Game 17 AfterThoughts: Post Game Recap

After the Stars’ first loss at American Airlines Center this season, Esa Lindell led off the media scrum with the cold, hard truth: “Quite poor from us, I think. We started slow.” And indeed, going down 3-0 against a team with just six wins in its first 16 games would qualify as a slow start.

Lindell went on to say that the Stars’ pre-scout said the Ducks were going to come out hard and physical, and the Stars didn’t match that. And while post-game quotes are often boilerplate, this was a game where I think that’s exactly what happened. The Ducks simply overwhelmed the Stars for the first 10 minutes of the game, and the two goals they put up had the Stars rattled.

I wondered whether Pete DeBoer might have considered calling a timeout somewhere in there just to shake the team by the shoulders, but I really don’t see how you can do that so early in a game. Pete DeBoer was candid afterwards, saying that every team is going to have a game like this at some point in the season, where you just don’t match a team’s effort level despite being the superior team on paper.

And for all that, it still took a couple of good bounces (doesn’t it always?) for the Ducks to capitalize on their dominant effort in the first period.

The Ducks jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a point shot from Olen Zellweger, who whipped a shot from distance off a face-off win that must have done one of two things: 1. Deflected off Duchene’s stick initially and tailed far side on DeSmith, or sailed past DeSmith because he gets fouled up by Terry’s stick hitting his glove just before the puck gets there. Or perhaps both. Duchene called the goal was like “a sinker in baseball,” so if it didn’t deflect off his stick, it might as well have, given how severely it tailed the opposite direction from where it started.

As for the contact with DeSmith’s glove by Terry’s stick, you can see the contact even more clearly in Sam Nestler’s tweet here. DeBoer said after the game that they discussed it, but that they didn’t think it was a viable challenge. And, given that DeSmith is outside the blue paint (and that the puck went in on the other side almost concurrently), the best you can probably hope for there is an incidental contact call, so a goaltender interference call was probably not worth the risk.

Then Anaheim continued to pour on the pressure, and it became 2-0 Ducks after another unfortunate bounce past a stick. First, Jamie Benn and Wyatt Johnston lost the puck over after almost feeding Logan Stankoven for a deadly shot. The Ducks sent the puck up along the boards, but not with any serious danger at first.

The puck gets chipped ahead for Brett Leason, and it skips ahead, to where Brendan Smith takes a swing and a miss at the puck, and Leason is moving so quickly that Smith barely even gets a stick on him before Leason is past him, catching up to the loose puck.

Dumba then has to make a split-second decision about whether to sell out for Leason, or to take his man in the slot and give Casey DeSmith a clean look at a shot from the wing. He chooses to take the passing lane, which is probably the right decision, in a vacuum.

Leason then loads up and beats DeSmith just over the right pad from the face-off circle with a shot that’s perfectly placed but also stoppable for an NHL goalie, as DeSmith would be the first to tell you.

Look, this game wasn’t on Casey DeSmith. DeBoer said that exact same thing afterwards. But it’s also true that Dostál had some huge saves at the other end, whereas DeSmith came up big a couple of times late, but not in the most crucial moment early. As DeBoer said, there are always going to be games like this.

Speaking of Games/Seasons Like This, Roope Hintz had a breakaway at 4v4 coming out of the intermission, but as his breakaways have seemed to go lately, he wasn’t able to beat the goaltender’s blocker hand. It’s a very odd thing when Roope Hintz isn’t beating goalies when he gets the opportunity, and you wonder if he’s close to breaking through. He’s got six goals in 17 games now, which works out to just about 30 goals, but he only has four assists, which is pretty crazy for him. It really does feel like he or Jason Robertson are going to have to figure things out sooner rather than later.

As the second period rolled along at 5-on-5, you could see that Pete DeBoer had come to a similar conclusion, as he juggled his lines. Afterwards, DeBoer said that Mavrik Bourque had some “jump, some confidence with the puck, carrying it.” DeBoer said they wanted to reward him, as they hadn’t seen enough of that sort of confidence through the first dozen games or so. And in a game where Bourque led the team in shots on goal with five and set up Lindell for a huge goal late, this is the sort of play you would certainly want to positively reinforce.

