston’s winner in Game 3 or Matt Boldy’s in Game 4 are so critical: with both teams doing a good job of locking down the house, you have to perfectly time your arrival with a free stick, and then execute the play. Because nobody has been allowed to linger in the most dangerous part of the ice.

"If you look at the games as a whole, we've got to find a few more tips,” Gulutzan said today. “We've got to get to the net a little bit harder. We got to come up with some loose pucks there around the net, and when we do get a Grade-A chance, we gotta finish."

It is indeed all about finishing, that most lethal and capricious of hockey skills. Here’s an all-up look at how the teams have finished their looks in all situations. Even when you include power plays, you can see that Minnesota has had a Midas touch, while Dallas has had to cut their steak with a butter knife. Take a look at this finishing graph:

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I haven’t felt this way I feel
Since many a years ago
But in those years and the lifetimes past
I did not deal with the road

The last time Dallas lost a playoff game in overtime, it was to Connor McDavid and Glen Gulutzan, in May of 2024. Since then, the Stars had come up with the overtime heroics four times in a row between last year and this.

But alas, they play the games for a reason, and this time things fell the other way. Minnesota couldn’t score from the most dangerous areas, but two point shots and one bounce from below the goal line were enough to win the game.

Minnesota will make much of the fact that they once again outscored Dallas handily at even-strength. Goals at 5v5 are 9-3 to the Wild so far in the series, and while Dallas once again didn’t get outplayed at evens tonight—shots were 45-43 for the Stars, and xG/scoring chances were similarly close—they did once again get outscored. Eventually, the results start to speak more loudly than the process, and Dallas is facing the reality of those results with the series tied 2-2.

“Both teams can defend,” Mikko Rantanen said postgame. “Both teams can play offense. We gotta find a couple bounces in [our] five-on-five game. Go to the net and get lucky.”

That’s the right mantra, if you’re Dallas. The Stars are getting close, and they’re getting good looks. There’s a reason both of these road games went to overtime, and it wasn’t because Oettinger was having to stand on his head (though he did come up with some enormous saves when called upon). It’s been a pretty even series, with Dallas’s special teams dominance being now equaled out by Minnesota’s even-strength goal-scoring.

The luck was on Minnesota’s side in this one, no question, but they didn’t win it on that account. Sure, they got two goals off some good fortune—one bounce off Heiskanen’s glove, and Foligno’s off the side of the net—but they also got the game winner on a prototypical “playoff goal” process: Boldy sneaked to the netfront behind Lindell and Myers (who was busy giving the business to Eriksson Ek), and Boldy had complete liberty to reach out and tip a shot going wide back in behind Oetinger.

“When you look at their goals, they got some sticks on pucks,” Glen Gulutzan said. “And just kind of the same way, we just couldn’t. We hit a post there on the wraparound, and we just couldn’t get any puck luck. So we’re going to have to start to finish off some, get some sticks on some of those pucks.”

Going down to five defensemen halfway through the game could’ve been a galvanizing moment, had the Stars hung onto their 2-1 lead in the third period. Instead, the cost of asking players to play higher in the lineup became more apparent as the game wore on. The Stars’ third pairing was asked to play a ton, and their struggles to beat the Minnesota pressure led to tons of momentum in the wrong direction. Nils Lundkvist has become very important, but it’s unfortunate that it took this game to demonstrate just how important.

Here’s what that overtime looked like, by the way (ignore the ice time totals at the right, which hadn’t updated as of this screenshot). You can see the 3:30 shift for Myers (and nearly as much for Bichsel) pretty plainly.

Yes, the Stars had their chances, especially early in overtime. Shots on goal were only 11-9 for Minnesota in the fourth period. But the Wild’s dominance of the puck felt much more dangerous, particularly whenever Heiskanen or Harley wasn’t on the ice. That’s what happens when you’re playing shorthanded, and Nils Lundkvist’s absence was very painfully felt—though likely not as painful as the cause of his absence.

Gulutzan said Lundkvist had a “deep facial laceration,” and said he didn’t know if a hospital visit had been required or not. With two more off-days, Lundkvist could either have time to get stitched up and ensconced in a bubble, or else the injury will prove bad enough to make the requirements of playoff hockey a non-starter. The Stars will miss him dearly, if so.

It was painful to watch a couple of those failed clearances by the third defense pairing tonight. You almost begin to feel it coming when the puck falls off a stick, not quite getting elevated on its way out of the zone. I’d imagine the players themselves felt the same.

Still and all, the Stars had the game there for the taking, with Johnston’s wrap attempt going off both posts and getting eventually cleared by Hartman in the paint with his glove, narrowly avoiding a penalty, to his credit. Hartman had also, much less to his credit, just laid a pretty targeted hit on Justin Hryckowian into the end boards, which you can watch way down below if you want. It wasn’t a penalty, but it was the type of player Hartman is, just like his goaltender interference on Jake Oettinger earlier in the game. Sometimes, a team benefits from players like that, and tonight was that night.

Miro Heiskanen looked as good as he has since returning tonight, and that’s no small boon to Dallas. Thomas Harley likewise had a couple of chances to do something special, but just couldn’t quite do so. The most frustrating thing about this game for Dallas will be not just the loss, but how close they came to taking a 3-1 lead back to Texas. They’ve been on the side of a Game 4 that swings momentum the other way, and this game wound up feeling like one that could certainly prove to be that. But then again, this series has been tight enough to where any momentum outside of an individual game is likely more narrative than experience, for the players.

Jake Oettinger was outstanding tonight, full stop. He gave his team four periods’ worth of chances to win this game with just a single 5v5 goal, but for over 140 minutes now, Dallas hasn’t been able to find one. That’s not a fun feeling for a team, though I can’t imagine Minnesota’s reflections on the special teams situation are all that sunny either.

Sam Steel and Arttu Hyry looked very good on the third line tonight, though Jamie Benn didn’t quite have the pace to match them, at times. He wound up playing the fewest minutes of all 12 forwards, and there were times you might have found yourself wondering if Blackwell or another winger might get a spell up there. Then again, Benn did feed Hyry for three gilt-edged chances to win it in overtime, so maybe we’re just reasoning after the fact here. Benn did draw a penalty as well, though I’m sure Wild fans might have a different idea about what should have resulted from that incident, where Benn’s own stick was lifted into his face.

Jason Robertson and Matt Duchene continue to look dangerous, but they need to be dangerous at 5-on-5, too. Tonight, they weren’t quite as scary at evens as they might have been, and you’d like to have seen them punish Minnesota during one of those extended offensive-zone stretches. Instead, none of them resulted in goals or power plays. It’s tough to win when your best moments don’t bear fruit.

If Lundkvist can’t return for Game 5, the Stars have two more right-hand shots: Alex Petrovic and Ilya Lyubushkin. I think Lyubushkin is probably a tick higher on the depth chart right now, and he’s got chemistry with Harley. Then again, the Stars could also move Myers up with Harley and slot Petrovic in with Bichsel, his familiar D partner from last year’s playoffs. Both of those options speak to the fact that the Stars would probably just be better off getting Lundkvist back, though.

My last real bit of noodling tonight is about the five-on-five offense. Gulutzan has said all year that the idea is for this team to be better at creating in-zone offense. Last year’s team was rush-offense dependent, as Edmonton showed, and Dallas is supposed to be more capable of grinding teams down with O-zone pressure.

Tonight, they got the pressure, but they weren’t able to thread any of their most dangerous chances off that pressure past the goaltender. Most of them didn’t even create scrambles for rebounds, either. That’s a credit to the Wild’s defending, but it’s also a bit of an indictment of the Stars’ shot selection.

Regardless, it’s not like the Stars are going to radically redesign anything after that game. It wound up being a coin flip, and Minnesota got three tails-up before Dallas could land three heads-up. It was close, but the odds of Marcus Foligno scoring another clutch goal like that one are probably not the sort of odds you count on. The Stars would be better off not relying on coin flips in Game 5, however. And if they can find a bit more even-strength offense to complement their special teams domination, they probably won’t have to.

Highlights and the Lowdown

John Hynes started the game by matching the Eriksson Ek line against the Duchene trio (rather than waiting for the Johnston/Rantanen duo), and the ice was initially tilted the other way. Jason Robertson took eight seconds to put a shot on Wallstedt, who easily gloved it down, and the Stars won the next faceoff to create some pressure as well.

Minnesota laid a few hits on Dallas, as Marcus Foligno and Matt Boldy stepped up with clean hits. But Ryan Hartman would end up causing issues for his own team by plowing into Jake Oettinger after getting in behind Heiskanen with a break. After the Stars’ goalie made the save, Hartman didn’t divert his pathway, and he got two minutes for goaltender interference.

And from there, the Stars power play did what it does, creating a couple of good looks before Robertson got the one he needed to score his fourth in four games, making it 1-0 early:

Marcus Foligno dealt two more hits on Esa Lindell shortly after the goal in an effort to invigorate his team. The Wild continued to look to agitate things as Boldy and Eriksson Ek came in to stand in Oettinger’s grill, and Mavrik Bourque took exception to that. He went after Matt Boldy, and he sat for two minutes as a result.

After a good kill with some especially nice work by Faksa/Back and Tyler Myers, the Wild got a second power play at the very end of the set after a stick-lift by Lian Bichsel apparently caught a glove, and he was given two minutes as well:

But the penalty kill once again bowed up, and the Wild power play would wind up getting booed as it went 0-for-2 in the meekest way.

Jason Robertson nearly scored again when a Jared Spurgeon pinch got caught by a bouncing puck that led to a 2-on-1, but Wallstedt’s glove caught up to Robertson this time. And in true hockey fashion, a save at one end would lead to a goal at the other.

Or at least, it sort of did. The primary cause of the goal was not Brock Faber’s shot, or even Wallstedt’s save, but Miro Heiskanen’s questionable decision to play goaltender a few feet in front of an otherwise un-screened Jake Oettinger. It didn’t go well, and he caught the wrong piece of the puck to deflect it past his goaltender. Thus, the game was tied.

Kirill Kaprizov and Quinn Hughes nearly grabbed the lead on successive plays, shortly after that, but Oettinger did the job both times, and Dallas survived long enough for Steel to get a Grade-A himself after a Wild turnover. Faksa bumped the puck over, but Steel couldn’t find net with his chance under pressure from the netfront.

The Stars would finish the period by getting whistled for their third penalty in 18 minutes when Wyatt Johnston’s stick got up and hit Middleton’s face. And this time, the Wild would manage to put the puck into the net on the power play, but only after Eriksson Ek launched Heiskanen into Oettinger from behind, and the goal was immediately waved off.

Minnesota had the option of challenging the call, but given how clear it was (and how unlikely goaltender interference getting overturned seems to be these days), they opted not to do so. Dallas would kill the rest of the penalty, thanks to Oettinger and a heroic Oskar Bäck block, and the Wild had a tie game but an 0-for-3 power play after 20 minutes.

The second period opened with both teams spending well over a minute in the other team’s zone, but with neither goaltender quite being asked to do anything spectacular. With the long change, Dallas was able to get the Duchene line out against a gassed Minnesota line following great work from Faksa and company, but the dagger was not able to be found.

It looked certain to come on the next shift, however, when the Johnston line outworked Eriksson Ek in the offensive zone, leading to a second straight hem-in with the Stars able to get fresh bodies on the ice with the bench right at-hand. This time, Harley would sizzle a puck after 3:13 of trapping the Wild’s best line on the ice, but despite some traffic, Wallstedt was able to collect and freeze it fairly easily to bail out his team.

Gulutzan put Harley out with Heiskanen and the Johnston line off a Minnesota icing halfway through the game, and you wondered if we might see more of that as the game progressed. This time, it didn’t result in anything.

After another great shift by the Kaprizov line in Dallas’s zone for the better part of a minute, Oettinger was called upon to make a huge save on Ryan Hartman all alone, and he did just that. Wallstedt would match him shortly afterward with a massive let-off for Hughes and Faber after Robertson picked the puck off both their sticks and tested Wallstedt.

Nils Lundkvist nearly caught Michael McCarron’s skate in the worst part of his face, as he got whistled for tripping the big center only to catch McCarron’s skate blade in the cheek for his troubles in a scary moment.

Lundkvist was listed by the team as questionable to return in the third period, but the Stars played most of the second half of the game with five defensemen, as you could understand when seeing close-up replays of the injury.

(Fair warning: it’s a painful watch.)

The Wild’s fourth power play had some dangerous moments, but the booing crowd would end up watching the 10th straight Dallas penalty kill, and the Stars got things going after that, including a Mavrik Bourque hit on Jake Middleton into the bench.

After that, Brock Faber lifted Jamie Benn’s stick into Benn’s own face in front of the Minnesota net with just over two minutes left in the second period to give Dallas their second power play of the game. It wasn’t a penalty, but because it was only a two-minute minor, the call couldn’t be reviewed, and Dallas got its second power play of the night.

And once again, the Stars would do what the Wild couldn’t, as Duchene found Heiskanen in the slot with a no-look pass from below the goal line. And Heiskanen redeemed his error on the Faber goal in style, whipping a puck past Wallstedt’s glove hand to give Dallas a 2-1 lead right before the end of the second period.

It wound up being an utterly dominant second period for Dallas, outshooting the Wild 17-4. And after going 2-for-2 on the power play, Dallas put Minnesota in the unenviable position of having just 20 minutes in which to erase a deficit, lest they go down 3-1 in the series.

Jake Oettinger had to make a huge save on Marcus Johansson after a Lian Bichsel turnover at the blue line, and he did just that, flashing the blocker arm after Johansson got a Boldy feed right on the doorstep off the break:

Jason Robertson and the Stars could feel the Wild’s nerves, and Minnesota put Kaprizov up with Boldy and Eriksson Ek in a load-up effort with desperation being required.

With that said, Robertson ought to have drawn another power play when Robertson was chopped down in transition, but given the Benn penalty shouldn’t have been called, you could say things evened out.

Oettinger continued to be tested as we got down to the final ten minutes of regulation. After making an important save under pressure, Bobby Brink deflected a point shot off the post that Oettinger never saw. But then Dallas got their own look, though it nearly cost Justin Hryckowian his life, as he got hit into the boards right before a scramble at the goal line that somehow didn’t get put away:

And once again, a just-about chance by Dallas was followed by a fortunate bounce for Minnesota at the other, as Marcus Foligno found a lively puck off the end boards that he shot off the net, off Oettinger, and was tapped in by Foligno to make it 2-2 with five minutes to go.

Hryckowian fed Rantanen off an entry play with a diagonal pass just after the goal, but the puck was just too far ahead for the Stars to complete the counterpunch.

As it would happen, Dallas’s best chance to avoid overtime came when Heiskanen picked off a Johansson clearance with six seconds to go and ripped it into Wallstedt’s glove from distance in a moment that quickly quieted the crowd.

But quiet or otherwise, the crowd would once again be treated to some bonus hockey, and the teams went to overtime with Dallas still down to five defensemen.

Overtime

Johnston led the Stars into the Wild zone with a good rush that looked dangerous, but didn’t wind up being so. But Dallas kept coming with shots from distance, and then when Minnesota finally looked like clearing the puck, Tarasenko got his pocket picked at the blue line, leading to an extended pressure sequence that saw Bogosian make a very painful shot block. Thomas Harley would also test Wallstedt after the Stars got a look off a break as well.

Lian Bichsel and Tyler Myers then found themselves witnessing Minnesota’s heavy pressure, and neither defensemen could cleanly flip a puck out, turning it over time after time. And even when the Stars were able to get the puck out, Myers wasn’t able to change. When the dust settled, Tyler Myers had gutted out a 3:30 shift, but the Stars had somehow survived it.

Kaprizov nearly ended it after a Harley turnover, but Harley also came up with a big block or two to clean things up. Foligno and Bichsel then collided when Marcus tried to turn the corner on Bichsel, only to find no corner awaiting him other than Bichsel’s check.

It was an overtime that then tilted entirely to Minnesota, but Jake Oettinger refused to cede the game in spite of what his teammates were doing (or not doing) in front of him. This save on Eriksson Ek was yet another sign that the Stars’ goaltender was giving them every chance to Do Something.

Arttu Hyry nearly did, as he got what looked like a Colin Blackwell moment, or maybe three of them, firing puck after puck after puck at the net from in tight. But with none of them getting past Wallstedt and his teammates at a crowded netfront, the Stars wouldn’t get many other looks.

Oettinger would come up with another critical save on Boldy after a puck went around the net and popped right out to the Wild’s winger, only to have Oettinger stretch and seal the ice.

The Wild looked to have won it when a rebound popped out to Boldy, but he put it in with a distinct kicking motion, and he knew it. (Nice play in soccer, though.)

