Checking out the Texas Stars on a Wednesday Night in Cedar Park
H-E-B Center at Cedar Park is a great place to watch a hockey game
Wednesday was an optional practice day in Frisco for the Dallas Stars.
DeBoer said he told the players to all do what was right for each of them, rather than what they thought the coaches expected of them. So it was a thin group.
Optional practices are sometimes great in terms of getting to have a good conversation with a player or a coach, but they are also often uneventful, on account of not much practicing going on.
So after driving up to talk with Pete DeBoer and watch a handful of Stars skating, I decided to make the three-hour drive down I-35 to see the Texas Stars finish their back-to-back set against the Ontario Reign.
Having played last night, there was no morning skate at Cedar Park for Texas, either. Here are a few of my observations from that Texas Stars game, free of charge.
One note: These are written from a largely Dallas Stars perspective. Check out 100 Degree Hockey for a more comprehensive writeup of the game from a Texas Stars standpoint.
HEB Center has a great atmosphere. The lower bowl is very raucous in good ways, and the suite/loge seating up above the bowl is very nice. The arena feels very slick, and multiple people have told me it compares favorably to other AHL arenas. There is no bad seat here. If I lived in the Austin area, I would be going to games here all the time, purely for the entertainment value.
When I lived in Seattle, I was fortunate enough to go to WHL games for both the Seattle Thunderbirds and the Everett Silvertips. But AHL hockey is on another level. You can see the latent NHL vision with some players, and you can also see pretty clearly when a player makes a pass or tries a play that they probably wouldn’t get away with in the NHL.
It surely doesn’t seem like it to the players, but from up above the ice, it does look like there’s a bit more time and space for players to make plays. The NHL product is the best in the world for a reason.
Ontario made a backhand outlet pass across the top of their own zone at one point that surprised me. It made it through, but it was the sort of play that drives NHL coaches crazy, with how dangerous a turnover would be in the high slot. The AHL is a very good league, but not every AHL player is an NHL player.
You also realize watching the AHL just how incredible NHL players are at board work. There were multiple instances of the puck being locked up along the wall with four or five players all piling up. The next time you watch an NHL game, look closely to see what tricks and tradecraft players use to protect and play pucks along the boards. It’s really an underappreciated part of the game, in my view.
The other thing about watching an AHL game is the rowdier atmosphere. Texas’s game presentation is still a lot of fun, but the crowd is where the AHL energy lives, not the screens or PA system. So when the crowd gets angry about a penalty, you hear the crowd, being angry about a penalty. It’s a very visceral experience, and that makes it a lot of fun.
As for the game itself, it was a good, one-goal hockey game until two shorthanded empty-netters by Ontario turned a 2-1 contest into a 4-1 defeat for Texas.
Justin Hryckowian scored the only goal for Texas, though it was a big one, getting Texas right back into the game after Ontario had just got up 2-0 on a power play goal by Jeff Malott.
Antonio Stranges and Kyle McDonald both left the game with injuries. McDonald looked like he suffered a knee injury along the boards, while I’m told Antonio Stranges was rubbing his collarbone after suffering a hard reverse hit.
Texas went 0-for-6 on the power play, while Ontario went 1-for-2. That was the difference, and it surely won’t sit well with Texas, since a couple of those power plays came after nasty hits by Ontario, with Jacob Doty racking up nine penalty minutes in the first period alone after a boarding, a fighting major, and an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
Here are a few assorted observations about some players from this game, in no particular order:
Kole Lind hit the crossbar early in the first, and a Hyrckowian follow-up was grabbed by Pheonix Copley. Lind had a couple of good lucks, including a late battle in tight, but he wasn’t able to solve Copley—though almost nobody was, in fairness. Lind got into a tussle at the netfront while battling for a rebound late, and he got sent to the box for slashing to negate the remaining half-minute of the power play. Lind was not happy, but he’s a player with a bit of a chippy reputation around the AHL. That’s not a bad thing, though.
Curtis McKenzie is clearly a beloved captain for Texas. He mixed it up with Ontario players after borderline plays a couple of times, and while he’s not the tip of the offensive spear for Texas, he’s still a productive players. He and Kole Line both have 14 goals for Texas this year. McKenzie was also lobbying for a Delay of Game when Copley dove out of his crease to cover a puck heading below the goal line, but that penalty has to be pretty blatant to get called, and Copley just did stay on the right side of the grey area.
Justin Hryckowian was the best player for Texas in this game, and he nearly scored a couple of goals. (Copley was the number one star of his game for a reason.) He also had six shots on goal, and his wrap-around goal in the third period was a cathartic one. Hryckowian is Texas’s top center, and he’s got 50 points in 53 games this year. You can see why his game didn’t look out of place during his NHL stints earlier this year.
Joe Cecconi played for Ontario in this one. My main memory of Cecconi is his “will he, won’t he” signing drama with Dallas a decade or so ago after his college days, but he did end up spending five seasons in the AHL with Texas. He hasn’t played in the NHL, but he did get six minutes of penalties in the third period, including an elbowing penalty on Curtis McKenzie that caught the Texas captain up high, sending his gloves and stick flying.
Matěj Blümel had six shots on goal, and nearly scored a power play goal on a sizzling one-timer that Pheonix Copley somehow managed to hang on to. Blümel was a volume shooter in this game, but he was getting great looks, and you could see why he was tied for the league lead in the AHL with 33 goals coming into tonight. He’s also added defensive elements to his game as well, including some work on the penalty kill. We’ll talk more about Blümel another time, but he had a good game in this one.
Alex Petrovic stood up for Luke Krys by fighting Jacob Doty the instant he stepped out of the box. Petrovic got the worse end of the fight, but it’s the thought that counts, and his team applauded him with their sticks when the players were released from the box.
Magnus Hellberg had a solid game, only allowing two goals, but Copley had that one extra save that made the difference for Ontario. Hellberg looked a bit screened on the second Ontario goal on the power play, and it beat him far side past the glove. You might like to see him fighting a tad more to pick up that puck earlier, but it was a nice shot, too.
Finally, I couldn’t help but wish the NHL would do more back-to-backs like this between the same two teams. It’s just too fun, and way better than a back-to-back with two different teams, where the second night is just two tired teams, as opposed to two fired-up teams settling scores from the night before.
The AHL schedule is a brutal one—Texas plays again on the road this Friday in Chicago—and the injuries and big hits Texas took tonight may take a toll. But the life of an AHL team is that of coping with circumstances beyond your control, from injuries, to scheduling, to NHL recalls right in the middle of your season.
Finally, here’s a plug for a book you should absolutely buy: We Win Here, by Sean Shapiro and Stephen Meserve. These two guys literally wrote the book on the Texas Stars, and I loved every essay in this thing. Buy it.