Game 12 AfterThoughts: Another Point Proven
This wasn't 2024 Finland
Justin Hryckowian scored his first NHL goal tonight just a few minutes after getting a bloody nose.
That’s a fitting metaphor for this game, and maybe even the season through 12 games. The Stars have gotten punched in the face in multiple ways, from losing their captain to a great center to a key defensemen to another great center. And yet, they’ve kept piling up points against good teams.
It hasn’t always been pretty, but like Hryckowian in Sunrise tonight, their performance has been resilient, persistent, and tenacious. And those are pretty good traits to be honing in the first month of the season—especially if you’re staying in a top-10 spot in the NHL while doing so.
Last year, the Stars started out 7-2-0 in their first nine games. Then they made a short trip to Finland, and returned with a 7-4-0 record after a destination date with the Panthers. It wasn’t pretty, and it ended up being a far-too-accurate preview of what the series with Edmonton would end up feeling like six months later.
Nobody knows what this year holds for Dallas, particularly with the changes to things both on and off the ice. But man, this game was a pretty good reminder that even against a team that has won two Cups in a row, a depleted Dallas team still has enough weapons to grab points from tough games, conventionally or otherwise.
Mikko Rantanen’s performance at the end of this game was further reinforcement of that fact. He capped a nearly 2:30 shift (which we’ll discuss below) that started out of necessity, then stretched as long as it did because Rantanen knew the Stars had a chance in the offensive zone. So when Rantanen finally did tip the puck home to tie things late, it felt like a bit of cosmic affirmation that all the suffering and hard work wasn’t for naught.
That’s a weird thing to say after he hit the post in the shootout to drop the extra point, I know. But I think you have to view shootouts as the mild abomination that they are when it comes to judging a regular season game. Seguin and Rantanen both beat Bobrovsky, but they just didn’t get that extra inch of love on the puck wobble. That’ll happen. It’s a coin flip. You shouldn’t judge a game by what happens in the minigame stapled to the end of it.
This was a high-character performance by the Stars, even though Florida was the better team in this one. And when you collect a point along with some character, that’s a lesson you’re always going to be content to learn.
Dallas handled some antsy moments early to make it through the first period unscathed, even generating a couple of very good looks themselves. But in the second period, disaster struck swiftly.
First, things went badly after Dallas’s first foray into Florida’s zone ended with a Rantanen cross to Heiskanen that got intercepted and turned around, after which the Panthers rushed back down and scored, with Marchand walking in without much resistance and beating DeSmith with a shot that has beaten a lot of goalies.
Two minutes later, after a bounce off the wall eluded Seguin to prevent an easy breakout (it must have hopped, but I never saw an angle that showed how), the Panthers deflected a point shot off the crossbar. Then, Sam Reinhart collected the puck before DeSmith could deduce what the actual what had happened, and Reinhart banked it off the bemused goaltender into the net to make it 2-0 Florida before the Stars knew what hit ‘em.
The Florida pressure continued after that, too. And it felt for all the world like this game was going to be all too similar to the ones played in Tampere, exactly a year ago, as DeSmith continued to be busy.
But then Justin Hryckowian took a pretty painful high stick from Seth Jones to give Dallas a four-minute power play. And his sacrifice would not be in vain. The opposite of that, actually.
At first, it nearly went to 3-0 for the Cats after a blind Seguin backhand gave Florida a shorthanded rush the other way, with Jason Robertson basically just trying to occupy space while Aaron Ekblad came downhill and fired.
But Ekblad missed the net (probably because he was thinking about that Calder Trophy he stole from John Klingberg), and the Stars’ power play did what the Stars power play has been doing this year, making it 2-2 before Paul Maurice could say “don’t take unnecessary penalties.”
First, Sam Steel made a nice pass (after a slick Rantanen entry) to find a wide-open Johnston, who immediately fired the puck past Bobrovsky.
(Not sure the Florida PK will love watching that one over again.)
Then the second power play unit made short work of the remaining two minutes on the power play, as the now-repaired Justin Hryckowian tipped in a Thomas Harley shot-pass for his first NHL goal.
And just like that, the Stars had managed to climb back into the game with a period to go.
In the third, things were much tighter in both directions, with Dallas probing here and there early, but clearly trying not to give up too much.
Harley nearly connected with Johnston for a tip that Bobrovsky barely caught up with, but time ticked down with the score still knotted at 2-2. Until it got unknotted, when Florida got an easy zone entry after a change, and scored a goal that looked like it might demoralize a tired team on the road.