Bichsel and Myers fouled up an exchange in their own end, and that meant Oettinger had to once again bailed out his third defense pairing with a glove save on Johansson to pause things. But Dallas continued to struggle to exit their zone, and a Faber shot later into another failed breakout forced Oettinger to lean back and fall onto a puck that looked like squeaking through.

As the first overtime was about to end, the Stars allowed one too many point shots, and a wide-open Matt Boldy easily reached out and tipped one in with 29 seconds left to give Oettinger, at least, a defeat he absolutely did not deserve.

With two more off-days, the Stars will have to prove that they can let this game vanish from their psyches before Tuesday.

Lineups

Dallas stuck with what worked in Game 3:

Hryckowian-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Steel-Hyry-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger

Minnesota:

Kaprizov-Hartman-Brink
Johansson-Eriksson Ek-Boldy
N. Foligno-Yurov-Tarasenko
Sturm-McCarron-M. Foligno

Hughes-Faber
Brodin-Spurgeon
Middleton-Bogosian

Wallstedt

After-AfterThoughts

• Zach Bogosian reportedly left warmups early for Minnesota, but he nevertheless ended up taking that sixth spot on the blue line in place of Jeff Petry, who would be next up. Bogosian only played about 11 minutes in that marathon Game 3 on a pairing with Middleton (who played similarly few minutes at 5v5).

  • (When you’ve got Hughes and Faber though, why wouldn’t you lean on them?)

• I liked this pair of stick checks by Tyler Myers on the penalty kill early:

• How about this block from Oskar Bäck? (And how about Quinn Hughes opting not to shoot on this chance to begin with?)

• In the first period, Dallas created as much pressure in one minute of power play time as Minnesota was able to do in six minutes:

  

• How scary was that skate blade on Lundkvist? Genuinely one of the sharp-intake-of-breath moments.

  

• Matt Duchene has had himself the best playoff series of his time in Dallas, and particularly on the power play:

  

• I’m sure Wild fans will use Benn’s getting hit with his own stick as an example of diving by Dallas. I’m equally sure that Stars fans will respond by pointing to power plays being 4-2 in Minnesota’s favor at that point. Physician, heal thyself?

• Anson Carter and Paul Bissonette both said they didn’t love the Hartman hit on Hryckowian as he was already engaged with a Wild skater here. Thankfully, it didn’t go any worse for Hryckowian.

• Here are some final time-on-ice totals for you:

  • Lindell 34:17

  • Heiskanen 33:33

  • Harley 28:49

  • Myers 27:25

  • Bichsel 21:36

    • Quinn Hughes 37:21

    • Brock Faber 35:47

    • Matt Boldy 29:52

    • Eriksson Ek 28:44

• Minnesota leaned on their top guys a tad more than Dallas did tonight. One would expect they’ll continue to do so.
  
  

  Stars Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. This is the third playoff overtime loss in Stars Thoughts history. Sorry.

After Game 4, this series is going to feel radically different than it does now. Dallas amassed a 3-1 lead in 2016, and that’s a big enough lead in the playoffs that comebacks from that deficit merit their own Wikipedia article.

Conversely, 2-2 series is mathematically even, but if the Wild also get someone like Mats Zuccarello back en route to evening the series, momentum will surely feel like it’s swinging their way, even with Dallas coming home for Game 5. This is, in fact, exactly what the Stars did to Minnesota in 2023, when they were trailing 2-1 in the series on the road, only to even the series in Game 4 before running the table in Games 5 and 6.

Tomorrow has enough trouble of its own, though. Today, let’s take a look at just what’s happened in a series Dallas now leads despite getting blown out in Game 1.

Special teams, sure

The Wild have scored three power play goals in the series, while Dallas has scored five. But you know that Minnesota scored two of their three power play goals in Game 1, when Mats Zuccarello was still on the top unit. Since then, the Wild have scored just one power play goal, and that was by the second unit the other night at the very end of the power play.

The raw numbers aren’t so bad: Minnesota has 40 shot attempts at 5-on-4, and Dallas has 43. However, less than half of Minnesota’s shots have made it on net (just 19), while 30 of Dallas’s 43 attempts have been put on net, on account of coming from generally better (i.e. less blockable) locations.

The underlying numbers tell an even bleaker story: Dallas’s power play is generating dangerous shots while the Wild’s simply hasn’t been able to get interior. Other than Joel Eriksson Ek’s two goals off feeds from below the goal line in Game 1, the top unit has largely been kept to the outside, as you can see below:

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Good morning! Also, it is the afternoon, and we have all been up for a while. But after that double overtime extravaganza, the whole day kinda feels like mornings, so go ahead and have that extra cup of coffee. I’ll allow it.

On today’s off day, we’ve learned some small news: Roope Hintz began skating again yesterday in Dallas, but he’s not playing in Game 4. He’s doubtful for Game 5 as well. For Dallas, reinforcements continue to be elusive. For Minnesota, they are beginning to look more and more vital, but John Hynes didn’t have a definitive answer on when or whether one or both of Trenin or Zuccarello might return to play.

Neither team practiced, so on today’s off-day, let’s take stock of a couple key points about the series we’ve seen so far, including a long talk with Matt Duchene about the incident with Marcus Foligno. But first, some hockey stuff.

Five-on-five play isn’t as one-sided as it seems

Marcus Foligno was well within his rights (and the data at hand) to declare the Wild the superior team at five-on-five through two games. But he’s missing something kind of important: he’s sort of been the problem for Minnesota at five-a-side.

Patrick pointed this out in the comments after Game 3, but just to drive the point home, here are the 5v5 numbers of Foligno the Younger through three games in this series.

For context: 50% in the far-right column would be breaking even. Foligno has, uh, not done that. He’s probably been the worst forward on his team.

At the other end of things, however, the Wild’s top guys have absolutely dominated puck possession at even-strength. I shall demonstrate that fact with the below eye chart:

Yes, you’re reading that right: the Stars have yet to score a single 5v5 goal when any of Hughes, Kaprizov, Boldy, or Eriksson Ek have been on the ice. So to see Boldy pulled off in the first period last night after Benn’s stick hit the back of his helmet, you can bet Wild fans were steaming. (Though not as much as Boldy was after he returned in the second and promptly created an all-world look for Eriksson Ek to bury.)

There’s more to the story, though. Because if you glance at the right-hand columns, you’ll notice that the Stars have still managed to generate high-danger chances against those players. They just haven’t gone in, which is a credit to how Jesper Wallstedt’s been playing. (Though it also raises questions about how you handle former starter Filip Gustavsson next season, as his five-year extension hasn’t even kicked in yet, but I suppose Minnesota will burn that bridge when they come to it.)

The goals are the thing, of course. The Stars will have to prove they can actually capitalize on chances more often when the numbers are even. But the Stars’ defensive work last night might have been a perfect encapsulation of this series: the allowed volume, but not of the lethal variety.

Sean said it well today in D Magazine: you can’t make a long playoff run without consistently being able to generate five-on-five offense. But as the Stars have shown before, you can most definitely win a single series on the back of goal-prevention and special teams. For the second straight year, they’ve grabbed a 2-1 lead in the first round by doing just that. Now they just have to get the horse into the barn.

Penalty calls aren’t designed to make you happy

Through three games, the Wild have taken 16 minor penalties, and the Stars have taken 15. Nearly half of those have been taken by either Mikko Rantanen (4) or Jamie Benn (3), and Benn probably ought to have gotten at least another minor for his conking Boldy in the back of the head last night.

It is not a revelatory statement for anyone to say those players need to avoid needless penalties, so I’ll not make it here. The chess speaks for itself. The penalty killed bailed the captain and the superstar out in Game 3, just as it did last year for Rantanen and Marchment against Colorado before overtime wins in Games 2 & 3.

The officials have obviously let some things go, and they probably got sold a bill of goods on a couple of the calls they did make last night. Game 3 colored outside the lines in almost every way imaginable, but that’s how series like these tend to go. Playoff hockey might be lauded for its culminating moments, but the road to game-winning goals is almost never a straight line. Even Brenden Morrow didn’t score his legendary goal until the Stars were on the power play.

I was talking about the goal of penalty calls earlier today with my brother, and he made a good point: Often, referees will use ten-minute misconducts to send messages and keep games under some measure of control, but as my brother put it, the teams did a good job of “laundering their misbehavior” such that a minor was usually all that could really be called. Or at least, it was all the officials had the appetite to do.

Sure, Johnston could’ve gotten something for his cup-check on Kaprizov, but given that Kaprizov was one of a few Wild players to take liberties with Oettinger’s glove hand after the puck was blown down, the officials considered the matter settled. Again, there is no way Minnesota feels the same, but that’s the series we’ve gotten: teams are averaging five power plays per game, and nobody is going to be happy when they’re on the short end of things.

As the penalty calls last night became more and more unpredictable, it became increasingly apparent that every situation was being judged less about whether the rules had actually been broken, and more about the stakes involved in the penalty call. Did Rantanen trip someone behind a play in the second overtime? Sure, but it didn’t cost Minnesota possession, so we played on. Did Foligno hit Arttu Hyry in the back well away from the puck, whether accidentally or knowingly? Absolutely, but it wasn’t quite violent enough or impactful enough to change anything about the play at the time, so it was let go.

That’s why you have to toughen up when watching the playoffs. The penalties aren’t being called to reinforce your sense of justice, but to prevent the game from being perceived as ruined. Whether the means of modern officiating actually leads to those supposed ends is another matter entirely, but anyone who remembers Game 7 in 2007 or Game 6 in 2024 knows that injustice lurks around every corner. The team that tends to win a series is usually the one who forces the issue.

Matt Duchene talks friendship with Folignos after falling on Marcus in Game 3

Duchene went into the Marcus Foligno incident more today on the Ticket, and he gave a ton of detail, so I wanted to share it here.

Here’s the incident again, just to refresh your memory:

And here’s Duchene coming back to check on Foligno after the fact:

For posterity, I transcribed Duchene’s entire response from his interview today when asked about the altercation, starting with his answer about whether it was accidental:

“Completely. That was funny. First of all, I’m tight with the Foligno boys, especially Nick. Like, Nick is one of my best friends in hockey. Marcus, I know a little bit just through Nick, and I went up to their charity game they used to have for their mom up in Sudbury, Ontario, and I stayed at Nick’s house. I know those guys, I know their dad. They are the most salt of the earth, great [guys]. I’m a Christian, they’re Christian, so we connect on that level. You wouldn’t know it by the way they play I guess (laughs), but as soon as you put the gear on, man, everything’s out the window.

So when that happened, I felt him underneath me. I literally felt his nose crunch on the ice, and I was like, oh man, that’s not gonna be good. And then he was down, and I’m like, oh man. Like, here’s the thing. You have a hit like Blackie where he hits Trenin, and he’s concussed or whatever’s wrong with him, and that’s part of the game, that’s part of the playoffs. You don’t want to like, fall on a guy. I felt bad. So I skated up to check on him, truthfully. Like, what the heck else was I gonna go do there? Marcus’s one of the strongest, biggest guys in the league. Like, I’m not gonna try and go poke that bear, right? Like, what would I be doing? And again, I have ultimate respect for the guy. I love both those boys. I legitimately was going up to talk to him, and he just snapped. He saw red. It’s funny, he snorted blood all over my jersey. I had his blood all over me the rest of the game.

But then, Spurgeon, who I know a little bit too, he’s an awesome guy, and even Nick, they thought maybe I cross-checked him, because they didn’t see the play. I was like, ‘Boys, come on, I fell on him.’ I said, ‘Watch this.’ Obviously they reviewed it, and they showed it on the Jumbotron, and I watched all their faces when they saw on the Jumbotron, and they were like, ‘Ah, okay.’

So anyway, third period, Marcus and I lined up at a draw, and he came right up to me, right away, and said, ‘All good man, I know you didn’t do that on purpose. It just felt like it when it happened, but all good.’ And I said, ‘Dude, honestly, I don’t blame you. I felt you underneath me, and I could feel what happened. I was literally coming to check on you. Like, I felt bad.’ I said the same thing in my press conference.

You know, it’s war out there, but at the same time, like, within confines, in my opinion, right? We’ll do anything to win the series, but I have never been that guy, that is gonna be like, I would never cross-check a guy’s head into the ice. (pauses) I mean…I don’t wanna say never, but they would have to really, really, really piss me off (laughs). Marcus, I don’t think he’s a dirty player by any means, so that’s how I look at it. He plays hard. There’s not many guys who hit that hard in this league, and he’s hitting to hurt. Not in a dirty way, but he’s hitting as hard as he can, but I respect that. That’s doing it right. I’m not gonna go out there and look to cheap shot anybody for anything like that. I’m not that guy anyway. That’s not my style.”

-Matt Duchene, April 23 2026
“The Sweet Spot” on 1310 the Ticket.

Anyway, I’m sure the audio will get uploaded later today, but it’s always fascinating to hear about both the intensity and the brotherhood we don’t always see on the ice.

4/24 Edit: Here’s the audio clip from the Ticket of Duchene’s interview of the above.

Do you have an opinion?
A mind of your own?
I thought you were special

What’s the best way to understand a game like this?

Or perhaps the better question would be: What’s the best way to watch what is actually three games in a giant, one-game-sized trenchcoat with the words SPECIAL TEAMS sewn into its lapels?

Look, whoever lost this game was going to have roughly a million grievances, and half of them legitimate. Glen Gulutzan’s prediction the other night about the series not reverting to its calmer, Game 1 form came true repeatedly in St. Paul on Wednesday/Thursday, as this series featured blood and guts, sometimes in literal form. I have no doubt Wild fans were spittin’ mad about Jamie Benn’s conk on the back of the helmet of Matt Boldy, who lay on the ice for a few seconds and was then taken down the tunnel before returning in the second period, and you can understand why, right? Mats Zuccarello wasn’t in the lineup because of his own head-contact with a Stars player earlier in the series, so to see one of their star players get accidentally-on-purposed like that will surely be mentioned in various emails, text messages, and communiqués.

In a game like this, either team could have made a two-minute montage of uncalled infractions, given how things were officiated at times, but then again, a ton of penalties were called, so it wasn’t as though it was whistle-swallowing time. It was just inconsistent, and as the power plays mounted (we got to 15 in the end), it felt like something had to give. It took nearly five periods of hockey for that to happen.

It’s not often that a team gets seven power plays in a playoff game. It’s even less frequent that said team gets five of those seven power plays in the third period and overtime. And I have to think it’s close to unique for a team to go 0-for-5 on said power plays. I mean, look at what Minnesota had to work with here:

That, right there, was why Minnesota lost this game—and why Dallas won it.

After scoring on their first power play of the game, Minnesota finished 0-for-6 in a penalty-infested street fight. Absolutely, the officiating wasn’t anywhere close to consistent, but you can’t point fingers anywhere but into the mirror when one of the best power plays in the league lays an egg like that. Yes, the absence of Zuccarello is clearly a critical blow for the Wild, but this is the team with Quinn Hughes, Kirill Kaprizov, and Matt Boldy. That’s a whole lot of awesome on that top unit.

Quinn Hughes, by the way, finished this game with 43:47 in ice time, and that included 12:01 on the power play. And while the Wild did technically get a power play goal in the first, it actually came with the second unit on and the penalty five seconds from expiration. Which leads me to believe that Hughes may not be back to full health. Because I simply refuse to believe that the Quinn Hughes we’ve seen all year in Minnesota could have that much time to discombobulate opposing skaters and fail to create even a single goal, unless he’s fighting something.

After this game, though, I’m sure a lot of players will be feeling it. This was where the series got truly nasty, though ironically, one of the bloodiest altercations was an accidental one, when Duchene fell onto Marcus Foligno after a shot block, and Foligno’s face went into the ice with Duchene on top of him. A major penalty was called (with blood on the ice and whatnot) in order to trigger a review, but the officials determined that there really wasn’t anything malicious in the play.

Malice was elsewhere, though. After an early slash on the glove of Jake Oettinger after a whistle, Dallas put up the phalanx in front of their goalie on subsequent stoppages. The ethos was more or less the same one Gandalf uttered on the bridge of Khazad-dûm, though instead of nobly vanquishing an unspeakable foe by a metaphorical re-enacting of the go-down-to-go-up theme of one of Plato’s dialogues, Wyatt Johnston just poked the toe of his stick into Kirill Kaprizov’s wedding vegetables. To each his own, I guess.

I have no idea how you officiate a game like this one, though. Genuinely, both teams could have had ten power plays, and it would have been pretty justified. Instead, the decision appeared to be to aim for seven apiece and then put the whistles away. But that only works for judgment calls, and when Yurov sailed a puck into the seats in double overtime, the Stars got their eighth power play of the night, and scored their third such man-advantage goal to win it.

