Game 10 AfterThoughts: A Damper in Tampere as Cats Take Round One
At the Winter Classic in 2020, I remember feeling almost overwhelmed before the puck even dropped. The sheer significance of that game happening in the Cotton Bowl felt like the culmination of the 2013 rebranding, a validation of all the good Dallas had done since the end of the Modano era. The NHL put its marquee event in Texas, and the Stars knocked it out of the park, both inside and out of the stadium.
This one was a little different. The neutral site made it slightly less celebratory, and of course the differences between European and North American sports audiences lend a bit of an air of the surreal to things.
All that said, it really was special to be here as this game happened. Even after a bit of a bummer of a third period, seeing Jere Lehtinen and Teppo Numminen reprise their Masters of Ceremonies roles from puck drop and come back out to give a gift back to Sasha Barkov in front of both teams after the final horn was a cool reminder that this really is bigger than just one result—even if the loss is the most notable thing for the fellas in Green.
For instance, both in warmups and the starting lineups, the Stars’ three Finnish players led the way. In fact, Heiskanen stumbled a bit and fell down when he came on the ice, so perhaps the nerves were more present than usual, as would be understandable. Both coaches also put all of their Finns out there to start the game, a move DeBoer confirmed afterwards happened independly of one another.
Additionally, the national anthem for Finland was very, very cool. The entire crowd sang it with gusto, and it made me wish the NHL didn’t quite bring as much North American game presentation as they did. The coolest parts of these events are the ones that are most different. But then, the NHL wouldn’t let Grubes DJ the Winter Classic either, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised they held off on embracing more of the environment.
Among lots of little difference I was tweeting about during the first couple of periods, the thing that stuck out the most was how much love the crowd continued to extend to the Finnish players. When Aleksander Barkov scored, it felt like the roof was going to come off the building, and it felt genuine.
This was in direct contrast to the artificial prompts to “get on your feet and get loud!” from the two in-arena hosts, to which the Tampere audience gave polite acknowledgement while refusing to act like puppets. I think Kenneth puts it well:
As for Jeff K, it was really cool to see and hear him navigate the minefield of enforced neutrality without appearing to sound any less enthusiastic. Very neat to have him doing the announcing.
***
As for the game, the most notable change was Jason Robertson moving down to the third line with Wyatt Johnston and Evgenii Dadonov, while Jamie Benn was moved beside Roope Hintz and Logan Stankoven. As Pete DeBoer said when Mike Heika asked him about it after practice the other day, Jason Robertson is a bit behind in terms of his recovery from having a cyst removed. Maybe that’s the six weeks of skating Robertson missed, or maybe it’s just one of those runs where Robertson isn’t quite finding the seams he needs to find to be effective. But honestly, it was a surprising move, because I don’t think Benn is necessarily that different of a player than Robertson at this point in his career except with regard to a lower ceiling in terms of scoring. But when you’re a coach, you tend to want to fix problems.
And the problems started early. DeBoer said that he really saw the first period as the biggest problem in terms of the Stars’ not competing hard enough with the Panthers, and that only the Duchene line was willing to “stick their nose in and match that type of competitiveness.”
The locus for that issue was when an Aaron Ekblad shot was tipped by Evan Rodrigues off the far post and in. You can probably quibble with something there, but overall, Florida just moved the puck quickly enough that Dallas wasn’t able to tie up sticks or get in the lanes, and the last-minute redirection did what that tends to do to players without psychic abilities.
A good sign can later when Carter Verhaeghe got a great scoring chance, but Jake Oettinger’s torso took care of it. It seemed to be a positive sign for Dallas, but unfortunately, this would not turn out to be one of Oettinger’s better games.
In fact, the Stars’ first shot on net came from—who else?—the fourth line, after Colin Blackwell smartly dumped a puck in with Mavrik Bourque busting down the weak side. Bourque got to Sergei Bobrovsky behind the net and turned the puck over to force a decent shot from the low point, but that was a sign that Sergei Bobrovsky had shown up in all his fullness, and the Stars would end up disappointed not to get more than four goals past him, if you can believe that.
I asked Robertson about that afterwards, and he said the Stars probably could have gotten more traffic in front, which is a pretty standard response from players. But the funny thing was, the Stars actually did start generating a lot more chances with traffic as the game went on, and they still weren’t going on nearly as often as Florida’s. Possibly this was just Sasha Barkov’s night.
Just to ensure that no other line could contribute in the opening frame, that same fourth line had a rough sequence on a failed zone exit a couple minutes later when Mavrik Bourque couldn’t find a seam, but Oettinger came up big that time to bail them out. The pressure continued, however, and the Panthers got a glorious chance from the third man on a rush when Aleksander Barkov beat Jake Oettinger’s glove hand from an area you probably shouldn’t be giving up shots to Barkov from, just my thinking here, I don’t know. Again, you can probably break down the play further, but ultimately I think you just can’t afford to let that chance develop, and that starts with a lot of little decisions that spiral into bigger ones.