You can see how the puck somehow rattles to Sam Bennett at the back post after both defensemen had committed to the other side here, too. Not the best break, but also not the perfect way to handle things, either. The danger was not where most of the players gravitated to.
That could’ve easily been the game. With last year’s team at this time, you’re inclined to think it probably would have been, in fact.
But then Mikko Rantanen went Full Moose Mode on a 2:24 shift (yes, really).
After weathering a big Florida push in the defensive zone, Wyatt Johnston and Rantanen went the other way at long last, and neither of them did the easy thing, dumping it in and going for a change, despite being 90 seconds into their shift.
I mean, with almost any other players, you’d probably say they should have changed here, going up against four Panthers late in a game where you needed a goal. But they kept at it.
Johnston takes the puck into the corner, and Robertson also decides he isn’t missing out on this Kovalevian megashift. He joins the party.
Brad Marchand will eventually get the puck when it squirts up the boards, but Robertson pressures him well enough to force a backhand that Marchand tries to slip between the points, only for Ilya Lyubushkin (who had smartly moved over to the middle of the ice) to keep it in the zone.
Lyubushkin sends it down low, and that’s when Rantanen’s mettle really showed. He takes multiple shots from Ekblad as they battle by the net, at least one of which looked like a clear cross check to Rantanen’s back, but he got up from the ice each time, pushing back, fighting for space, and looking for his chance.
Johnston would eventually come off the ice for Sam Steel, but Rantanen and Robertson remained out there. Esa Lindell and Ilya Lyubushkin read the room, and they were activating hard, keeping the things going, maintaining possession along the walls. And after Robertson retrieved another puck and sent it back to Steel (who was covering for a pinching Lyubushkin), it would all end with Rantanen tipping a Steel pass over Bobrovsky in what I like to call “pulling a Hryckowian.”
That is why you trade the farm for Mikko Rantanen when you get the chance. Right there. The Stars got to overtime because Rantanen somehow had enough willpower and wherewithal to outwit the reigning, two-time champions despite being out there for two-and-a-half minutes of intense, furious battling.
Then, surely gasping for oxygen as his muscles screamed for rest, he ignored their calls, slyly slipping above the goal line before deftly deflecting a puck top-shelf to tie the game up.
Is there another player in the NHL like him right now? I just don’t know that there is. This shift is just crazy, wonderful, and unbelievable. And also, I don’t recommend that anybody copy it.
As for the overtime, you know what happened. Wyatt Johnston nearly ended it early, and Aaron Ekblad got two chances in a row to do the same, only to get stopped by DeSmith.
Rantanen and Harley also got great looks (and Johnston another one), and the post got rung to Bobrovsky’s left on a vicious one-timer, too.
Dallas could have won this in overtime, even without Matt Duchene or Roope Hintz to help. Probably they should have, given the cumulative chances. But overtime isn’t much more meaningful than the shootout when it comes to evaluating a team’s overall potency, as Colorado’s own overtime woes can surely testify.
But one play I do want to highlight from the Bonus Hockey portion of the game is a ridiculously slick one from Johnston, who showed why his hands have scored ever so many goals in his young career.
This play is the hockey equivalent of a basketball block where you get to face the crowd and scream after sending a hopeful shot into the upper deck of the crowd seating, I think.
Wyatt Johnston, by the way, is two years younger than Justin Hryckowian—who scored his first NHL goal tonight, as we discussed.
The Stars have a pretty good team, even when a lot of that team isn’t here.
As for the feel of regulation, it was certainly tilted in Florida’s favor for most of the night.
Here’s one example of how simple, but insanely effective, Florida’s forecheck can be.
At :03 of the clip, note how hard Florida’s F3 comes in to attack Bichsel, who has to go up the wall. The defenseman is pinching down hard on the wall, with a forward (#70) coming back up to cover at the point (around the :06) mark. That forward then sends it back in deep, and it bounces to the other point, where another Florida forward wins the race again (:09). Petrovic is again getting pressured by F3 behind the net, so he tries to bump it along to Bichsel for a chip-out (:13), but Bichsel is also getting pressured, so he has to rush the play, and he ends up icing it as a result.
It’s gotta be infuriating, right? You can skate and skate and skate, but there always seems to be a Panthers player right in your face. It’s so efficient, so effective, that you basically have to stop the puck along the wall and shut down the movement until you can win a puck off the wall, or else beat the defense to a rim-around, which is nearly impossible when they can do so by coming downhill with a better view on the puck, so you might vacate your defensive lane too early to try to win that race, leaving space for another Florida attacker to exploit.