It’s got to be maddening, if you’re Minnesota. Here you are, the most skilled team in Wild history, and yet Dallas is up 2-1 in the series thanks in large part to winning the special teams battle. And worse, Dallas is also dealing out hits that have taken players out of your lineup, clean though one of them may have been. The injustice of it all has to burn, I would imagine.

From the Dallas side, I’m sure they couldn’t care less. The Stars have now reclaimed home ice, and they’ve also largely quieted the Wild’s most dangerous weapon for two games in a row. And if a power play stops feeling confident, things can take a little while to get right again—often, much more than the time afforded going into Game 4 of a playoff series.

As for that Stars penalty kill, how about the adjustments made by Alain Nasreddine’s group? Bäck, Faksa, Steel, and Blackwell (with some help from Hyry, too) kept the Wild from most of the good spots, and they hurried them into missed shots when they did manage it. Radek Faksa’s work was particularly admirable, as he had five blocked shots all by himself, and nearly won the game at the other end on multiple occasions, including a puck that he tipped back through an empty crease behind Wallstedt. It probably took a piece of his heart with it.

Faksa, like Mikko Rantanen, experienced both courses of fortune’s wheel, taking a penalty that looked potentially devastating only to get let off the hook by the rest of the Stars’ PK, and then come up with a huge moment later on. In Faksa’s case, he drew a penalty for Dallas right after his team killed his tripping penalty on Kaprizov. And on that power Faksa drew, the Stars would score the game-tying goal.

Miro Heiskanen was everywhere in this one, playing 43:05 (surely a career-high), including 10:57 on the power play and 9:54 on the penalty kill. Those are just numbers, but if you stop to think about what it would feel like to spend ten minutes killing a penalty with Quinn Hughes somewhere on the ice, then you begin to realize just how special a player Heiskanen is. He also sent the puck on net that Johnston won the game with, by the way.

Mikko Rantanen’s pass to find Matt Duchene in the third to tie the game bookended the regulation scoring, which Rantanen had opened with a goal himself, off a beautiful pass from Robertson (again, on the power play). He had six shots on goal and another unnecessary penalty (as well as a second sketchy play in double overtime that was not called), but the good outweighed the bad in this one by a wide enough margin.

Jason Robertson racked up another three points, including a beautiful 2-on-1 rush goal that demonstrated Jesper Wallstedt’s mortality. It was the only 5-on-5 goal Dallas would score tonight, and it was also Robertson’s third goal in three games in this series. I think he might be a playoff performer.

Wyatt Johnston played 30 minutes in this game, which is a number forwards just don’t reach unless you’re Nathan MacKinnon on like a random January game. Power play minutes are easier than others, but half an hour of playoff hockey is still half an hour of playoff hockey, and Johnston capped it off with a goal he won’t forget. (Though he’ll have to keep it straight in his mind with some effort, given the growing number of goals in that category). His takeaway on Quinn Hughes earlier in the game might have been even more impressive, in some ways, than his goal. But of course, the goal was the most important. Overtime is overtime.

Nils Lundkvist played another dominant game, and I thought he and Thomas Harley looked strong to very strong every time they were on the ice. In fact, all three defense pairs for Dallas were great in this one, with Tyler Myers and Lian Bichsel taking regular turns well into the depths of overtime, which is not something third defense pairings often are trusted to do. Zach Bogosian only played 11 minutes tonight, while Jake Middleton played 17. Lian Bichsel was the lowest TOI-haver on the Stars, with 22:27.

And defense in general was the key achievement, for Dallas. Yes, Minnesota had a lot of the puck in the latter stages of the game, but Dallas managed to avoid giving up the worst chances, and they got more than as good as they allowed. They played a patient, counterattacking game that served their purposes. Against a team as good as Minnesota, you simply find the way that works.

The Wild really do appear to be in a rough spot, both mentally and creatively. Despite surging back from a 2-0 deficit to take a 3-2 lead, they couldn’t land the knockout blow. And when you can’t increase the margins, you’re usually going to be overanalyzing every marginal decision, for better or for worse. Why couldn’t they turn all their overtime possession into more actual scoring chances? Why couldn’t the power play find a way to simplify, or complexify, or transmogrify themselves into something that could at least score on one of those final chances?

I don’t know the answer to Minnesota’s woes. Certainly Dallas has its own infirmary to maintain, so the sympathy will be nonexistent. But the key difference, right now, appears to be this: When Roope Hintz wasn’t able to play, Matt Duchene was able to step up as a 2C and center a dangerous scoring line while also filling in on the top power play. The Wild have not seen similar results with Vladimir Tarasenko, who has had to move up the depth chart in the absence of Zuccarello.

Maybe taking pride in that role is why Duchene was there to save a goal at the top of Oettinger’s crease by sweeping a loose puck away after Boldy and Eriksson Ek had a shorthanded 2-on-1 rush that was better than almost anything they created on the power play. Maybe Duchene is thriving so much in these playoffs because he’s being asked to do more. Whatever the reasons, Duchene has already matched or surpassed his goal totals from the past two playoff runs in Dallas.

Maybe that is what Glen Gulutzan has really done: take a lot of familiar pieces and find a way to make them work differently. Certainly, his hiring was made with an eye toward a better fate in the playoffs, and three games is no referendum. With that said, you’d have thought that Minnesota would have been ready to exploit matchups on home ice and bully Dallas to the brink of the series before it even got back for Game 5. Instead, the Stars are the ones doing the (real or perceived) bullying, and that could make things tricky for a Minnesota team looking to avoid a 3-1 series deficit on home ice.

But we’ve seen the Stars flip a 2-1 series in both directions, so pronouncing anything after three games seems naive, at best. If that Kaprizov shot sneaks inside the post, the Stars are the ones facing a 2-1 deficit on the road, and things are quite different. This early in a series, you have to be steady, but there’s a risk to being too patient. One would expect to see Minnesota try to push the pace as ferociously as they can in Game 4. The players they have available will be a big factor in how strongly they can do that dictating, though.

And by the way, how about Jake Oettinger, who clearly picked up on the blocker-side targeting from Minnesota after letting in the McCarron goal from distance and adjusted? Going from allowing that goal to shutting a team out the rest of the way is no mean feat, and Oettinger found a way to reset and regroup on a night when he wasn’t quite as sharp as Game 2—though I’m not sure any goalie really could be, with all the penalties in this one. There’s a special kind of talent involved in playing well even when your game isn’t razor sharp, and he exemplified that trait tonight.

Three years ago, the Wild were the team up 2-1 after three games, only for Dallas to rip off three wins in a row. I’m not sure that anyone will be resting on their laurels after this marathon, but certainly the Stars will be thinking about this game for a couple of days while they recuperate. There is a lot more good than bad in the performance we saw in Game 3, and a lot of the bad seems extremely preventable. That’s as much as you can ask for in a tight series, though: Take care of your own business, and you’ve got a path to grabbing this series by the collar and shaking two more wins out of its lunchbox.

Whether the next of those wins will require special teams galore or turn out to be a 2-1 nail-biter, this team seems like they can actually hang in this series, which is what you would hope to see (and feel) from the third-best team in the NHL. Minnesota currently doesn’t have a giant stick to threaten the Stars with, and that has to be a good feeling. In the playoffs, even a little confidence can go a long way.

Highlights and the Lowdown

After the Duchene line created an immediate scoring chance (and Jason Robertson shot), Jonas Brodin tripped up Sam Steel to put Dallas on a power play right off the bat. And they wouldn’t take long to punish the early miscue.

Matt Duchene made a quick entry play and pass to Jason Robertson as the power play struck with speed rather than trying a more deliberate entry. They caught Minnesota flat-footed at the blue line, and Robertson had enough space to make a nice pass, which Rantanen finished on his backhand like he was putting away the groceries.

Matt Boldy would go down in the Minnesota end a few minutes later, drawing a chorus of boos from the fans expecting an even-up call, but no dice. Instead, the Stars kept rolling lines, and Minnesota continued to look just a bit nervous as the first ten minutes played out.

Nick Foligno would put the Stars back on the power play with a pretty blatant pull-back on Lian Bichsel that led to a Holding call, and his incredulity did not change anyone’s mind.

The power play looked sharp, but Dallas passed up a couple of A- looks for potential A+ ones, and the result of all that deference was one in-tight look for Robertson, and a point shot by the second unit that ricocheted back and forth and just wide of the net.

The most important part of the power play might have happened at the end, when Jamie Benn caught Matt Boldy’s helmet as he leapt over the Wild forward’s extended leg.

Boldy stayed on the ice for a few seconds, and he would miss the rest of the period after heading down the tunnel.

It would be the Wild’s fourth line that would cost them the next goal, as Marcus Foligno tried a drop pass to McCarron that went awry, and Jason Robertson’s eventual shot on a 2-on-1 with Duchene beat Wallstedt’s glove to give Dallas a 2-0 lead in the first period.

Minnesota’s nerves continued to show up, and Arttu Hyry nearly made it 3-0 on a 2-on-1 of his own just a minute or two later after blocking Jake Middleton’s shot and getting by him:

But after Joel Eriksson Ek’s face was hit by Jason Robertson’s stick, the Wild got a power play of their own, and they would need 1:55 of the 2:00 to convert it, before Marcus Johansson benefited from a puck battle behind the net that got fed out to him with traffic, and he buried it.

The period would end with that 2-1 score, though Oettinger had a couple more big saves to make as the Wild seized some momentum after getting on the board.

Matt Boldy would return for the second period, either having passed initial concussion protocol or having gotten some other sort of treatment. Whatever the case, Minnesota was glad to have him back, and he would show why when he set up Joel Eriksson Ek for the tying goal with a nice rush through traffic and a blind pass back into the slot that found Eriksson Ek:

Minnesota started rolling after that goal, and Dallas spent a lot of the next five minutes in their own zone as Minnesota probed around the outside, trying to pick Dallas’s defensive structure apart.

Wyatt Johnston nearly victimized Quinn Hughes with a great takeaway at the blue line, but he just didn’t quite have the momentum to beat Kaprizov up the ice, and Minnesota avoided any damage.

A crazier sequence followed up, beginning with a quick up by Wallstedt during a crucial Dallas change that missed its mark. That led to a rush the other way where Sam Steel tried a toe-drag move. He would miss the net, and Jamie Benn would then take a hooking call on Eriksson Ek, putting the energized Wild onto the power play.

Boldy would hit the iron from the slot early in the power play, signaling that he was feeling just fine, thank you very much. A fracas happened when Eriksson Ek whacked Oettinger’s glove after a clean save, and Tyler Myers buried him into the ice. A player from each team would sit, and the last of the power play ran out when Ryan Hartman tried a subtle trip on Oskar Bäck during an entry play that the officials caught, which they generally do, on account of he’s Ryan Hartman.

More penalty discussion came after Marcus Foligno went down to block a Duchene chance from the slot, and he ended up bleeding from his face after Duchene tumbled over and onto him.

A major penalty was called, but after review, it was rescinded, and things carried on without result. It would not be the last power play of the period, however, because Ryan Hartman cross checked Radek Faksa a couple of times, and the cumulative call was made to put Dallas on their fourth power play.

Rantanen and Robertson made a couple in-tight attempts, but Matt Boldy made the biggest play when he sent a clearance down the ice and over the glass, putting Dallas up two men with 40 seconds left on the initial call.

One way or the other, the game would turn on that moment, and it did—but not for the Stars. Minnesota killed all the penalties, and then Michael McCarron fired a puck from distance right after Boldy got out of the box, and it sizzled past Oettinger’s blocker to give Minnesota their third straight goal in a full-throated home building.

The third period would arrive with Minnesota looking to build on that momentum, and an Esa Lindell tripping penalty on the first shift looked every bit like it would be that. Instead, Dallas killed the penalty rather well, and the Stars came back with a decent push of their own on a couple successive shifts, including one where Bourque tried a wrap/stuff attempt with the Wild gassed and Wallstedt stickless, but the Wild goaltender was able to cover.

Then the Stars got into more penalty trouble when Radek Faksa tripped Kaprizov in the offensive zone, and you could see Faksa thinking just how costly that penalty could be as he sat in the box, staring a thousand miles ahead. But once again, the Stars came up with a big kill, and Faksa would get out of the box and go on to even his ledger up by drawing a tripping call of his own behind the Wild net with a hard bit of puck possession and determination. Jason Robertson would get a glorious look dead in between the circles, and he would rip it right off Wallstedt’s mask, breaking a buckle in the process.

Then it was the Matt Duchene show, which he began by saving a goal at one end after Oettinger made a big save on a 2-on-1 with the puck sitting right in front of the crease…

…and then finished after Mikko Rantanen showed incredible patience after a bunch of saves by Wallstedt to finally create a look nobody was going to stop, tying the game at three apiece.

Here’s another look from the goal line, where you can see Spurgeon almost saving the puck himself. What a play, what a shot.

Dallas got a couple more looks after that, including a rush by Faksa to the net and another offensive zone sequence with multiple looks. But instead, Minnesota would get momentum out of almost nothing, thanks to one of the most avoidable tripping penalties you will ever see, by (you guessed it) Mikko Rantanen, who poked Hughes’s skate out from under him with nothing going on in the Minnesota zone to give the Wild a golden chance to re-take the lead with 7 minutes to go on the power play.

But—stop me if you’ve heard this one—the Stars’ penalty kill came up big again, and we got to the five-minute mark of regulation with the penalty fest looking entirely up for grabs. More and more things began to go un-called, however, and regulation tightened up with both sides looking a bit tense. An overtime hero would be required to resolve this one.

Overtime

Overtime began with a furious Wild sequence that ended with Esa Lindell prone on the ice next to Oettinger after absorbing some of a Faber shot from the top of the circle. Duchene broke his stick after another D-zone faceoff a minute later, and the Stars had to ice the puck just to get back to level. It would be a theme for the first overtime, during which Dallas would do a whole lot of defending and not much else.

Minnesota continued to have the bulk of possession, with Dallas very content to protect the slot in their own zone, and only a couple of Minnesota icings got Dallas anything like offensive-zone time in the first ten minutes. But whenever Dallas did get the puck in the neutral zone, they were generally looking to create a three-forward rush, and you could see Minnesota tensing up on the occasion that happened.

But the best chances would come on power plays—two of them, in fact. The first one was drawn by Quinn Hughes, when Steel reached out with his stick and got it into Hughes’s…knees? Anyway, Hughes went down, and the Wild got the first power play of overtime.

And the Stars came up with another big kill, including an absurdly dramatic sequence where Radek Faksa’s stick was broken, and the Stars were caught with a 5-on-3.5.

Duchene said after the game that he had his head on the bench with one eye watching because of how disastrous that moment seemed. But a stickless Faksa and company made some huge blocks with Minnesota smelling blood.

But you thought it was all for nothing when Oettinger sprawled over to where Kaprizov had gotten a puck along the goal line. The superstar wingers collected the puck, and ripped it past Oettinger…but off the post.

Dallas would, eventually, manage a clear to get a full change with four players (all with sticks), and it felt like momentum was back on their side. And it was, for a bit.

But then Jamie Benn took a pretty indisputable holding penalty when he lost position on Nick Foligno and got his arms draped on him with a minute to go in the first overtime. The good news was that Dallas would make it to the end of the first overtime with the game still live.

The bad news was that they had to start the second overtime on the penalty kill for 1:10.

The even more good news, however, is that the Stars’ penalty kill continued its recent work, and the teams got back to even, which is to say that state of play where 80% of penalties by both sides went uncalled. The best look, for a while, was this tip play by none other than Radek Faksa, who would have been seeing this one in his nightmares for a long time, had the game ended differently.

But after Minnesota got two power plays in the first overtime, Dallas would unsurprisingly get two in the second overtime, including this Esa Lindell chance on the first power play (drawn by Mikko Rantanen) after which Eriksson Ek went down the tunnel for a bit before returning later.

After another couple of uncalled penalties, the Wild got hemmed in their zone for a while, and an exhausted Danila Yurov sent a clearance over the glass, giving Dallas a power play the officials had no choice but to call.

And this time, Wyatt Johnston would make it count, with one of the deftest deflections you will ever see, to win Game 3 in double overtime.

The two teams will have two days off before squaring off again in Game 4 on Saturday in St. Paul.

Lineups

Dallas rolled this lineup again:

Hryckowian-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Steel-Hyry-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger

Minnesota, thus:

Kaprizov-Hartman-Brink
Johansson-Eriksson Ek-Boldy
N. Foligno-Yurov-Tarasenko
Sturm-McCarron-M. Foligno

Hughes-Faber
Brodin-Spurgeon
Middleton-Bogosian

Wallstedt

After-AfterThoughts

• With Yakov Treinen and Mats Zuccarello still available, the healthy bodies on both sides were closer to equal going into this game. I have no idea who is actually healthy after that game, though.