As a consequence of the line shuffling, though, Jason Robertson found himself on the left wing with Sam Steel and Oskar Bäck, while Mavrik Bourque moved up to center Benn and Stankoven. Wyatt Johnston moved up onto Roope Hintz’s wing opposite Dadonov, although Robertson would swap with Dadonov in the third period to load up the top line again, albeit to no avail. And while the talk was about rewarding Bourque, the move was a pretty clear indication of where DeBoer saw Robertson’s game through 20 minutes, too. It’s not the first time this season Robertson has been moved away from Hintz for part of a game, and one suspects it won’t be the last if they don’t start getting top-line production from their top line players.

There was a scary moment in the second when Thomas Harley got tangled up with Brock McGinn on a 1v1 opportunity, and McGinn went into the boards hard after taking a slapshot at speed against DeSmith, who stopped it. McGinn had to be helped off the ice, but he was walking down the tunnel under his own power. McGinn would not return to the game, however.

Harley was given a tripping minor as a result of it all, and it turned into a scoring chance for Ilya Lyubushkin of all people, who found himself on a shorthanded 2-on-1 with a wide-open look, and he ripped a shot off the elbow of the goal frame, proving that the only thing that can stop the offensive dominance of Lyubushkin is the goal itself.

That half-inch difference in shot trajectory would prove especially costly when the Ducks capitalized on the power play, as a low-to-slot pass slipped through the skates of Lyubushin and by the stick of Esa Lindell, finding Cutter Gauthier well-prepared to slam home his second career goal, making it 3-0 Ducks. It ended up being the game-winning goal, and it’s worth remembering that even if your power play isn’t contributing, the other team’s very well might be.

***

Tyler Seguin has never scored a regular-season goal against the Anaheim Ducks in 28 tries. This was attempt number 29, and I suspect a lot of folks in the crowd knew it. So when Seguin got a breakaway from the red line in after sensing a turnover and getting a stretch pass, the whole crowd had time to shoot up in their seats, and the roar built to a crescendo. But Seguin apparently parked his car on Walt Disney’s foot in a former life, so the underside of the crossbar managed to just barely foil him, kicking the puck down and out of the crease with as little margin for error as you can possibly imagine.

The broadcast had a great shot showing the mark Seguin’s shot made (and Lyubushkin’s on the corner, too), and man, if you can hit that part of the crossbar, I feel like the puck ends up going bar-down and in nine times out of ten. But this game was clearly that weird tenth time when it came to posts, or the 29th time in Seguin’s case.

Drew Helleson high-sticked Jamie Benn to send the Stars back to the power play, and it was a great chance to start digging out of the hole. But it wasn’t enough to vanquish whatever hex had been placed on their shooters in the first 40 minutes. Seguin once again got a golden chance, firing a one-timer from the slot that was eerily similar to Gauthier’s, except for the difference in proximity and result, and Dostál made the save once again.

Somehow, the second period would end with the score still 3-0 to Anaheim despite the Stars’ being given every chance to close the gap or eliminate it entirely. It had been a frustrating 40 minutes for Dallas, but the game still felt within reach, if only the Stars could burst Lukáš Dostál’s bubble.

And in a game that felt as frustrating as that first Florida game in Tampere, the Stars called upon the same goal scorer to get them going: Esa Lindell, who fired home a perfect little bump pass in the slot from Mavrik Bourque, who finally got rewarded for being one of the most creative players on the ice for the Stars all night. And, appropriately enough, Lindell’s shot went in off the post.

Leo Carlsson then tested one of the Stars’ posts off the rush for similar friendliness but the force field only seemed to be operating at the one end of the ice, and the puck glanced away to keep the Stars within two with over half the period left.

Wyatt Johnston nearly converted a beautiful chance just past the halfway mark. Really and truly, I’m thinking DeBoer had the right idea in the third period by just throwing all three of Johnston, Hintz, and Robertson together and letting them sort their respective scoring issues out. If anyone’s going to get them going at their usual pace, it’s got to be one another, right? I refuse to bet against players as good as these guys.

Wyatt Johnston had a stretch last year where every goalie looked like prime Hasek against him, but the difference was he had 9 goals at that point instead of 2. The surge is coming.