I gotta say: I think the Panthers are pretty good. Not sure anyone has figured that out yet, but that’s why folks ask me my opinion on so many things. Or at least, I assume they mean to ask. They probably just keep forgetting, so the safest thing is for me to keep volunteering it regardless.
ESotG
Lineups
With Oskar Bäck returning, the Stars returned to a more conventional 12/6 lineup, albeit with a newly loaded top line:
Robertson-Johnston-Rantanen
Steel-Seguin-Bourque
Bäck-Hryckowian-Blackwell
Erne-Faksa-Bastian
Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lyubushkin
Bichsel-Petrovic
DeSmith in goal
Florida ran this out there:
Luostarinen - Lundell - Marchand
Verhaeghe - Rodrigues - Reinhart
Boqvist - Bennett - Samoskevich
Greer - Schwindt - Gregor
Forsling - Ekblad
Mikkola - Jones
Sebrango - Petry
Bobrovsky
AfterThoughts
Dave Zeis worked his 2,000th professional game tonight. Zeis joined the Stars back in 2007, and he’s been a mainstay of the Stars’ athletic training staff ever since, and he’s seen some things. It was very cool to see him deservedly honored by the team he’s been with for going on 18 seasons now.
As if Sergei Bobrovsky wasn’t intimidating enough after winning two Cups in a row, Brien Rea and Brent Severyn noted this absurd stat before the game began:
Dallas got a big penalty kill early after Nate Bastian took a slashing call behind the Panther’s net while trailing the puck on a forecheck. One nervy moment at the netfront resulted in a panicked scramble, but Hryckowian got to the puck after it came out of the scrum, and he sent it down the ice to defuse the pressure.
Florida equaled Dallas with a nice kill themselves, including a dangerous shorthanded chance for Cole Schwindt. Quieting the Stars’ power play even once is pretty impressive right now, but then, Florida are a pretty impressive group.
After a couple of early looks in the Florida zone by Lindell and Hryckowian, Dallas really struggled to create chances early, with Florida’s forechecking making life tough on Dallas’s breakout as the first period wore on. The Panthers really are maddeningly effective at clogging lanes and pouncing on risky passes, and it led to multiple stretches with the Stars searching for a way out of their zone (the basic reasons for which we discussed earlier).
Jason Robertson got a great look with about five minutes to go in the first, but would you believe that Sergei Bobrovsky came up with two big saves?
Wyatt Johnston got the best chance for Dallas in the opening, but he couldn’t get a clean backhand on the puck with an open net (and a lot of pressure on him).
Casey DeSmith and Ilya Lyubushkin combined to make the Stars’ biggest saves of the first period. Nobody said being a backup goalie was easy. I’m taking suggestions on the best deep-cut soundtrack for this particular sequence. (Frogger OST, maybe?)
Adam Erne did some goofy, wonderful work to collect his stick and play the puck here. I still can’t quite figure out how he managed this, but it is impressive.
Jason Robertson decided to stretch the zone midway through the second, and he got a great scoring chance as a result, albeit one foiled by Bobrovsky’s quick pads. This was something Dallas did a bit as the game went on to make their breakouts slightly easier, forcing Florida to back off the Dallas blue line a little bit more.
Great play by Radek Faksa here to prevent the dagger pass on what looked like a sudden 2-on-1 here after Lyubushkin pushed up to prevent the entry at the blue line.
DeSmith made a crucial save after Blackwell got victimized by the Notorious Florida Ice. DeSmith had to handle a lot of wild stuff in this one, but he gave Dallas a chance to win. That’s all you can ask for.
Dallas dominated the faceoff dots tonight to the tune of 67% (31-for-46), but that doesn’t really mean much when it comes to overall possession in the modern NHL, as you can see from tonight’s shot chart.
HockeyViz.com The Panthers out-chanced Dallas pretty solidly, thanks to their overwhelming cycle and forecheck game, but the Stars somehow managed to hang around long enough to get the goals they needed in regulation to force overtime.
Justin Hryckowian has gone from being a 13th forward on this team to playing a pretty noteworthy role on the penalty kill, power play, and even in the final minutes of a tied game against the reigning champions. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that the coach who saw him win Most Outstanding AHL Rookie last year is running the power play, but the Stars have needed a lot of forward help with the injuries they’ve had this year, and Hryckowian is really growing into an important bottom-six piece of this roster. Great to see him score his first goal tonight. Well-deserved.
Good breakdown of Florida forecheck effectiveness.