• Radek Faksa:

  • on his soccer pass without a stick on the penalty kill in overtime: “Yeah. I’m European, so…”

  • on his tip that went through the crease and out the other side: “I don’t even wanna see that [replay], to be honest.”

  • “I’ve never played a playoff game with so many penalties, probably ever.

• Jason Robertson:

  • on what he was eating to stay fueled after the first overtime: “I don’t know. They’re just throwing stuff at me. I don’t know. I’m learning a lot about myself. I think a couple years ago, we went to double overtime against Minnesota at home with an 8:50 (start), so it’s the second latest game.”

• Matt Duchene:

  • On the Marcus Foligno altercation: “I know the Foligno boys really well. He didn’t know what happened. He felt me fall on him, and I felt his face go into the ice. He came up to me after to say, ‘hey, all good.’ I felt bad. I mean, you don’t want to hurt a guy like that. I know it’s playoffs, but you know, I felt bad. I could feel his snout was going into the ice, and glad he’s fine. Just one of those unfortunate plays. I got to wear his blood on my jersey for the rest of the game, so that was great.”

• This play by Eriksson Ek almost looked a little bit like something he did intentionally, but I have no idea if he did it intentionally, and even if he did, that’s a pretty clever way to get a power play.

• Great game from Tyler Myers and Lian Bichsel, but Myers in particular, who killed penalties in excellent fashion. His own rebounding from some tough games this year has been really impressive—I suppose you don’t stick in the NHL this long if you aren’t pretty accustomed to weathering the highs and lows, though.

• I didn’t realize it at the time, but that Johansson goal in the first rattled off (I think) two different Stars players on its way in:

• Paul Bissonette (of all people) called out Heiskanen’s stick-check on Middleton on the Stars’ first goal. Without this play, the puck may not get through to Rantanen. Great play by Heiskanen.

  

• How about this play by Radek Faksa to nearly make it 4-3 for Dallas in the third? What a game he had, in many ways.

• Joel Eriksson Ek went 27-for-40 on faceoffs in this game, which is an absolute ton of faceoffs to take in a single game. (Hartman went 5-for-21, so the Wild may need Eriksson Ek to keep that pace up.)

• As much as the game was a power play competition, the Stars were also the better team at 5-on-5, keeping Minnesota almost entirely out of the low slot:

  

• Finally, here’s a shot of the bench when Johnston won the game. Some hearty handshakes, those are.

One of the irksome things about covering (or watching) Central Division playoff games is the late-night starts. I was wrapping up the postgame story last night this morning, and even as I published the thing, I hazily felt like I’d barely scratched the surface of everything that got packed into those 60 minutes in Game 2.

Great playoff games tend to defy a single story, which is why I always recommend reading coverage from a variety of writers1 covering both teams, if you really want the fullest picture of the series. (Like NHL.com’s Dan Rosen, who got Duchene’s perspective on the Stars’ lackluster Game 1 performance after they evened the series last night).

I wanted to touch on a few other things still on my mind after last night/this morning’s 4-2 Stars win, but before that, let’s quickly get to a couple of updates from a brief presser with Glen Gulutzan before the team flew to Minnesota today.

Roope Hintz not traveling for Game 3, “very doubtful” for Game 4

The Stars are flying to Minnesota today, but Roope Hintz won’t be joining them. At least, not for Game 3.

“Game three, [he] won't be there,” Gulutzan said of Hintz. “Game four, I would say, is very doubtful. So, hopefully by the time we get back we're in a good spot, and he's in a good spot.”

In other words, Roope Hintz’s return continues to be less than imminent. But if there’s some good news, it’s that Nathan Bastian is starting to skate again. Gulutzan said today that while Bastian is limited in the hockey work he can do while still recovering from a hand injury, his return currently lines up with some time in a potential second-round series.

Everyone else, Gulutzan said, remains good to go for Game 3, which is scheduled for Wednesday night in St. Paul.

Faber and Hughes vs. Harley and Heiskanen

Dallas did a better job (though not a perfect one) of containing Hughes last night, and their reward was to have the Wild’s second D-man step up and come close to a hat trick. Faber attempted eleven shots last night, and six of them went on or into the net.

In total, Minnesota got two goals from Brock Faber last night, while Quinn Hughes continues to be a dominant force in the series (as he’s been all year for the Wild), with three points, including two 5v5 assists (and a setup to Boldy in the first period that ought to have been another, if not for Oettinger’s glove).

On Dallas’s side, they haven’t quite seen the same one-two punch from Heiskanen and Harley. Heiskanen has a pair of secondary assists on the power play, but nothing else. Harley has seven shot attempts, just one of which went on goal. He has yet to record a point in the series.

Furthermore, I was a bit surprised by the below two moments in the first period last night.

Read more

I'll wait in the lobby for someone to show
And if they don't come, I will know where to go
The bodies are lined up outside in the hall
I don't want to decay in a mall

For the second consecutive year, Colin Blackwell left an indelible mark on Game 2 of the first round.

It’s not often in today’s NHL that you see a clean, shoulder-to-shoulder hit that rattles an entire arena. But with 5:16 left in the first period, Blackwell—whom I am legally obligated to remind you is 5-foot-8—stepped up on the NHL leader in hits and delivered one of the biggest body checks you will ever see, dealing out a crushing shoulder-to-shoulder that knocked Trenin out of the game. It also announced a major tone-shift for what now looks likely to be a long series.

"It's fun. I enjoy playing physical,” Blackwell said. “Trust me, I get hit all the time. In a series like this and playoffs and stuff, you get the chance to be physical and you get the opportunity to do so. It just so happened to be a big one. There's a lot of other times where trying to slow some of their big guys getting licks on our D. I think any time you get a chance to lay a hit, it's just one of those things where the opportunity presents itself, you take advantage of it."

Trenin joins Mats Zuccarello on the Wild’s list of upper-body injuries, but Marcus Foligno did his best to add to the Stars’ own infirmary with a headlock on Thomas Harley that drove him into the boards, as well as a near-miss on Jason Robertson that saw Foligno go into his own bench. All that to say: this series is only just getting started.

But back to Blackwell for one more moment. Because players like him are often the subjects of underdog narratives and “look at him go” sorts of stories, but if you watched any of his last few games, you’ve been seeing a veteran player almost giddy with anticipation, knowing what it’s going to cost his body. Colin Blackwell is an NHL player, and that means he’s one of the best hockey players in the world, even if he doesn’t have the size that affords you a little extra time or a little more room to disperse the crushing force of big hits.

Colin Blackwell is inevitable because he decides to be, game after game, or even scratch after scratch. But tonight, he looked eager to pay whatever price was asked during each shift, and his hit changed the game for good—and probably the series, too.

“He’s got so much grit and desire,” Glen Gulutzan said. “He’s been a big part of our penalty kill and a big part of our team. In this last stretch, we’ve had a bunch of injuries, and he’s played his best hockey. He just rose up to the challenge at the end of the year, and it’s just carried on. He’s been a good jolt of energy every night for us in his minutes.”

That jolt extended to the penalty kill, where Blackwell was one of four forwards to handle the bulk of the biggest task: containing the Wild’s power play, which had scored five goals in the teams’ past two meetings, including two on Saturday. And this time, it was the Stars who won the special teams competition, as they got a second-period power play goal from Matt Duchene that wound up being the only such tally for either side in the first 59 minutes, as Minnesota went 0-for-4 on the power play.

It was a dramatic resurgence for a penalty kill that has been a hallmark of this Dallas team’s success, including last year’s first round series against Colorado. And despite the final 4-2 scoreline, the Stars needed every bit of stepping-up they got, from Jake Oettinger on out.

Yes, Oettinger. This game was shaping up to be a 4-1 Minnesota lead after 20 minutes with a similarly deflating result, if not for three incredible stops by the Stars’ franchise goaltender, who was on top of his game all night (outside of one iffy puck play behind his net in the third period). His two stops on Matt Boldy in the first period were superstar stuff, the type of playoff-caliber goaltending that top netminders are expected to provide at least once a night. Instead, Oettinger did so at least four solid times in this one, including another all-alone chance by Danila Yurov early in the game.

But when you saw Oettinger make those saves—and when you noticed the way he went about doing so, confident with his glove, stick, and blocker alike—you knew it was going to be one of those games, where Dallas simply needed to provide a modicum of offense in support of a star performance. And provide it they did, albeit in some unorthodox ways.

Wyatt Johnston scored two goals, but each had a bit of flukiness about it. Jesper Wallstedt, to his credit, recovered from a howler off the end boards to open the scoring and made Dallas work for their meal the rest of the way. (Two posts also didn’t hurt.) The empty-netter to seal things was a bit of cruel fate for Quinn Hughes, who was smarting from his own bounce off the end boards following the fourth Dallas goal.

But the middle two goals were every bit as important as the bookending ones. Matt Duchene’s power play goal off a beautiful rush entry and pass by Rantanen on the power play ensured that the man-advantage wouldn’t be a source of deflation for Dallas, as failed power plays so often can be. Coming when it did—in the final 20 seconds or so of the chance—Rantanen did what superstars do, and willed a scoring chance into being on a rush with Duchene, who played his second outstanding game in a row.

That goal came at the tail end of a Nick Foligno elbowing penalty, but that was far from the only Foligno-related discussion point in this one, as we’ll see.

First, though, it must be pointed out that it was Jason Robertson who wound up scoring the game-winning goal, and he did so by fighting for space in the middle of the ice while absorbing a cross check or two, then expertly knocking a Nils Lundkvist shot out of the air and through Wallstedt, capitalizing on a strong run of play for Dallas and giving them what would turn out to be a critical two-goal lead.

This game was the nitro-fueled, supercharged, [other cool car term] playoff game we were promised, and all it took to get it started was Colin Blackwell. All it took to get it finished was Jason Robertson, scoring his second goal of the series.

The other moment that will echo for a while—aside from two goals by Brock Faber, who was incredible tonight for Minnesota—was at the end of the second period when Marcus Foligno, perhaps in an attempt to avenge one of his injured teammates, responded to a Thomas Harley interference penalty by headlocking the Stars defenseman and driving his head into the curved corner of the glass at the end of the bench.

It was called a major at first blush, then downgraded to a double minor after a review. And Glen Gulutzan was okay with that result.

“It was interference on Harls for sure,” Gulutzan acknowledged, “ And then it was a headlock into the turnbuckle. But you know what? That’s probably the right call. They’ve got a lot of the veteran guys there with good character. It’s just a hard-fought
series. I don’t think too much of it. Sure, he had him in a headlock, and I don’t think, other than that, it was malicious. It’s playoff hockey. The biggest thing for me is how Harls has stepped up in the physicality department and how solid he’s been, too.
I’m just looking at things from my side.”

Foligno, by the way, saw things similarly.

“Yeah, I mean, he interferes with me,” Foligno said, “And there’s a stanchion in the way. Yeah, I think there’s an interference call on him, and at that point, do you think I’m gonna think about smashing a guy’s head in that quick of time? No, it’s unfortunate that there’s glass in the way.”

I doubt the Stars felt the play was entirely accidental, and neither did the officials, who gave Dallas a power play out of all the resulting mess. Harley appeared to be fine afterward. But that won’t be the last of Foligno we’ll hear in the series, because as always, he isn’t backing down from anyone—rhetoric included.

“I mean, they’re looking to play five-on-four,” Foligno said. “I mean, that’s their game. They can’t hang with us five-on-five. So just same thing as before, we got to just be smarter, and myself included. But it’s a heated game out there. You’re gonna have emotional swings, and learn from it. And we got a split series.”

It’s always a very entertaining thing in a competitive playoff series when you get that sort of narrative and folderol, post-facto chirps by both sides. Minnesota is clearly not happy about the Myers elbow on Zuccarello that kept him out of Game 2, and maybe longer. Dallas likely wasn’t happy that Miro Heiskanen was injured during the Hartman play in Game 79, and you can bet the Harley hit (after he and Boldy exchanged friendly greeting at the end of that same regular season finale) won’t be the last time the Wild challenge Dallas with their physical brand of hockey.

Either way, this series is only getting started. And if you’re Dallas, that was all you could ask for, going into this one. It appears that now, we’ll all be getting even more than we bargained for.

Highlights and the Lowdown

Whatever forecheck-related adjustments Gulutzan’s team may or may not have made after Game 1, they managed to force a Minnesota icing on the first shift of the game. Of course, the Stars would ice it themselves 30 seconds later, and Vladimir Tarasenko would get a wrap attempt that came with more space out front than Dallas would’ve liked to allow.

Overall, the Stars’ transition game looked better through the first run of lines, but Mikko Rantanen lost a puck in the neutral zone in transition, and his reach back caught Kaprizov up high, sending Minnesota to a familiar spot: the power play.

But Alain Nasreddine’s group had clearly done some homework over the weekend, and they were much quicker to prey upon Minnesota’s entries. Oettinger had just one save to make at the end of the set, and Dallas killed it off as easily as you could have hoped for.

Wyatt Johnston very nearly gave Dallas the lead right after that kill, tipping a point shot back the other way, but Jesper Wallstedt’s right toe was ready for it. He wouldn’t be the only goalie to make a big save in the first period, however, as Oettinger came up with an enormous stop on Yurov all alone at the netfront with his stick. It was the sort of save that tends to mean something, and it would do so immediately.

Because at the other end, a Wyatt Johnston shot from the point bounced sharply off the end boards, and caught Wallstedt off-guard. Almost miraculously, the puck banked off Wallstedt’s glove side and into the back of the net, and Dallas had a 1-0 lead.

The lead wouldn’t last long, however. After Benn and Bogosian were sent off to make it 4-on-4, Brock Faber would get past Jason Robertson and fire a puck in from close range with Heiskanen engaged at the netfront, tying things up at one goal apiece.

Minnesota nearly made it 2-1 a moment later, when Quinn Hughes beat Harley from the point and fed a puck across to Boldy, who had tons of net facing him. But Oettinger’s glove lashed out at the last minute for his second moment of outright robbery in the first period.

Esa Lindell hit the post down at the other end as 4-on-4 expired, and Johnston couldn’t quite find the rebound as the game stayed wide open. But it would only ramp up more as the period went along, because Colin Blackwell had himself a Colin Blackwell! moment, crushing Yakov Trenin with as big an open-ice hit as you’ll ever see, shoulder-on-shoulder. Trenin would leave the ice with some assistance.

Any residual fears about Jake Oettinger’s playoff capabilities on Monday were put to rest when he faced a Matt Boldy breakaway, only to come up with his third highlight-reel save of the period with a glove-hand stop.

Wallstedt had to make multiple dangerous deflection saves, but all told, Dallas was extremely fortunate to escape the first period with a 1-1 tie (if you count outstanding goaltending as “fortunate,” that is.)

The second period began with Dallas getting a power play after Nick Foligno rather unnecessarily got a forearm into Lundkvist’s face while finishing his check, resulting in an elbowing penalty.

Johnston toe-dragged around Jake Middleton off an entry place to generate a good scoring chance, but his shot caught Wallstedt’s arm at the same time Rantanen plowed into the crossbar, and no damage was done (except maybe to the goal frame). The rest of the power play was elapsing without much of anything happening, but with 20 seconds left in the power play, the top unit remained out, and Rantanen carried in on the right side with Duchene streaking to the net. He found him, and it was 2-1—with a big scrum ensuing right after, as Rantanen and Eriksson Ek got into it during the celebration.

Dallas would wind up shorthanded after the scrum, with Duchene and Eriksson Ek getting matching roughing minors, and Rantanen an additional slashing call for his initial shot on Eriksson Ek. But once again, Oettinger’s glove and the penalty kill got the job done, and Rantanen would find himself on the other end of penalty trouble when he got out of the box, getting tripped by Spurgeon to put Dallas back on the job themselves.

But this power play would not have a happy ending, as Heiskanen was called for tripping Michael McCarron after a fumbled 2-on-1 rush shorthanded. McCarron appeared to fall more than anything as he pivoted and spun, but a furious Heiskanen had to sit in the bin regardless. He didn’t have to worry though, because once again, the Stars’ penalty kill came up aces.

Minnesota had the better of play for a while after that, with Dallas rarely getting the puck into the other end of the ice. But things would tilt eventually, with the final six minutes of the second period being played in Minnesota’s end, albeit without many pucks finding their way onto Wallstedt’s net.

The physicality of the game did not decrease as it went on, and Marcus Foligno tried to put Jason Robertson into the fifth row behind the Minnesota bench. But Robertson saw him just in time to dodge the worst of it, and Foligno wound up in his own bench as a result.

Foligno would be Quite Involved at the end of the second period as well, when he responded to a Thomas Harley interference by wrapping his arm around Harley’s head and driving it into the rounded (thankfully) corner of the glass at the end of the bench.

The officials called a major penalty initially, then downgraded Foligno’s foul to a double minor after review, with Harley getting a minor himself for interference. Dallas would carry over 1:58 of man-advantage time to the third period as a result.