Another way to put it was that, as the first period reached the halfway mark, one of the teams looked like the reigning champions, and the other one looked like a team that had just moved a 40-goal scorer to the third line. But in soccer, they have a term for what happened next: a goal “against the run of play.”
It was the only high-functioning line the Stars have right now, as you’d think. After a deliberately slow zone entry by Duchene, he dished it to Ilya Lyubushkin, who was able to get the puck deep. And after more forechecking work, Seguin got the puck just in time to take advantage of the fact that Borovsky hadn’t completely combobulated himself back into a boring, post-Jonathan Quick position against the, er, post. That’s how Seguin banked it in off Bobrovsky’s left skate. Sometimes you just need someone to make a play.
Mason Marchment then drew (double-checks notes) a penalty from Matthew Tkachuk to put the Stars on the power play with a chance to tie the game before Floirda realized what was happening. And they almost did so on an early zone entry from Roope Hintz (who is from the Nokia/Tampere region, you may have heard), but Bobrovsky’s legs held their respective posts to keep it 2-1.
And you know, sometimes it’s good to score on your power plays, because it turns out the other team is also allowed to get them. Matt Dumba got a little over exuberant in his own zone, and he ended up hooking (and then giving some extra business to) Tkachuk. And who could blame him, really? Well, it turns out the referees are specifically paid to blame people, and Dumba got the gate.
After the Stars entered the game having allowed just a single first-period goal all season, Anton Lundell would triple that number by tallying the second too-easy tip of the game in the last few seconds of the Dumba minor. I’m beginning to wonder if teams have figured out how to beat Oettinger: simply by redirecting the puck at the last minute or by shooting from really close with your best players. Nobody tell the other teams.
I also asked Heiskanen about that goal, and whether he was trying to front the shot (as Sean discussed the merits of in his mandatory 20/20) or just failed to get to Lundell’s stick, and Miro confirmed that he had tried to tie up Lundell’s stick, but that in that situation, you “need to be a little faster.” Ah well.
Something that I think is worth pointing out here: we in the media often like to ask questions that provide coaches with a ready-made excuse. Not necessarily because we believe it, but because it forces the coach to make a choice rather than provide a more mundane answer. I don’t love the tendency, but I’m sure I haven’t been innocent of it either. And DeBoer, to his credit, was pretty sardonic when someone started to ask that question after the game: “Left our legs in the sauna? Is that what you’re saying? I mean, they were in the sauna too, and they showed up on time to play, so…”
As Jim Nill mentioned to me earlier this week, this is a team absolutely opposed to any excuses, which came up a bit later on the Panthers’ sixth goal, as we’ll discuss in a moment.
***
After a bad first period, Dallas needed to show something to get the game turned around, and whom else would you turn to than the third Finnish goal-scorer of the game in Esa Lindell? The Stars generated a nice counterattack with a 3-on-2 sort of rush, but Bobrovsky saved the first one-timer. However, Bobrovsky had no chance when Jason Robertson made a ridiculous pass back across the crease to Lindell, who stashed it past the pesky pads of Bobrovsky just to remind his team it could be done.
“He’s got more offense than people give him credit for,” DeBoer said after the game. “I’d like to see him do that a little bit more, you know, jump into those spots, because he has some real good offensive instincts.” This is the sort of encouragement that I appreciate coaches giving to “steady” defensemen. The Stars’ attack is built on skill, speed, and pressure. In fact, even Paul Maurice mentioned after the game that he thinks Dallas may be the team with the most skill in the NHL. It’s nice when everyone agrees. but as the New York Yankess recently discovered, skill alone will send you home.
After the Lindell goal, the Stars had a big push, the most dangerous moment of which came when Matt Duchene leapt to make an outstanding keep at the blue line before feeding the puck back down to Marchment, who found himself all alone on the doorstep. But Marchment got cleaned out just before the final deke because he didn’t have a Finn on the back door to pass to, and the Panthers would survive long enough to take a penalty out of desperation during a great shift by Colin Blackwell and Mavrik Bourque.
The power play might have been the worst possible thing for the Stars, given the momentum they had been building at even strength to that point. And just to drive the point home, Jamie Benn kept a puck in that ironically would have been better let out, as the Panthers were able to counter immediately and catch Benn in transition, leading to a 2-on-1 that Thomas Harley backed off to take the pass. But in hindsight, considering that Sam Reinhart was leading the NHL in shorthanded goals at the time (albeit with just two), maybe Harley needed to defy convention and be a hero, because shortly thereafter, Sam Reinhart was leading the NHL in shorthanded goals, with three.
But the Stars nearly punched right back once again, only for Evgenii Dadonov to send a golden rebound chance off the far post of a gaping net. The chance came about from a smart little delay by Robertson in the high slot, just in case you weren’t sure whether Robertson took the demotion personally. He really did create a lot of chances outside of the primary assist to Lindell, and he said after the game that he does feel his game is progressing pretty well. Based on what we saw tonight, I think Robertson might be right on the cusp of breaking through. Stay tuned.