— Corey Sznajder (@allthreezones.bsky.social) 2024-11-19T03:26:09.616Z

Sam Steel made a rough decision at the top of the point that nearly torpedoed the comeback effort, turning the puck over to Vatrano for a Seguin-like breakaway. But DeSmith came up huge on the chance, keeping the Stars in the game with what looked like a huge turning point immediately afterwards. Because the old “save at one end, goal at the other” aphorism came into play once again, when Brendan Smith made another nice poke check in the defensive zone to turn the puck up the ice, where Duchene sent it to Seguin, who fed Duchene with a great up that Duchene took perfectly in stride, busting to the net and fending off the backcheck while simultaneously dekeing around Dostál to tuck the puck home, making it a 3-2 game with plenty of time left and even more momentum. It was a gorgeous play that you should watch again.

That filthy Matt Duchene goal. (I promise I won't Twitter double post that often)

— DavidCastilloAC (@davidcastillo.bsky.social) 2024-11-19T03:27:41.939Z

But it wasn’t to be, as Dallas just couldn’t quite sustain their initial post-goal push, and Anaheim turned a 2-on-1 that didn’t succeed (thanks to a desperation dive/poke check from Smith) into a follow-up chance that did, when Robertson wasn’t quite able to get to a feed from the corner before Jackson LaCombe caught the pass and moved to his backhand for a really nice tuck, though I’m sure a coach would say he ought to have been prevented from doing so. Anyway, that was the fourth goal of his NHL career, which you could probably guess since his name is “Jackson,” and every “Jackson” I know is between the ages of 10 and 25. That put the Ducks back up by two, and despite a couple of final chances, that’s how it would stay.

***

The major positives in this one start and end with Mavrik Bourque, I think. Duchene praised Bourque after the game for coming back from a groin injury in the preseason, and he mentioned how tough it is to come back from that injury, given how worried you are about re-injuring it. And, speaking as someone who suffered a groin injury in a slow-pitch softball game (I know, I know) a few years back, I can attest to how nervous I felt even trying to start jogging again, even six weeks afterwards. So it doesn’t really shock me that Bourque is only now starting to really find his game. Here’s hoping the confidence and the musculature both strengthen in equal measure.

If tonight was a preview of what’s to come, then Bourque may just be in for a solid season. But we’ve said this before about young players, or even about veteran players. In fact, we’ve said it about the Stars team as a whole. One great game is all well and good, but it doesn’t mean much if you can’t string a few of them together and build on them. That’s how confidence gets rolling. That’s why Seguin, Duchene, and Marchment look like they’re playing at a whole other level from every other forward line on the ice. For goodness’ sake, even when you account for score effects, the Duchene line was above 90% in expected goals in this game. It’s just unreal sometimes.

Part of that come back to forcing the coaches to keep you in the lineup. It’s why coaches like to have a reason to keep players in after a good game (and it’s worth noting that Colin Blackwell and Nils Lundkvist sat for the second game in a row in this one). DeBoer and his coaching staff would clearly love to see Bourque, Smith, and even Matt Dumba build on solid games and stay hot, then have other decent players ready to come in when needed. And right now, the Stars just might need some of their depth players to rotate in and out more frequently in order to get other guys rolling. That’s not fair, but in the NHL, you have to take your lumps and make your own breaks sometimes. Certainly the Ducks did that early in this one, and it ended up being enough.

Now the Stars have the unenviable task of facing the Sharks on Wednesday, who took them to a shootout at home a few weeks back, you may recall. After that, Dallas has some tougher games waiting on the east coast, so you’d hope they’ll take it to San Jose from the get go. But then, that’s what Lindell said they were told to do against Anaheim, and they got overhwhelmed in the neutral zone and outmuscled in their own zone. You just can’t wade into games in this league, and the Stars, while they’re perfectly fine at 11-6-0, can’t keep wading into this season, either. They don’t have to win even game 7-1, but they do need to stop losing games where the whole teams acknowledges they ought to have known better.

And, as with the top forward line, I’m quite a ways from betting against this group. It’s a long season, you know. But we’re 20% of the way through it now, and the Stars’ schedule isn’t going to get easier. We’ll see if they’re able to rise to the occasion 65 more times. And then a couple dozen more after that. It sounds easy when you only have to write about it.