The top unit wouldn’t get much of anything going, but with two seconds left, a Hryckowian jam play result in a frantic clearance by Faber that went into the netting for a delay of game call that looked like a gift, only to have it rescinded after a Minnesota challenge succeeded in overturning the call because the puck had glanced off the stickblade of Bourque.

Dallas kept the pressure up though, testing Wallstedt’s short side more than once and leaning on Minnesota in general. But the Wild nearly victimized Dallas when Oettinger stopped a puck behind his net that Faber got to first, feeding it out to Nick Foligno, who couldn’t get the puck on net. Marcus Foligno nearly pulled off a higlight-reel move himself a moment later, banking the puck off the back of the net to himself and feeding out to McCarron, but it wouldn’t go.

Jason Robertson nearly scored off a nice Duchene setup shortly after that, but fluttered a puck in that Wallstedt made a nice save on. He wouldn’t get the next one.

Nils Lundkvist sent a puck in off a faceoff win for yet another flyby tip play, but Jason Robertson finally beat Wallstedt with a perfect tip to make it 3-1, giving Dallas some breathing room.

But once again, the Wild would respond, and it would be unfair for Oettinger, who made a pair of sparkling saves just beforehand. But a puck wasn’t won up high, and then a pass to the low circle deflected off Hryckowian and right to Faber, who fired it back against the grain before anyone knew it, making it 3-2 with ten minutes to go.

And what a ten minutes it was, featuring everything from Quinn Hughes doing Quinn Hughes Things to Rantanen juggling a puck three times in the air as he tried to win a 1-on-1 rush in the Minnesota zone. Dallas was defending Minnesota’s active defensemen with calculated turnover attempts at their blue line, and they generated a couple of near-breakaways as a result. Robertson got another one-time attempt in the low slot, but the play happened just a tad too quickly to be clean, and he fanned on most of the shot.

With 3:44 to go, disaster struck, as two players came off the bench for one, and Dallas was assessed a Too Many Men on the Ice penalty. It was, by far, the biggest penalty kill of the game, but Alain Nasreddine would not be denied, and the Stars made it through, thanks to some big blocks and a bigger Oettinger save on a Kaprizov between-the-legs attempt from the side of the net.

And then, with 1:21 to go, Minnesota returned the favor with a needless Too Many Men on the Ice penalty of their own to put Dallas on the job. But drama found the game even then, as Minnesota was able to gain possession and pull Wallstedt for a 5-on-5 rush, but it didn’t last long. Because a Wyatt Johnston backhand clearance was scooped out of the zone, and it rolled down toward the empty net.

Quinn Hughes went back to chase. He then pulled up momentarily, as the puck looked to be curving wide of the goal for an icing, but then Hughes saw what 18,000 others did: the puck, horribly, cruelly, impossibly, curling back inside the post of the gaping net. Hughes had only paused momentarily, but that tiniest bit of hesitation would cost him dearly. The puck rolled in, and then Hughes lost his balance and slid hard into the end boards as the goal horn sounded.

It was not easy. But then again, what part of this series was ever going to be easy? The Stars tied up the series 1-1, and they now head to Minnesota hoping for, at minimum, a similar split before returning home.

Lineups

Dallas mixed things up with this lineup:

Hryckowian-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Steel-Hyry-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger in goal

Minnesota rolled this after Mats Zuccarello was a late scratch:

Kaprizov-Hartman-Tarasenko
Johansson-Eriksson Ek-Boldy
N. Foligno-Yurov-Brink
M. Foligno-McCarron-Trenin

Hughes-Faber
Brodin-Spurgeon
Middleton-Bogosian

Wallstedt

After-AfterThoughts

• I’m told Dave Jackson explained on the ESPN broadcast that you can’t assess a double minor for a single foul there (unlike you can with high-sticking), so presumably there were two distinct infractions called on Foligno in that sequence.

• With that said, that Foligno play on Harley is a major penalty in almost any other hockey game, right?

• John Hynes was asked about the injuries to Yakov Trenin and Mats Zuccarello, and all he would say was “upper-body.” Hynes also confirmed the earlier report from Mike Russo that Zuccarello’s injury was a result of the elbow he took from Tyler Myers in Game 1.

  • Zuccarello has suffered serious head injuries before in his career, so one would expect the team to be exceedingly careful with his recovery. It’s a tough blow for a Wild team, and particularly on the power play, and thrives on the skilled plays and space-creation players like Zuccarello can provide.

• Glen Gulutzan on Colin Blackwell:

  • “I think he’s getting adjusted about five times tonight after the game by the chiropractor. But he’s made of rock, that guy.”

• Gulutzan on Arttu Hyry:

  • “We didn’t put him in there on a whim. We got to watch him for 20 games, and this is a good hockey player. It’s his first [playoff] game, and I thought he was one of our better players poise-wise, stick-wise, defense-wise, offensively. We knew that kind of in training camp and just with the roster, but coming in, in this scenario, he looked very good.”

• Once again, the Matt Duchene line was dominant, out-attempting its opposition 14-4 in its nine minutes at 5v5. Natural Stat Trick had scoring chances 6-1, and Expected Goals share at 98%(!), too.

• Arttu Hyry played like a player who had been waiting for this game his entire life. And in a sense, he was. As his first playoff game, Hyry made this one count, driving play constantly and battling (physically and otherwise) relentlessly. He wasn’t strong on faceoffs today, going just 4-for-12, but what he did between the faceoffs was strong to very strong. I genuinely don’t know how you take him out of the lineup after this performance. He was every bit the 3C Dallas was hoping to get, and it’s a big credit to Hyry that he was able to step in and play that role so naturally.
  
  

  Stars Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. We do not hit people at Stars Thoughts.

Welcome to a Monday Roundup, which is replacing the usual Monday Rundown. Today’s piece is open for all, since the playoffs preempted the usual Rundown. Also, because I’m just a nice guy.

The big news from today is that Arttu Hyry will be drawing into the lineup, with Adam Erne coming out. The defense pairings were the same, but new lines at morning skate looked a lot like we speculated they might yesterday, too:

Hryckowian-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Steel-Hyry-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger in goal

Glen Gulutzan confirmed that Michael Bunting is healthy, and said they expect he will factor into a long playoff series at some point—not tonight, however.

“Today, we’re addressing some needs on specialty teams,” Gulutzan said. “And we’ll go from there.”

When asked about Hyry, Gulutzan pointed to how he’s been a big part of their penalty kill lately, as well as a dominant faceoff force. Hyry is a dominant 58% on the dot, which is second on the team to only the injured Roope Hintz (whom Gulutzan also ruled out for Game 3 today, by the way).

You can read more about Hyry’s faceoff prowess here:

In talking with Hyry this morning, he said it’s hard to compare playoff games to regular season games, especially when you “watch from the top” as he did in Game 1. But a couple things did jump out at him, even so.

“It’s just all about battles,” Hyry said. “You win battles, you control the game. Lose battles, and they do.”

Hyry was a key part of the Texas Stars’ run to the Western Conference final in the AHL last year, and he said the intensity always ramps up in the playoffs, as you’d expect.

“That’s what it is,” Hyry said. “Everyone kind of locks in, in every single situation on the ice. In the regular season, some of the opposition might be a little looser with the puck, and I’m sure that’s not the case in the playoffs.”

I heard something similar from Justin Hryckowian today as well, who played in his own first Stanley Cup Playoff game on Saturday. The key phrase?

“No business decisions out there,” Hryckowian said. Instead, the intensity and battle level goes up in every situation.

But if last year’s Calder Cup playoffs (and this year’s season) are any indication, the Stars will be in good hands with Hyry and Hryckowian in the lineup tonight.

Tyler Myers: Quotes and Elbows

After practice on Sunday (yesterday), I had a chance to talk with Tyler Myers about his elbowing penalty in Game 1. Myers, of course, wasn’t trying to elbow the 5-foot-8 Mats Zuccarello in the face, but was just instinctively trying to keep Zuccarello from getting by him with what is a standard move for most players. Usually, the forearm gets the chest or shoulder, but an entire foot of difference in height made for a perfect storm, and Myers ended up taking a costly penalty.

Myers said he knows that, as a “longer” player (his term), he tends to get called for things other players usually wouldn’t. It’s something he’s dealt with his whole career, but every now and then, it still ends up biting him. It’s the downside of the gift of great size, but he’ll be looking to exhibit the upsides of his big frame tonight in Game 2.

Incidentally, Myers is also close with Wild forward Marcus Foligno, as the two played together in Buffalo from 2011 to 2015. I asked Foligno today what some people might not know about Myers, and the answer surprised me a bit.

“He’s a great guy. I mean, honestly, he’s a really good person, a great family man,” Foligno said. “People don’t understand how big of a movie freak he is with quotes and stuff. Big movie guy. We used to have conversations just in movie quotes during the day.”

Foligno said that former Sabres forward Tyler Ennis would also be a big part of those quote-based conversations with Foligno and Myers, too, with movies like That’s My Boy being favorite source material. But the biggest thing that sticks with Foligno about Myers is what you’ll hear from a lot of folks who know Tyler Myers: his character.

“He was an awesome teammate,” Foligno continued. “We’ve been in touch ever since [Buffalo] with our families and stuff. I would say that’s the biggest thing is, you know, big guy. I think you see it on the ice, a physical guy. But one of the most laid back human beings out there. Just wants to have a good time, just enjoys hanging out.”

One suspects that goodwill will take a backseat to proceedings tonight, starting at 8:30pm.

Lian Bichsel on his second NHL playoff run

Lian Bichsel said this playoff run has begun much the same as last year’s for him. And that includes some key lessons they’ve learned after Game 1 defeats like Saturday’s.

“The games matter more,” Bichsel said today. “So regrouping is really important. You think about the game after the game, maybe watch some clips. But then the next day, you’re focusing on the next day. It’s also in the regular season, kind of like that. Like, we have so many games, and thinking too much about unnecessary stuff that’s unimportant, it’s just gonna kill you. It was the first game, and we know we have to get better.”

One other thing Bichsel has learned is that the ramped-up physicality of the playoffs is something he personally has learned to love.

“It was heavy,” Bichsel said. “Both sides, I mean, it was over 60 or 70 hits in the game, and you could feel it the next day, for sure. But it’s a part of it, and you have to like it. Playoffs are really intense, and you have to really enjoy getting hit, and smiling about it. It’s a playoff grind, and that’s what it’s the hardest cup to win. It’s a lot of fun.”

I clarified: Getting hit is fun? But the big Swiss defenseman doubled down.

“Yeah, I love it,” Bichsel said. “I mean, it’s my game. It’s what I’m thriving off of, the physicality, Getting under people’s skin. It’s a fun time, for sure.”

Jason Robertson on playoff adjustments

It is not a surprise that the only player to score a goal in Game 1 for Dallas was Jason Robertson. After all, this is his fifth playoff run in the last five years with the Stars, and he’s learned a lesson or two along the way.

I asked Robertson today about his 2022 playoff debut against Calgary, and he humored me with some reflections about what he remembers being the biggest adjustment, for him, during his first playoff run.

“Just understanding how the environment is,” Robertson said of that Stars/Flames series. “I mean, it’s all context, too, who you’re playing against. We played a tough team in Calgary, right? And we were the wildcard team against a powerhouse team, so it was definitely intimidating, but that was also my second year in the league. As you get older and your team gets better, it’s different. It’s all context. It’s all different.”

One element of those differences is scoring chances, which can be at a premium in the playoffs. So does that mean Robertson has to go about creating chances differently, come playoff time?

“Yeah, I think so,” Robertson said. “It’s a little harder to get inside. Guys are reloading harder. They’re making sure-fire plays. They’re not turning the puck over. Yeah, it’s tough, but there’s still plays to be made out there, right? It’s still hockey, but definitely a little tougher.”

My last question for Robertson today was about missing last year’s first round series against Colorado after injuring his knee on a hit from Michael McCarron. How did a hockey nerd like Robertson stay sane during a rare stretch where he couldn’t play hockey?

Robertson acknowledged that it was tough, given how few games he’s missed to injury in his career. But for now, he’s focused on the good things right now, rather than what happened last year.

“I don’t like to remember it,” Robertson answered. “But I’m happy I’m playing now.”

Final thoughts

• Radek Faksa said there’s no comparison, for him, between playoff hockey and the regular season. Perhaps we’ll hear one day about all the details involving just what Faksa had to overcome in order to turn what initially looked like a season-ending injury after the Olympics into something he got back into playoff-readiness for. But when you love the playoffs as much as Faksa does, it’s little surprise he found a way to get back on the ice.

• Keep an eye on the penalty killers tonight. With Hyry in the lineup alongside Bäck, Faksa, Steel, Blackwell, and Hryckowian, it’ll be interesting to see who gets the bulk of the minutes. But make no mistake: the Stars are laser-focused on improving their work against the Wild’s power play, so I’d expect to see Alain Nasreddine changing something.

• Two quotes from Gulutzan today were telling, I thought.

  • When discussing the breakdowns on the goals against: “You start pointing your finger at certain areas without kind of looking individually at what’s going on, then you can get yourself into trouble as a coach.”

  • On whether he’ll be making adjustments after the Wild prevented Dallas from forechecking as well as they wanted to in Game 1: “We did make an adjustment today. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but certainly we looked at that exact same thing. We just didn’t have enough forecheck time. And when you have defensemen like they do, who can control play with their legs, if you’re not hemming them in their zone or creating a forecheck and getting pucks stopped, you’re gonna be on the other side of taking in water.”

  • Further to the above: “The only thing I can say, [the change] is not completely related to just the forecheck. There are other pieces that have to be in place so that you can create those kind of things. So we wanted to tidy up those pieces this morning and yesterday.”
    
    

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Glen Gulutzan reiterated today what he said after the game last night: nobody on the Stars thinks they played their best game last night in a 6-1 loss to Minnesota on home ice.

Playoff series are (usually) long and complicated, with momentum going both ways at different times. Game 1 history aside, the Stars know that the best thing they can do is to write off Saturday’s loss as an uncharacteristic fluke and put forth a much better effort on Monday night.

But if effort were all that was required, hockey would be a very different sport. In a playoff series, there are big-picture strategies and shift-to-shift tactics for teams to employ against one another, and the Stars have a few things that we already know they’ll be looking to change up tomorrow night.

In fact, I came away from today’s optional practice with five things I expect the Stars to change. And everyone on the internet knows that when you have five things to talk about, you’re supposed to turn them into a list. So, let’s do that.

1. Get Healthier

This is both the simplest and the hardest thing for Dallas to accomplish.

Today, Glen Gulutzan confirmed that Roope Hintz isn’t even skating on his own yet, let alone practicing with the team. So unless something changes dramatically in the near future, it’s getting tougher and tougher to see how Hintz would end up being well enough to play at any point in this series.

On the other hand, Gulutzan said that Mikko Rantanen is no longer dealing with the injury that he suffered at the Olympics. When asked whether Rantanen was 100% yet, Gulutzan responded with this: “He is now.”

Still, Rantanen didn’t really seem to look like Mikko Rantanen until the second half of the game, but that’s kind of par for the course with number 96 at any given time. He doesn’t have to dictate every shift he plays, but the Stars will hope he can find a way to impact the game before the only way to do so is being a comeback hero.

As for the rest of the lineup, Gulutzan said yesterday that Heiskanen’s situation is such that the Stars’ top defenseman probably will get a little more comfortable each time he skates. The hope will be, like in last year’s playoff run, that Heiskanen looks more like himself as the series progresses.

Sam Steel and Radek Faksa both skated in practice today as well, so their respective recoveries look to be going as smoothly as they can be. And for what it’s worth Gulutzan confirmed today that the Stars made it through Game 1 without suffering any further injuries.

There’s no question that Minnesota is the healthier of the two teams right now, but if Dallas can close that gap even a little bit by just getting the already-active players a bit healthier, it could improve their chances in this series significantly.

2. More Active Defensemen

While Glen Gulutzan was careful to say that he never uses another team’s players as examples with which to motivate his own guys, it was pretty clear last night that Quinn Hughes was making some big-time plays, whereas Miro Heiskanen didn’t quite have the same impact. Both players were less than 100%, for different reasons, but Heiskanen wasn’t quite able to do what Hughes did.

What Gulutzan did say today, however, was that he challenged all of his defense to do a little bit more than they did last night.

“I’ve challenged all of our D to use their legs a little bit more,” Gulutzan said today. “But that didn’t start happening almost until the middle of the second period. And you could see when we skated. You could see Nils [Lundkvist] made some great plays skating up the ice. So we do have to get our transition and our legs moving a little bit more back there.”