Niko Mikkola and Jamie Benn then got into it after the play to send the teams to 4-on-4. And that sequence featured one of those maddening plays where a defenseman loses a stick, then he neither receives a spare from a forward nor goes to fetch one himself, opting instead of occupy space rather than abdicate his duty entirely for a few seconds. And it ended up with Oettinger having to flash the leather on Aaron Ekblad, who got a pass and realized Thomas Harley could do absolutely nothing to stop him from whipping the puck at the net. I thought I heard a teammate yell at Harley while the Panthers were changing a few players, and I wonder if there was a window where he ought to have gotten a stick. But you and I both know how defensemen are trained these days, and staying in position is king. But if position is king, then Oettinger is also at least a vice regent or something. Or he was, earlier in the game.
Mason Marchment then ended a sequence of great pressure by the Duchene line by cross checking Ekblad behind the net in what may have been a misguided effort to give Dallas a shorthanded goal opportunity of their own. It was a noble idea, but the real chance came after the penalty expired, when Thomas Harley wafted his way into the zone to start a chance where Matt Duchene got two chances to beat Bobrovsky from the doorstep all alone, but he couldn’t find a crack either time. Bobrovsky was really good in this one, despite giving up four goals. I don’t think he got beaten by a clean first chance all night, other than the back-door play by Lindell.
Dallas went back on the power play when Mikkola was forced to grab Robertson, and the game still felt well within reach in the final quarter of the middle period. The power play looked dangerous when the Duchene line was out there, but the rest of it wouldn’t generate much. Robertson said he felt the power play was a little too impatient, and that does tend to happen when frustration creeps in. It really did feel like the Stars only had four forwards creating anything, and three of them were on the same line. True to form, Tyler Seguin got a breakaway thanks to a brilliant read of a line change, but Bobrovsky continued to come up huge when the Panthers needed him most. I suppose that’s what heroes do, come to think of it.
All in all, the Stars ended a much better second period with the exact same deficit as they had twenty minutes earlier, and you could feel Florida preparing to lock things down. And, uh, they did that…sort of?
True enough, the Panthers kept a third man high from the outset of the final frame, daring Dallas to do something about it. And they nearly did, with a decent enough wrap-around chance by Mavrik Bourque with traffic that presaged future things. But the game did what it had been doing, and the first chance Florida got after that saw Jake Oettinger get beaten off the rush by a decent (but not otherworldly) shot from, and I am not making this up, a player named Mackie Samoskevich. It wasn’t the best goal to allow, and it was particularly uncharacteristic given Oettinger’s recent form. But it is also the case that Oettinger wasn’t really the main reason it was 4-2 to begin with. But some heroics would have really helped, there.
Robertson then made the confident sort of play on a low-high pass that was so common during his record-setting campaign a couple years ago, as he shuffled to the side of a pile of bodies atop the crease and whipped a shot at the net. But Bobrovsky continued to look like the best goalie in the game, and he was able to catch up to the recent events.
Then a really, really weird and unfortunate sequence happened where the in-arena horn blew, but the officials didn’t realize it, and play continued. Nobody really wants to talk about moments like that when you give up six goals, but my strong hunch is that, because of the dulcet tones of the goal horn in this arena compared to the blaring blasts we have in North America, the North American officials just froze at an unfamiliar sound. Thus, play continued long enough for the Panthers to score a sixth goal when Reinhart tallied on the back door again.
Afterwards, the officials huddled for a long while, then explained that there had been an issue with the game clock, which usually necessitates a stoppage. Hence the horn, which is usually only deployed during play to signal that a goal happened during a prior play but was not called.
But if my guess is right, the main problem is that, because the officials did not whistle the play dead when the horn first sounded to signal the clock issue, they can’t retroactively do so. Thus, the goal that happened after the horn blew was allowed to stand, and the clocks were reconciled while the Panthers celebrated a sixth tally.
The Stars would get it back in a similarly weird sequence after a puck somehow did slip through Bobrovsky with the fourth line out on the ice. I actually wondered if Paul Maurice might challenge based on both Bourque’s foot being in the crease as the shot happened, and Bobrovsky appearing to be pushed a bit back in the crease while trying to make the save. But maybe, just maybe, Maurice knew that Florida had gotten a bit of a gift, and he decided not to be petty. Anyway, whatever his thought process, the end result was no challenge, and it turned out to be Mavrik Bourque’s first NHL goal. It’s a consolation prize, certainly, but a prize is still a prize. You learn to look for bright spots in these times, and Bourque had some other good moments in this game that deserved some reward. Good for him.
Another bright spot came with 33 seconds remaining, when Jamie Benn pounded home a great pass from Logan Stankoven after some extended Dallas pressure in garbage time. Bobrovsky continued to make just that one more save than you would think a goalie should even right before that one, though, rendering the goal as moot as Benn’s muted celebration. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Just be a little better than expected, and it can be more than enough.
Dallas will have another crack at the same team in the same environment tomorrow, and I genuinely thing a split was always the most likely outcome of this series anyway. But losing both of these would be tough psychologically on the Stars, who haven’t proven what Florida and some other big does have, recently. You’d like to show up in less unfortunate fashion than Dallas did, and maybe they will. As is the case for every single one of us, there is always tomorrow.