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Same ol' thing just a different season

The good news is this: Dallas have been down 1-0 in a lot of playoff series recently, and it often hasn’t been the determining factor. But as Gulutzan said tonight, I don’t really view what happened tonight as a trend that continued from those games. This game was its own ugly animal, and the Stars can flush it away for good so long as they take care of business on Monday.

That’s either good or bad, depending on your perspective. For Dallas, they’ve had a couple of stinkers this year that they showed the ability to put behind them quickly, so you’d think they’ll look to do the same thing again. One day at a time and all that jazz.

But man, if you’re the Minnesota Wild? Well, then tonight was picture perfect.

Two power play goals to win the special teams battle? Check. A confidence-boosting win for a young goalie in his first playoff game? Bingo. Signs that your best players are better than the other team’s top dogs? Oh, you betcha.

To rub salt in the wound, Quinn Hughes more or less said after the game that he wasn’t even fully healthy, having not skated in a week while recovering from an illness of some kind that he declined to specify. And yet, Hughes played almost 25 minutes, made multiple jaw-dropping plays, and finished the night with a sweet assist and a +3 on the scoreline. Not bad for a player who had to be ushered into the building by his GM after not even skating at practice yesterday.

Kirill Kaprizov also scored a gorgeous goal from a sharp angle to kick off a run of three goals in the first seven minutes of the second period that put the game out of reach before the halfway point. It was a stunning performance from the visiting team, and Dallas only managed a lone Jason Robertson power play goal in response before what wound up being a more energetic but ultimately perfunctory third period.

Yes, if you’re the Minnesota Wild, tonight was indeed the best-case scenario.

Which means that, if you’re the Dallas Stars, tonight was, ah, the opposite of that. An early Tyler Myers elbow into the face of Mats Zuccarello was immediately cashed in, which meant that an otherwise even first period still ended with Dallas trailing 1-0. And instead of coming out in the second with a statement, as Dallas has done quite a few times this year, the Stars saw the game slip away before they could do all that much about it.

“The first period was tight,” Gulutzan said. “They executed on the power play. But we couldn’t get our game going at all in the second. I thought that they certainly, to a man, were better than us, which leaves me…”

Here Gulutzan paused to choose his words carefully, before continuing with a very sobering sentence.

“That hasn’t happened to us a lot during the year,” Gulutzan stated. “And it was to a man, so there’s certainly room for growth, for our team. But you can’t get your game going if you’re not gonna win battles. You can take any metric, and if you lose skating battles and puck battles, you’re always on the receiving end of everything negative.”

Hearing Gulutzan acknowledge what was plain to see in the second is either comforting or sobering, depending on how you view it.

Yes, the Stars were getting outworked, pulled out of position, and beaten to loose pucks in that determining second period, so it’s good the head coach isn’t treating this one as bad luck. He saw flaws in the process, too.

On the other hand, hearing Gulutzan agree with the fact that the Stars kinda wound up getting waxed in this one? That’s not exactly a fun thing to admit, even if it might be true.

“When you’re not winning anything, and you’re not winning races, and you’re not winning your 50-50s, you put yourself at risk for what happens: Deflections, a shot from the half-wall that goes off a guy and goes in, one kind of from behind the net. You’re in vulnerable spots because you’re not winning battles.”

As for the Stars’ top guys, Miro Heiskanen returned, and both he and Gulutzan said that he was good to go. He wasn’t the gamebreaker that Quinn Hughes was, but neither coach nor player was chalking that up to whatever happened to him after getting tied up with Ryan Hartman a couple weeks ago.

“Felt pretty good,” Heiskanen said of getting back on the ice. “Legs were good, body felt good. Not fun, obviously, but body felt pretty good.”

Gulutzan likewise said that he saw a player who hadn’t played in a while, but he didn’t see anything that was “a big hitch,” to use Gulutzan’s words.

“Moving forward, I think Miro,” Gulutzan said, "With his injury, it’s just one of those things that’s gonna get better and better with time. I thought he was fine tonight. But like everybody else, I think we all have a little bit more.”

Speaking of more, Gulutzan was asked about whether he might consider putting Michael Bunting back into the lineup, and he was a bit diplomatic.

“We’ve got lots of guys that have played lots of good hockey for us,” Gulutzan said. “So if you look at the analytics, and you look at a little recency of the games, we’ve got lots of guys that have done a really good job for us. We’re not afraid to put anybody in. We have Arty, who’s played great hockey for us. We’ve got Bunts, who’s played good hockey for us. Everybody that we’ve put in has contributed this year. So, someone’s got to sit when you’ve got guys that contribute.”

With that said, one would expect changes of some kind, given the 6-1 result tonight.

One change that wasn’t made tonight was in goal, where Oettinger allowed five. But Gulutzan was clear that he didn’t see this game as one to lay at Oettinger’s feet, pointing to the Hartman goal and one or two others as examples of breakdowns that simply couldn’t be allowed.

“Nothing for me was on our goaltending,” Gulutzan said when asked if he’d considered pulling Oettinger. “For me…certainly our specialty teams need to be better, and our 5-on-5 play wasn’t good enough.”

Oettinger was, as you’d expect, harder on himself, saying he would have liked to make more saves, particularly on the penalty kill, but the 5-1 Eriksson Ek goal was the main one he called “bad,” while pointing to some bounces on other goals.

Still, the goalie was quick to point to himself when asked what the team needed to do better.

“I think I can make more saves,” Oettinger said. “That’s the only thing I can focus on. I can’t control what’s going on in front of me.”

In fairness to Oettinger, however, this really was a case of one team simply being definitively better than the other when it counted. And as much as Oettinger has shown himself capable of keeping a Stars team in games they didn’t deserve to be in, the Wild and a bounce or two ensured this one was never going to stay within reach.

“The goalie can be the difference-maker on the penalty kill, and I wasn’t that tonight,” Oettinger said. “I need to be better on the penalty kill, and we’ll all look at the goals they scored, and all their opportunities, and what we need to get better at, and we’ll do it.”

One thing that the Stars could obviously improve would be not to give Minnesota three power plays early, as they did with Myers’s elbow and two stick fouls from Mikko Rantanen.

“Just gotta be a little careful with my stick,” Rantanen said. “Work less hard sometimes, and just be smart.”

Shots on goal ended 29-28 after a flurry in the third for Dallas, but with Minnesota sitting back into a trap formation with a big lead, the hole was far too large for even Rantanen’s comeback magic. Instead, he and other Stars players gave Minnesota opportunities they cashed in on, either with goals or momentum that would turn into goals later on.

“I myself had two O-zone penalties,” Rantanen said, “One high stick and one tripping. You gotta stay out of the box. Those ones got killed, but still the momentum goes their way. That’s how it goes in hockey. We got a power play in the second, we score. And momentum, we had a couple of chances after.”

They certainly did have chances, including Bichsel’s shot in the second that rang the crossbar. Had any of those looks gone in the way the puck off Hartman did, maybe it’s a different story in the third. Likewise if Benn or Johnston’s 1v1 clean looks in the second had beaten Wallstedt to make it 4-2.

But alas, they didn’t. And a second Eriksson Ek power play goal in the third just drove home the point in this one: Dallas was beaten by a team that outplayed them, from their top forwards to their top defenseman and their goaltender. You can focus on any one of those areas, if you like, but the truth of the matter is that the game was won (and lost) in the second period, when Minnesota outscored Dallas 3-1.

Gulutzan said the good news in this one is that it’s not been a common thing for them to get outplayed to the degree they did tonight, so it’s not like there was some inherent character flaw that tripped them up. Of course, the bad news is that Minnesota was able to come into Dallas and turn a defensively stingy team into a scattered and generous one.

And if the Stars want to make this the competitive, exciting series it was supposed to be, that means playing better hockey on Monday, from top to bottom. If they do that, then suddenly they’ve got a brand new series, but one that starts in Game 3 instead of Game 1. For Dallas in recent years, that’s proven to be a very good thing indeed.

Highlights and the Lowdown

Minnesota’s forecheck put Dallas under pressure early, but the Stars looked capable of dealing with it, and they were able to get up the ice with space a couple of times after strong work defending their blue line, but Jesper Wallstedt wasn’t tested overmuch.

On the other side, Oettinger dealt with his first two shots with ease, but Tyler Myers got an elbow up on Mats Zuccarello after the second one, putting the Wild on the power play five minutes into the game.

After 60 seconds of efficient killing, Joel Eriksson Ek would one-time a shot from between the circles after a bit of overaggressive work opened up the middle of the ice, which led to an easy one-two from below the goal line to give Minnesota the lead.

Dallas got its own power play when Marcus Johansson got whistled for a slash that looked pretty soft, in all honesty. Johansson’s stick did graze Lindell’s chin after it whacked the stick, but that was all.

Duchene nearly sneaked a puck between Wallstedt’s back and the post, but the power play was otherwise repelled, and the special teams battle was officially 1-0 for the Wild after 10 minutes of play.

Dallas probably got lucky to avoid a Too Many Men call with 6:30 to go, but the 5v5 play was otherwise pretty even. Oettinger then had to make his best stop of the game with just over two minutes left when Danila Yurov got the puck all alone, and Oettinger had to come out and make a big left pad stop to avert disaster.

Mikko Rantanen then got a chance off the rush at the other end, and he put a wobbling puck on net that Wallstedt reached back to make sure he had. He made the save, however, and then Rantanen cost his team a penalty with a stick check that rode up and caught Zach Bogosian up high, putting Dallas back on the penalty kill late in the opening period.

Oettinger made a save on Boldy through traffic early, and then an even bigger one off an entry play and a pass across from Kaprizov that required a fantastic stop by Oettinger, which he came up with, and the Stars went to the first intermission with 11 seconds left to kill in a 1-0 game.

Dallas would do just that, and Sam Steel and Nils Lundkvist both carried pucks behind Wallstedt’s net with space when it looked like Dallas had a push mounting. Unfortunately, Kirill Kaprizov came down the weak side and got a puck with acres of space, and he ripped a shot over Oettinger’s short-side shoulder to make it 2-0.

It was a play where Harley kind of got caught between the netfront and telescoping out to Kaprizov, and he opted to stay home and wait for Johnston to recover and apply pressure rather than doing so himself. It was an understandable decision, but giving Kaprizov that much time and space to work with is a dangerous game, and the Wild benefited from what looked more like indecision than anything else.

In watching the broadcast at intermission, they also called out Rantanen for a less-than-110% backcheck, so I suppose you’re welcome to put the blame where you feel inclined to do so. Great shot, though.

The deficit became 3-0 shortly afterward, thanks to yet another of the Wild’s top guys. Quinn Hughes made a gorgeous backhand pass at the blue line to Faber, and suddenly the Wild had a 2-on-1 back in the zone, and Faber shot a puck across the crease that hit Hartman and went in to make it 3-0.

To make matters worse, Rantanen tripped up Spurgeon behind the Wild’s net for an offensive-zone penalty, and the Stars had to kill a third penalty after already being down three goals.

Oettinger would have to work to keep it “only” 3-0, making a glove stop on Tarasenko on a 2-on-1 after Dallas tried to win a puck in the corner but got outnumbered above the goal line after losing it. The Stars would technically kill the penalty, but the adverb up there probably tells the story. Boldy got some good fortune when a puck into a pile bounced off toward Harley above the goal line, and Harley’s swing at the puck didn’t do enough to overpower Boldy, who did enough to slide the puck in behind Oettinger, making it 4-0.

Dallas hit the crossbar on the very next shift when he whipped a puck on goal from the point, but when things are rolling the wrong way, they tend to keep doing so rather than reversing course. This was a game where Dallas would have to make their own breaks, and they couldn’t seem to do so.

Gulutzan went to the lever out of pure necessity midway through the second, swapping Hryckowian onto the top line to add some juice, and moving Faksa up with Benn and Steel. It worked a little, and Dallas got another rush chance that fizzled after a late-coming Bichsel tried a dagger pass across to Lundkvist rather than firing with players at the net, only to have the pass poked away.

Duchene drew a penalty with six minutes to go in the second period when Yurov cross-checked him pretty needlessly at the Wild blue line. And Jason Robertson would capitalize, reaching across with a sneaky backhand that Wallstedt never flinched on to make it 4-1.

Wallstedt would come up huge right after allowing his first goal, however. First, on Jamie Benn, who got a puck all alone on the doorstep and tried to snap it five-hole, and then later on Johnston, who collected a missed shot by Minnesota at one end that turned into a 2-on-1 rush at the other. But Johnston’s shot ticked off Wallstedt’s glove, and the Wild escaped any serious harm.

The rookie goaltender would remain fired up late in the second. After he made a save off a deflected Johnston shot from a Rantanen rush entry, Wallstedt then gave a bit of a blocker hand shot to Rantanen in a pile, and another scrum kicked off. But after everything settled down, Dallas was down behind 4-1 with just 20 minutes left to play.

Duchene got a great look early on, but ended up waiting a bit and missing far side after his angle decreased. He was one of a handful of Stars who were creating chances consistently, but one team was finishing and the other was not.

Rantanen then decided to draw a penalty rather than take one, going 1-on-2 in the defensive zone and making Brodin do things illegal. Rantanen put a one-timer on Wallstedt during the set, and Duchene created more danger down low off a Johnston shot that led to a rebound, but a massive Spurgeon block killed the rest of the power play, and a Matt Boldy shot a minute later went off the post, signaling that Minnesota’s momentum had recovered from the penalty kill.

Esa Lindell would get whistled for what he viewed as an odd tripping penalty (which it was—his stick wound up wedged between two Wild players, but wouldn’t have tripped either one on their own), and another Eriksson Ek power play goal would salt the game away at 5-1 when he got a second low-to-doorstep pass that he put inside the near post for a goal that nobody on earth cares about analyzing, but that your seat neighbor probably used as evidence for why Jake Oettinger should be traded for like, Carlos Baerga or someone.

The 4-on-4 play was interesting, but Dallas would get a 5-on-4 chance later on when Lindell drew a penalty off some good offensive-zone work. Duchene put another good chance on Wallstedt that didn’t go through, and then Gulutzan pulled Oettinger for the remainder of the power play, given the four-goal deficit and just four minutes left in regulation.

The game was over with, but a Rantanen entry got picked off by Boldy at the blue line, and he sailed a puck down into the empty net to make it 6-1.

Dallas will have a 1-0 series deficit to consider until Game 2 begins at 8:30pm on Monday.

Lineups

Dallas groups:

Steel-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Bäck-Hryckowian-Benn
Erne-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lunkdvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger

Minnesota lines:

Kaprizov-Hartman-Zuccarello
Johansson-Eriksson Ek-Boldy
Tarasenko-Yurov-Trenin
M. Foligno-McCarron-N. Foligno

Hughes-Faber
Brodin-Spurgeon
Middleton-Bogosian

Wallstedt

After-AfterThoughts

• Michael Bunting being a healthy scratch was a very interesting choice by Glen Gulutzan, though you’d be hard-pressed to disagree with it, given the time Bunting missed, and his struggles to fit into the lineup when he was healthy. He helps the forward depth, and it wouldn’t shock me to see him draw back in later in the series, but I can understand the decision.

• With that said, you pretty much have to put Bunting back in on Monday if he’s healthy, right? The degree to which Minnesota tilted the ice in the second period simply isn’t something you’d think they can just shrug off.

• On the other end of things, the Stars had used the Bäck-Hryckowian-Benn line just twice before tonight, but it was good both times.

  • 6-2 win over Boston on 1/20

    1-0 loss to Columbus on 1/22

    • In those two games, the line was dominant, with the below numbers:

      14-4 in shots on goal

      81% expected goals share

      2-0 goals scored

• Nils Lundkvist was fired up in this game, and he was also involved in the altercation after the final whistle. His playoff mode was activated for much of the night, and it wasn’t insignificant. He looked like a player eager to vindicate the trust he’d earned this year, and it was refreshing to see him thriving (as much as anyone thrived tonight, at least).

• The Robertson-Duchene-Bourque line deserved better tonight, out-chancing Minnesota 7-1 with a 78% expected goals share, too.

• Conversely, the Johnston/Rantanen line (mostly with Steel but a bit with Hryckowian later in the game) was heavily outplayed, primarily by the Harman/Kaprizov/Zuccarello trio and Hughes/Faber on the back end. Two of the Wild’s three 5v5 goals came against Johnston’s line, and the run of play very much supports those sorts of results.

• Without Hintz, the Stars didn’t have a third line to drive play, and that showed tonight. The Hryckowian/Benn/Bäck line couldn’t generate a sniff of offense in their minutes. All this to say: I think we’ll be seeing some different line combinations on Monday.

• Kirill Kaprizov, on his goal tonight:

  • “I had a little more time than I usually have in playoffs,” Kaprizov said. “I saw Zuccy, I just wanted to try to pass to him. Then at the last moment, just shooting on net. A lucky shot.”

    • Forgive me, Kirill, but that was anything but lucky.
      
      

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For the ninth time in Dallas, Jamie Benn is leading the Stars into the playoffs. But this year’s version is a very different one than the first eight Jamie Benns.

It is true that being 36 years old is not the same as being 25, as Benn was when he won the Art Ross Trophy. In fact, Benn’s stats this year—15 goals and 21 assists in 60 games—are much less similar to his own peaks than they are to a different 36-year-old player from that 2014-15 season: Erik Cole, who scored 18 goals and 33 assists in 57 games before being traded to Detroit at the deadline for draft capital and Mattias’s Janmark and Bäckman.

But comparing Benn to Cole is like comparing Jason Robertson to James Neal, which is to say there is no comparison. You don’t stick around as the captain of a team from 2013 to 2026 without meaning something very special to a whole lot of people. And Benn is also different, this year, for less chronological reasons.

He’s a husband and a father now, which anyone will tell you Changes Things. But then again, Benn has, for most of his Dallas career, been elite in his ability to focus obsessively on the goal at hand, blocking out noise and eschewing media pleas to open up and display more personality, even when the person or people in charge of his team have a lot of things to say about his performance in a given year. Benn just isn’t that sort of guy, anymore.

Instead, the Jamie Benn Stars fans have known since 2019 is the one who has stoically watched beloved teammates end their careers while sitting next to him on the bench, watching that last chance at Stanley Cup immortality slip away as the other team flings sticks and gloves in the air when the clock reaches zero.

Every athlete craves the perceived eternity of those jubilant moments, when the number of back-slaps and hair-tousles exceeds the human memory’s ability to track. But in eight tries so far, Benn’s Stars have yet to summit the mountain, because all but one team fails to do so every year, no matter how good you are. It’s not enough to be good, or consistent, or dedicated, or even passionate. You also have to be lucky enough to be great, and to be great enough when you get lucky.

This year’s Benn has also encountered something very unusual, for him: two freak injuries to his lung and his face that caused him to miss 22 games—nearly as many games as he’d missed to injury in his 16 prior seasons combined. Jamie Benn simply doesn’t let anything stop him, if he has any say in the matter.

This year, Jamie Benn still wears the “C” on his sweater, though the Stars will be wearing different ones at home than in any playoff run he’s had before, sporting the ‘99 sweaters whose design harkens back to the same one a teammate from Benn’s rookie year wore when he hoisted the Stanley Cup for the first and, shockingly, only time in his career. Even the very best to do it get no guarantees, in this game.

Benn is playing fewer minutes than in past years, but his production has still been strong, and his defensive game has even become much less of an issue in Glen Gulutzan’s system than it was last year in Pete DeBoer’s. He isn’t the top guy anymore, but he’s also not a “checker,” as he half-jokingly referred to himself when talking to Wayne Gretzky last year in the locker room. On Gulutzan’s team, Benn is a leader on the third line, and he’ll be expected to do what he’s done all year: contribute.

That contribution could look a lot of different ways, particularly in a series where you’d expect to see a ton of scuffles, big hits, and even fights. Such is the way of things against the Minnesota Wild, who will once again try to channel an entire state’s resentment into an on-ice morale boost. More than ever, this Minnesota team could do just that, too.

But personally, I think this series might have been designed for precisely this Jamie Benn, who will turn 37 in July. Rather than toiling away on the fourth line against Colorado as he did last year, Benn could very well find himself quite at home against a Wild team he’s led the Stars past twice before.

Only two of Benn’s current teammates were around for that first series against Minnesota in 2016: Radek Faksa and Tyler Seguin, the latter of whom won’t be playing in this series, or any others this spring. But you can bet Benn remembers, like all elite athletes, his first taste of just how badly Minnesota always wants to beat the Stars. And you can bet he’ll take an extra bit of joy from whatever ways he finds to help the Stars hold off their northern opponents once again.

I always have a lot of time for aging superstars in any sport, because their acclimation to the realities of aging are just a super-sized reflection of our own. At some point during these playoffs, if you’re in a rink for a game, you’ll almost certainly hear a fan sulk about how at least one formerly great player now isn’t what he used to be, how he should be “cut,” or how he’s “washed up.” In the playoffs, fans like to play the hits.

Maybe it’s my own aging process taking its toll, but when I hear those sorts of complaints, I tend to think it’s more about people shaking their fist against time itself, knowing they also are not what they once were, and will not, in some years, be what they are now. Anyone who has watched a parent grow old knows the unsettling nature of this realization, that time has the insolence not to spare us and the ones we love from its ravages.

So today, I wanted to tee up the playoffs by remembering just how special players like Jamie Benn were, and still are, precisely because of what he’s done, and might still do. So before the game kicks off tonight, here is one goal from every single one of Jamie Benn’s playoff runs. Whatever he does in this series and any that might follow, it’s worth remembering that he, perhaps more than anyone else on the Stars’ bench, deserves to be wearing the only NHL sweater he’s ever known.

2013: Game 4 vs. Anaheim

The first year of Lindy Ruff, Tyler Seguin, Victory Green, and Jamie Benn’s captaincy ended in a surprise playoff berth against the division-leading Ducks. But after going down 2-0 in Anaheim, the Stars bounced back at home with a 3-0 win in Game 3, and they looked to even the series in Game 4 before heading back to Anaheim.

Instead, the Ducks scored two early goals, and Dallas was facing the reality of a 3-1 series deficit midway through the game. If you remember watching this game, then you’ll recall that Dallas just didn’t have much going on. And when Benn, Seguin, and Val Nichushkin lined up to take a neutral zone faceoff early in the second period, nobody expected to see Benn win the faceoff forward, and do what he did to spark the Stars’ comeback win to even the series.

(Start at 3:36 if the video doesn’t take you there, which it should.)

2016: Game 2 vs. Minnesota

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Miro Heiskanen is likely going to play in Game 1 tomorrow afternoon. This is, by far, the most important thing we learned at practice today.

Heiskanen skated for all of practice, participating in drills, special teams, and line rushes alongside Esa Lindell. After some initial side-to-side swiveling after first getting on the ice, Miro Heiskanen looked pretty much like Miro Heiskanen, which is to say one of the best defensemen in the NHL.

Gulutzan didn’t give the final confirmation after practice, but he came about as close as you can to doing so before adding the caveat that the team’s training staff would ultimately determine Heiskanen’s readiness.

“I think there’s a good chance,” Gulutzan said. “He made it through practice, so I’m hoping he can go. I can’t say to you right now that it’s 100%, but I would think that as long as everything goes good, he should be in.”

Gulutzan also pointed out that one key to matching up against Minnesota is to avoid letting their blue line dictate the speed of the game. One suspects the Stars’ forecheck will be targeted in such a manner to restrict the blue line from doing that, though we’ll have to wait and see exactly what their approach looks like tomorrow. Anyway, just something to file away in the ol’ brain box, for now.

With Heiskanen in the lineup, the Stars rolled these lines in their initial rushes:

Steel-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Bunting-Hryckowian-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Erne

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Jake Oettinger, of course, will start Game 1. Casey DeSmith was also present, with both goalies wearing some new gear:

The big name not on the ice today was Roope Hintz, who did not participate in morning skate, and wasn’t around the rink at all that I saw, whereas Tyler Seguin and Nathan Bastian were both wearing street clothes rinkside at the beginning of practice. So perhaps Hintz was working out and/or receiving treatment elsewhere, but regardless, Dallas continues to say that he won’t be playing tomorrow or Monday.

Further to that point, Glen Gulutzan had a tad more to say about Hintz on the Ticket Friday afternoon, (with a digression on Heiskanen, too):

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Like so many other big cities, Dallas is often defined by its dysfunction more than its virtues.

You know about the traffic and sweltering summers and the toll roads and the [lack of] sidewalks or mass transportation. You know about the Very Interesting Bureaucracy, and how it’s recently factored into some strife between the local hockey team and the local basketball team, the latter of which Mark Cuban has already admitted he regrets selling to its current majority owners.

But amid all of the things we love to complain about in this town, something keeps changing every spring. In late April, the traffic turns into a symbol of anticipation, and suddenly paying for parking or standing on the DART feels a little bit like arriving at Disneyland.

This year, the Dallas Stars have once again brought hope to the sports landscape. They always seem to do that, and never has the city needed it more.

Last fall, the Rangers’ bats wasted some of the best pitching they’ve ever had en route to a .500 season, and it remains to be seen whether this year is going to end any differently. I’m hopeful, but they caught lightning in a bottle once a few years back, and expecting them to do so again feels greedy, or at least heavily optimistic.

The Mavericks were only too happy to pull the ‘chute on everything from their general manager to the very player they ripped out the city’s heart to acquire, and despite getting luckier than anybody could have imagined with the right to draft Cooper Flagg, this season was a brutal reminder of just what the new ownership and their management chose to punt on. Even moderate success is never guaranteed.

And of course, the Cowboys went Full Cowboys, and you should never go Full Cowboys. Maybe in another 30 years that’ll change, but for now, the sports landscape seems determined to keep submitting itself to the chokehold of someone who I’d really love to say doesn’t remind me of Emperor Palpatine.

Meanwhile, the Dallas Stars just finished third in the NHL, and they did so despite firing a very successful head coach after the prior three seasons in a move that was treated by some at the time like an emotional overreaction to criticism of their goaltender.

Instead, Jim Nill once again proved why he’s earned so much trust from Tom Gaglardi: he’s got his eyes on the prize. And more than that, it’s about how Nill goes about the pursuit of a championship. Because he does it in a way so refreshing as to seem almost unbelievable, particularly in this town.

But don’t take my word for it. Just ask Tyler Seguin, who’s also been here since 2013.

“The way Jim treats people, I think that’s what trickles down, why it’s such a big family, and why we see so much success. I was here for the early days, you know, the first year of Jim, [Tom] Gaglardi, the new jerseys, having games on a Tuesday night, and seeing 9,000 people in the stands. And to see where we are now, it’s blissful.”

-Tyler Seguin, February 2025, D Magazine

You don’t win GM of the year time and time again without being good at your job, but Nill also happens to be good at being good, which is a quality that seems increasingly rare in our world these days, let alone in the cutthroat landscape of professional sports. And the fact that Tom Gaglardi has trusted Nill enough to continue to spend to the cap while tolerating the odd year of disappointment is a testament to the uniquely functional nature of the only playoff team in the Metroplex.

Unfortunately for Seguin, this season didn’t go anything close to blissfully for him, as his ACL was torn by another player’s clumsiness four months ago in New York, ending his season. But that hasn’t stopped Seguin from being every bit the player Stars fans were deliriously excited to have acquired 13 years ago, as he’s spent the back of this season rehabbing his knee for next year, but also chipping in on the coaching side and even helping out on the bench. The irrepressible Seguin may not be on the ice, but he hasn’t for a moment stopped being one of the faces of the franchise.

Seguin will be joined in the press box, at least to start the postseason, by Roope Hintz and Nathan Bastian. Hintz suffered a setback in recovery after an initial injury from when Nathan MacKinnon caught him with a leg lift of some kind last month, and it feels wrong that he won’t be in the lineup for what is sure to be an all-timer of a playoff series. Here’s hoping he can channel Heiskanen and Robertson from last year and get back on the ice while the run is still ongoing.

Bastian won’t draw the headlines of Hintz or Seguin, but don’t underestimate what he’s given to this team, either. Relegated to a 13th-forward role, Bastian played just 36 games this year—the fewest he’s recorded in a season since his rookie year last decade. But despite it all, Bastian has kept his spirits up and been a positive force when he’s been needed. If the Stars are still playing in three weeks or so, he could be available to help. If history is any indication, he will do just that.

Similar to Bastian is Adam Erne, who went from playing in the AHL last season to undergoing the same grueling hip surgery and recovery that Seguin did last season. He entered training camp on a PTO this year only to force his way onto a team that’s wound up needing him. Despite playing in just 45 games himself after suffering a couple of his own injury setbacks this season, Erne shrugged off the pain and led the Stars in hits.

Those sorts of stories—from Nill to Seguin to Erne—embody why this team is so easy for fans to root for. Yes, you will absolutely run into Dallas folks who can’t stand the Cowboys, who continue to boycott the Mavericks, and who can’t be bothered to watch Manfred Ball in an indoor baseball stadium. But I have yet to find someone who’s actually gone to a Stars game during the last 13 years and not found it utterly enthralling. When hockey is good, there’s nothing better. And for the last half a decade, the hockey has been very good.

This year, Jamie Benn won’t have Tyler Seguin by his side on the ice, but you can find any number of other storylines that will capture your fascination, and probably your heart—not least of which is Benn himself. Still the captain after that same 2013 anointing, Benn is now drawing a $1 million salary barely above the league minimum, though with some incentives on the back end that he’s earned by playing 60 games despite a fractured face and a collapsed lung.

And in the playoffs, you can expect Benn to keep playing through whatever comes his way.

It’s not just about the veterans, though. This year’s Stars team is filled with a core group complemented by young talent that Glen Gulutzan has given space to blossom, and they have.

Mavrik Bourque stepped up in Seguin’s absence and hit 20 goals this year. After barely cracking the playoff lineup under Pete DeBoer, Bourque figures to be a key top-six winger for a Stars team that will need him, and assistant coach Neil Graham knows firsthand what Bourque can do in big games, as he saw the forward put up 11 points in 7 Calder Cup Playoff games back in 2024.

Justin Hryckowian has captured hearts everywhere after signing as a college free agent and quickly becoming a rookie who backs down from nobody, even standing up to the best player in the world. He and Bourque have also been two-thirds of the best-nicknamed line on the team this year.

The defense continues to be led by Miro Heiskanen, Thomas Harley, and Esa Lindell, all of whom played a bit of a playoff warmup at the Olympics. But don’t sleep on Nils Lundkvist or Lian Bichsel, two younger players who have taken their own big steps this year. For Lundkvist, he’s run with the opportunity Gulutzan has given him, and he earned a two-year contract extension only this morning. Like Bourque, he’s justified every bit of faith put in him, even if it took the team a couple of years to find someone willing to do so.

Whether the final spot on the defense ends up being filled by trade deadline acquisition Tyler Myers, or by someone like Alex Petrovic or Ilya Lyubushkin, the fact is that the Stars have plenty of perfectly decent options this year, and that’s more than a lot of teams can say about the bottom of their blue line.

Meanwhile, Mikko Rantanen has been everything the Stars could have hoped for this year, other than perfectly healthy. A white-hot power play for most of the season ran through Rantanen, and his elite vision, size, strength, and skill should continue to stretch other teams to the breaking point, allowing even more space for Wyatt Johnston and Jason Robertson—or the Bing-Bong Bros, as Razor has coined them—to keep piling up goals.

It’s not just about the scorers, though. Playoffs are about seeing veterans like Radek Faksa and Matt Duchene empty the tank, because they know more than most just how few opportunities like this a player gets in a career. Both of them have made remarkable comebacks from difficult injuries this very season, but both have also tasted early disappointment in the postseason. You can only hope that the scares prove tougher than the fears, for players who have yet to win a Cup.

The edges of the forward roster have wound up being stronger than expected, given the talent that departed last year. Sam Steel (who only just returned from injury himself) has found new offensive highs both up and down the lineup, and Michael Bunting has a track record of meshing with skilled players. The latter hasn’t quite found his groove yet, but injuries have been the enemy of everyone this year, and everyone has a short memory in the playoffs. He can easily be this year’s Evgenii Dadonov, and that would be enough.

Players like Oskar Bäck and Arttu Hyry have been surprisingly critical for Dallas as well this year, and you’d not be shocked to see them called upon for their own Colin Blackwell moment this year. That brings us to Blackwell himself, who also looks every bit like the heart-and-soul player who came within a whisker of scoring two playoff overtime goals in as many games last year. The Stars have players in this lineup who will be key factors in the team’s success, even if they might not be the ones whose faces are draped over the side of the building. Such is life on a successful NHL team, where even the fourth-liners are still among the most talented 0.01% of hockey players in the world.

And as much as anyone, this team is worth rooting for because of Jake Oettinger, who ended last year with his name unexpectedly in all the headlines. Never before had the young franchise goaltender gone so quickly from stealing a playoff series to being screamed at by his coach. Being pulled early in a game is always embarrassing, but to be unexpectedly (and unceremoniously) yanked from an elimination game was something entirely new for Oettinger. Despite everything he’s done early in his Stars career, and despite a bit of a dip in this regular season, Oettinger can only redeem himself from that performance in the postseason. Now, he’ll have his chance.

Glen Gulutzan has brought a new approach to the same Dallas Stars team that won six playoff series in the last three seasons. It would have been crazy to suggest the Stars would change coaches after Thomas Harley’s overtime goal against Winnipeg last year, but much like in the city of Dallas, things can change in a hurry in the playoffs. And this Stars team seems every bit like one ready to change the ending of their last three playoff runs.

At last, we know the time and date: Dallas will begin its 2026 playoff run at 4:30pm Central on Saturday, April 18.

They’ll be facing a team called the “Minnesota Wild” (real name), and I wrote a more concise series preview about the Stars/Wild matchup for D Magazine that went up today, so you can check that out here.

But today, we’re doing something a bit different, because playoff hockey is different. Radically so, even. You can bring an almost entirely sports-illiterate person into the building for a playoff game and walk out three hours later with them fuming about high crimes that were committed by the other team. It’s special stuff, the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and this series profiles to be the most intense and bloodthirsty of the first eight series we’ll see.

We know this, because the series kind of got started a week ago when the Stars stiff-armed the Wild back into third place in the Central for good, but at the cost of Miro Heiskanen.

That game was filled with vitriol from start to finish, from Mikko Rantanen jumping Quinn Hughes to Nick Foligno refusing to let Colin Blackwell celebrate a goal in peace.

The game also featured a certain Wild antagonist putting a hit on Miro Heiskanen that ended his regular season, as a stick got behind Heiskanen’s legs while he took contact from the front.

Now, there’s still some hope that Heiskanen could return for Game 1, but given that the Stars have already lost a top player to another altercation with a player on a division rival, this moment will overshadow the entire matchup until Heiskanen finally returns to the ice. And from there, every run a Minnesota player takes at Heiskanen—and they will take plenty—will draw a Hearty Response from the Stars that wasn’t always there in prior years.

The blood will be boiling throughout this series. And if you can’t quite remember or picture what that feels like, I want you to go back and watch the highlights from 2023’s Game 1 right quick, just to remember what it feels like to experience the despair, anger, jubilation, and devastation of just one game of playoff hockey between these two clubs:

Okay, welcome back. How’s the heart rate? Should probably get that blood pressure checked, by the way.

Now that you’ve got that series fresh in mind, let’s get to the modus operandi of exactly where Stars fans’ ire will be directed over the next week or two, based on what we’ve learned this year, and from that 2023 matchup.

1. You will be furious at Ryan Hartman

To be honest, I don’t see the Hartman hit on Heiskanen as a dirty play. The result was bad, but there was more bad luck than malicious intent, from what I could see.

But Hartman lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago, so much so that his ability to stay on the windy side of the law is a big talking point in Minnesota even today. And little wonder, given his ten-game suspension last season for a play that was not just dirty, but incredibly dangerous:

Hartman at his best is prime Steve Ott, a player who uses his speed, tenacity, and edginess to provoke other players into foolishness rather than beginning it himself. If you are a Stars fan, you will find yourself being furious at him, at some point.

Of course, Wild fans will easily counter any finger-pointing by gesturing to Mikko Rantanen and Michael Bunting, both players who have been fined for embellishment in their careers, with Rantanen also having served a suspension for the second of two dangerous hits himself, one of which ended Alexander Romanov’s season.

I hear Jamie Benn has caused an injury or two over the course of his career as well. so if you are foolish enough to start barking at opposing fans on social media, remember that all NHL fans live in glass houses to a certain extent, and a playoff series tends to involve this sort of fury. Ride it out with as much composure as you can muster. If you’re lucky, there will be a lot more hockey you’ll need to save it for.

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My fifty-mission cap
I worked it in
I worked it in to look like that
It's my fifty-mission cap

The Stars hit 50 wins for the third year in a row, which they’ve never done before. But is that just a nice, round number for us to talk about, or did it mean something to the team, too.

“Yeah, we were thinking about it, certainly, in the coaches’ room. It’s hard to get 50 in this league,” Gulutzan said. “Fifty goals, fifty wins. It seems to be a number. Good on our guys. Just the fact that they were thinking about it just shows you a little bit about our group. It’s quite an accomplishment by them.”

Gulutzan praised the team for sticking to the habits they’ll need to exhibit against Minnesota, particularly with how mobile Buffalo’s defense tends to be (even without Dahlin). He said the chatter on the bench was what it’s supposed to be, and that’s all you can really ask when it comes to dialogue at ice level (much of which is surely far too blue to be repeated here).

It’s been a long, packed season. Everyone could have understood if the Stars had dropped a game on the road that meant nothing to their playoff fortunes. Buffalo was playing at home, in front of a raucous home crowd delighted to gear up for their first playoff run in 15 years.

But goals from Esa Lindell, Mavrik Bourque, and Justin Hryckowian got the Stars to overtime, and then their penalty kill got them to the shootout, where they finally got the job done.

“Lots of hockey,” Lindell said to Josh and Razor after the game. “I can tell you that. March felt pretty tough, but now the fun part starts. I’m just excited to play hockey, and finally we get to go to the playoffs.”

Nobody (else) got hurt tonight, which is far and away the most important thing. Buffalo opted to rest a lot of their top dogs while the Stars didn’t, but one suspects the Minnesota series won’t be decided by who’s fresher going into Game 1, but by who’s left standing after it. That series is going to be more vicious than any the Stars have played in a while, I think. If you haven’t experienced playoff hockey before, you had better do your Playoff Hockey Exercises to get in shape before Saturday.

This game was no such exercise, even if it was literal exercise. Sam Steel played just under 16 minutes, and Gulutzan said that’s what he was aiming for in Steel’s first game back, even having to “dial it back” after Steel got a fair chunk of time earlier in the game. It was about rolling lines and trusting the group to get things done, and in a roundabout way, they finally did that.

Nils Lundkvist was also solid in his own return after being with his wife for the birth of their son, even getting some rare work in 3-on-3 overtime. Everyone played between 12 and 22 minutes, which tells you that the preseason feel of things extended to deployment as well.

Esa Lindell’s ping-pong tally gave the Stars 71 power play goals this season, which is their highest total since the 2006-07 season, when power plays were still heavily inflated from the My NHL era of the league and Dallas got 79 tallies (shout out to Junior Lessard and friends). If you remember how that playoff run went, then you know that high power play goal totals are no guarantee of anything, but it is always better to be good at something than bad at it, and the Stars have scored, as of right now, the most power play goals of any team in the league this season.

Every blocked shot in this game made you wince a bit more than usual, as did hits on players like Wyatt Johnston and Radek Faksa. Jake Oettinger’s first pad sad in overtime likewise made you look just a tad bit closer at the screen than you would have preferred, but it appears that all is as well as it was going to be after 82 games, which means the Stars have a gauntlet awaiting them on Saturday (we think).

Mavrik Bourque hit 20 goals right off the bat, and everyone was thrilled for him, as they should be. I don’t know that anyone had him pegged to hit that number this year, except maybe this guy:

Mavrik Bourque started the season slowly after pulling a groin muscle in the preseason, scoring just two goals in 34 games before putting up nine goals in his final 39. He’s also a likely candidate to get some more power play time on the second unit this year without Marchment, Dadonov, and Granlund ahead of him. If you assume he can simply keep up his second-half pace without taking an even bigger jump, that would be about 20 goals over 82 games—adding another nine goals.

(In fairness, that was never a full prediction, because predictions are silly, but more of a “this could be part of how they replace the goals they lost” paragraph, but I digress. Anyway, have a look at that piece in retrospect, because it’s interesting to see what we thought could happen compared to what did, I think.)

From here on out, every game will bring joy or pain, suffering or ecstasy. Other sports have seven-game series, but I don’t know that they feel quite the same way that hockey does in the playoffs. It’s probably the best postseason in sports, which means it’s also the most painful around half the time. Yes, the big games are finally here, but nobody goes 16-0 in the postseason. Gear up for the tension, because it will throttle you if you aren’t ready. Except just kidding, because it’s impossible to be ready for it, because playoff hockey is unbelievable.

For a blissful 48 hours, however, we have the past 82 games upon which to reflect fondly. We’ll get into the stats more in the coming days, but the Stars have done something very special by regular season standards, and now is a good time for resting, whether in preparation for what’s next, or because 82 games’ worth of laurels are a pretty darn good cushion.

As always, I think Esa Lindell said it succinctly:

“Fifty wins looks pretty nice.”

Highlights and the Lowdown

Mavrik Bourque didn’t need long to hit the 20-goal mark in this one, as Esa Lindell called “bank,” whipping a point shot off the backboard and right to Bourque, who dunked it home before the seats were warm in Buffalo.

Radek Faksa put the Sabres on the game’s first power play (such as it was, given the absent bodies) after Josh Norris’s stick was lifted into his own face, drawing a two-minute minor that looked like it would have been able to be challenged and rescinded, had it been a double-minor.

Regardless, Buffalo had a parade of chances, none of which they could stuff home despite some less-than-assiduous defending from the penalty kill, which featured an appearance from Adam Erne, given the unavailability of Faksa (penalty box), Hyry (scratched) and Blackwell (scratched). Erne hasn’t killed penalties much this year, but it looks like Alain Nasreddine wants him to get some reps.

In the end, Norris would get things done himself, albeit at 5-on-5, as Buffalo made it 8-2 in shots on goal and 1-1 in goals in goal with a wicked shot after a pretty easy zone entry:

You can see Oettinger’s blocker arm flinch first here, so you wonder if he misread the puck off the blade here, or if the puck might have hit Lyubushkin’s stick and changed direction. Either way, it’s a nice shot, and a goal Oettinger won’t love allowing.

It was the sort of thing you’d expect to see from a game with a distinctly preseason feel up to that point. An Ilya Lyubushkin holding penalty on Jack Quinn only reinforced that point, but the Stars would kill this one, even generating a shorthanded rush late in the penalty. That rush would get turned around and put off Oettinger’s mask on a counterattack from the Sabres, Once again, the Dallas PK survived despite earning not too many style points.

The period would end without either side having emptied the tanks, to put it mildly. Shots on goal were 10-5 for Buffalo, but the 1-1 scoreline was all that mattered, to the extent that anything mattered in those 20 minutes, which is debatable, except what doesn’t matter in this world, when it comes to working together? All life has meaning. The first period was over.

After another big Oettinger stop from the front porch, the Stars would get their first power play of the game early in the second period, and that turned out to be great news for Zach Benson, who got two different shorthanded rushes, finishing the second one cleanly:

But if you watched the Stars for most of this year, then you know they have this annoying habit of being able to hang around despite not playing their best game. And Esa Lindell, who gives the exact same full effort every single game, would show why, calling “bank” for the second time tonight to tie things up 2-2 in the dying embers of the power play:

Jason Robertson nearly made it 3-2 soon after that, only for an eager Mavrik Bourque to go for #21, thereby foiling, uh, number 21:

Things got a bit more intense from there, as the Sabres looked like a team thoroughly over the Stars’ halfhearted persistence. Checks were finished, and heads were kept a bit higher up. Radek Faksa drew some guff himself after nearly banging home a loose puck at the post with four or five whacks at the puck, which may or may not have been in Colten Ellis’s glove.

A puck that was certainly not in Jake Oettinger’s glove was this one, batted off the goaltender and into the net by Alex Tuch on a bang-bang play from two Buffalo players beneath the goal line:

Oettinger had been fairly slow from post to post all night, compared to his usual pace, and this time he got burned by a sneaky smart play.

Speaking of sneaky and smart, Justin Hryckowian tied things back up on a rush after Tyson Kozak fell at the point, snapping a puck through Ellis with Jamie Benn on the other side of a 2-on-1 rush:

The Stars once again got a power play with a chance to grab a lead, when Luke Schenn gave Faksa the business in the corner and got two minutes for holding. Once again, the Stars netted out a zero on the power play, though they achieved this one in much less interesting fashion than on their last chance. The second period would end 3-3.

Michael Bunting created a great chance in the third period for Justin Hryckowian, who might have had almost too much time in front of the net after a turnover by Buffalo, stickhandling quickly but not quite effectively enough to beat Ellis:

Dallas kept the pressure on after that, with Johnston and Erne testing Ellis themselves. If the locker room message had been something to the effect of, “Play a period of playoff hockey,” the result would have matched it.

Still, Buffalo hung around, and Oettinger had a couple of stops to make down the stretch. Rantanen, Johnston, and Steel had a cycling shift that also created danger for the Sabres, but Ellis likewise kept them out of the net.

Conor Timmins then gave Dallas yet another opportunity to grab a lead on the power play when he sent a puck out of the defensive zone and into the crowd with 6:51 to go in the final frame. But this just wasn’t the top unit’s night, and Dallas spent two minutes preparing for a chance they never quite got.

Tyler Myers wound up on a slapshot for what would have been a goal from the only Stars skater not to tally a goal this season, but alas, it wasn’t That Kind Of Night, and Ellis swallowed up the clapper.

Michael Bunting nearly caught Ellis napping after collecting a blocked shot off an individual rush and putting the puck right back on net, nearly threading it through Ellis’s arm at the near post.

As regulation wound down, Tanner Pearson nearly capitalized on a bit of apathy in the Stars’ zone, when the puck was fed out to him at the net front off a dump-in the Stars might have thought was icing, ringing the post behind Oettinger and bringing the whole arena to their feet, momentarily:

Instead, regulation elapsed, and we headed to the final 3-on-3 overtime of the Stars’ season.

Jason Robertson nearly put the game to bed before it even brushed its teeth, almost wrapping around a chance Ellis never really got over for, but he couldn’t quite tuck it in.

But things came to head when Mavrik Bourque found himself defending a 2-on-1 that looked very much in danger of being a 2-on-0, so he took a penalty that still required Oettinger to come up with a huge save, after which he got conked in the face:

Buffalo went to the power play, which brought Lyubushkin, Bichsel, and Faksa out for some rare overtime action to kill the 4v3 time.

But kill it they would, and a rotation of Stars’ PKers continued the work with a couple of whistles intermixed, though it surely helped that Buffalo’s power play was nearly all in the press box for this game. In any case, we went to a shootout, because why wouldn’t these two teams play late in Buffalo?

The Stars went down 2-1 in the shootout after Jack Quinn and Alex Tuch beat Oettinger. But his teammates came through in crunch time, as Jason Robertson, Matt Duchene, and finally Wyatt Johnston all scored to give Dallas their 50th win of the season, beating Buffalo 4-3 (SO) in Buffalo.

Robertson’s goal was typically slick.

Duchene’s goal was beautifully patient, as Ellis was tricked into doing all the work with none of the results:

And Wyatt Johnston’s goal was efficient and deadly, much like he’s been his whole career:

This was a lot more fun way to go into the playoffs than losing seven in a row, I’d say.

Lineups

Dallas rolled out this Game 82 lineup:

Steel-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Bunting-Hryckowian-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Erne

Lindell-Lyubushkin
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger

Buffalo Buffalo’d like so, 11/7 style:

Greenway-Kozak-Tuch
Pearson-Krebs-Quinn
Benson-Norris-Doan
Dunne-Malenstyn

Byram-Timmins
Power-Metsa
Stanley-Kesselring
Schenn

Ellis

After-AfterThoughts

• Sean and I recorded our third episode of Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey today, and it was a blast. It’s been a project I’ve genuinely loved doing, and we had two more outstanding guests today: Former NHLer Dominic Moore (now a broadcast analyst for the Utah Mammoth) and USA Head of Player Development/Goaltending Steve Thompson. You can watch or listen depending on your preference.

• Jamie Benn earned his fourth $500K bonus for playing in this game, as he hit the 60 games played mark. (He hit the prior three at 20, 30, and 50 games). That means Benn will have at least $2 million in performance bonuses that will carry over to next year’s salary cap. Given all that Benn endured this year, it was quite an accomplishment to play 60 games.

• Adam Erne turned a puck over on a shorthanded rush, but his effort to recover on this play was pretty admirable, I thought:

• If you don’t believe that it was a bit of a preseason-y game, take a look at this chance for Buffalo early in the second period, which Oettinger stopped. Lotta straight legs there.

• Colten Ellis accomplished one of my life goals by shouldering an NHL shot into his own glove like he was a hockey magician or something:

• Luke Schenn is not a fan of Radek Faksa, it would seem:

• This graphic from the broadcast is pretty impressive stuff. Who needs home ice when you can do this on the road?

  

• Assistant Coach David Pelletier was brought down to the bench for Game 82 after spending most of the season watching the game and communicating from up high. Little thing, but I’m glad the broadcast pointed it out.

• 

• I’d say Glen Gulutzan did a good job this year, personally.

  

• Oettinger’s save off the coconut early on was a good omen, it turned out.

  

• Linesperson Steve Barton got some well-deserved congratulations from both teams after officiating his final game tonight. Great career for Barton.

  

• Finally, if you don’t watch the postgame broadcast on Victory+, you’re missing moments like this one, where Esa Lindell was interrupted during his TV interview by a hand offering him a slice of pizza. Who was it, Josh Bogorad asked?

  

  • “Mikko stopped by,” Lindell said. “But he’s gone now.”