Game 2 WCQF AfterThoughts: All's Well, That Blackwell
It's the playoffs now, for real
For all the talk about Mikko Rantanen and Nathan MacKinnon, the final battle of this game came down to the two players who played the fewest minutes for their respective teams in this one: Colin Blackwell and Miles Wood.
Wood is #28 in white, Blackwell #15 in green.
After Wood attempts to bring the puck into the zone, Wood did what a whole lot of players did in this game, and lost the puck as he crossed the blue line, and it bounces away, leaving all three Avalanche forwards caught low (instead of the Stars, for once).
Blackwell busts down the ice with his plus-plus speed with Sam Steel, against Colorado’s two remaining defenders.
You can see Miles Wood on the far left, trying to clean up his mess by poke-checking the puck from Blackwell as he attempts to shoot the puck, with Steel getting inside Sam Girard at the netfront.
Blackwell would get the shot off, while Wood’s desperate poke check sends him stumbling over the prone Johnson in front of him. The first shot would be saved, but it wouldn’t get swept away. It would lie in wait for the next volunteer just a few feet outside the goal mouth.
Blackwell would get to the rebound before Wood, with the goaltender brilliantly named for both of them caught deep in his net, with the only other defender on the wrong side of Steel, who has created space for Blackwell to rush in and send this puck where it belongs.
Wood was far from the only player to turn over the puck in overtime, let alone the entire game.
But as wonderful as it was to see a depth guy like Blackwell get rewarded, think how crushing this mistake must feel to a player lower in the lineup, like Wood.
Then, travel back to last year’s Game 1 against Colorado in Dallas. That game also went to overtime, if you’ll recall. And the game was won when an Avalanche depth player busted down the ice and turned the corner on Miro Heiskanen, of all people.
That player was Miles Wood.
Hockey, man. It’ll raise you up and bring you down. But you can’t always be prepared for how low the lows can be.
Trivia: do you remember the last playoff overtime goal Dallas scored at home, at American Airlines Center?
It was Joe Pavelski. Though that goal came with a 3-0 series deficit, so this one probably meant a bit more in the moment.
One things different about this year: In overtime: everyone played, including the third defense pair and fourth line (duh).
Now, that doesn’t mean it was an easy night. Harley played nearly 36 minutes, and Lindell 31. The big guys got leaned on. Mikko Rantanen even played 26 minutes, leading the forwards.
But overall, the Stars were able to roll their lines and use their third defense pair relatively frequently. That’s a far cry from last year, when the Stars played nearly two rounds with a sixth defenseman DeBoer didn’t trust for more than a few minutes early on, most nights.
I asked Harley Monday morning if it had been tough played over half the first period of Game 1 en route to another 27-28 minutes on the night, and he pointed to the games he and Lindell sat out down the stretch, saying these games are what they were resting for.
Harley often has a bit of a matter-of-fact sense of humor when talking about his game, but tonight proved his point: he had to carry a big load, and he had some very nice moments while doing so—including a goal.
Jake Oettinger wasn’t great early in this game. Nathan MacKinnon’s power play goal looked like it was just in the right spot underneath his glove, whereas Jack Drury beat him over the glove, much to Drury’s delight.
I don’t blame Oettinger much for the third goal (backhand, top shelf also over the glove) but I think he’d like another crack at those first two glove saves.
I also think Oettinger made his biggest saves in the third period and overtime. So, if you have to choose…probably those are better periods for your goalie to shut the door than the first two.
(They usually don’t let me choose, though.)
Dadonov’s goal was massive, too, starting with a huge hit by Jamie Benn to prevent a quick puck movement, and then followed by a smart curl up and shot by Wyatt Johnston, knowing there were bodies at the net.
It was, I’m sure, part of the Stars’ gameplan. Get quick shots to the net when you have a lane and you have traffic. Hunt for rebounds after that.
They would score goals 3 and 4 in that way, and you could see how much it meant to them.
Here’s the best (grainy) photo of Dadonov jumping for actual joy I could grab at 4 in the morning:
Much as the big superstar play is a satisfying one, I think putting in the hard work and seeing things go the way you plan for them to has to be equally rewarding, particularly for players like Dadonov, who have the perspective of a long NHL career, and who knows these moments aren’t a given.
Funny enough, I chatted with Dadonov for a bit Monday morning about playing with Hintz and Granlund (before being moved back with Benn and Johnston), and he was his typically cordial self. He said at this point, they’ve all played with almost everyone, so they know what they’re supposed to do. Line chemistry might be overrated, in other words (my words).
But in this case, seeing the line from two playoff runs ago reunited and scoring a huge goal with every player contributing a key moment? Man, that’s cool. That’s just really cool.
Through 60 minutes, the Stars probably deserved better than overtime with 34 seconds of shorthanded time to kill.
They had been getting chances in tight, and Blackwood was struggling to control rebounds. It was a pretty successful execution of their game plan on offense, but that had to make it frustrating to look so bad on a couple of power plays in the second period, with the Avalanche capping that stretch by scoring a third goal of their own to take the lead just before the second intermission.
I don’t care about “Deserve to win-o-meters” or anything, but in terms of which team pressured more, it was Dallas. And while Colorado could easily have won this game multiple times, the Stars got better as it went along, whereas Colorado’s most notable players in the final 25 minutes or so were Nathan MacKinnon and Valeri Nichushkin—but not always in the best ways.
Tyler Seguin one-timers on the power play have not gotten old, it turns out.
The veteran got a feed from Jamie Benn via Marchment, and he hammered it home from his favorite spot in the circle, where he and Jamie Benn combined for so many goals last decade, before life got Complicated.
The scary thing here is how close Blackwood came to stopping the shot, which Seguin took a tiny bit off of, I think, in order to aim it. It went under Blackwood’s blocker arm, ticking it a bit on its way through. But Seguin got it past him, and that was all that mattered.
I will never, ever get tired of watching Tyler Seguin score goals. And how did he celebrate the goal after the game, as he was waiting to do postgame interviews while Colin Blackwell took his turn in front of the cameras?
“Let’s go, we’re dads,” said Seguin, talking over the couple dozen cameras, phones, and scribes crowded around Blackwell. “We gotta get home to bed. I haven’t stayed up past midnight in forever.”
Blackwell also has children at home, as do…phew. A lot of Stars players, come to think of it (including Jamie Benn, now).
Also, it was like 12:20am on a Monday night. Seguin, as usual, probably knows what he’s talking about.
Also, it is 3:00am as I’m finishing this back at home. This playoff schedule is ridiculous enough before you factor in nearly a full overtime and a variety of postgame duties.
I may not be built for the playoffs, folks. Time to dig deep from the keyboard side of things, too.
Those three power plays for Dallas in the final ten minutes of the second period really sucked momentum out of their game. The O’Connor goal to cap that off felt almost deserved after three missed opportunities to grab a lead the Stars really wanted to have going into the final period at home.
Instead, they gave it away to a fourth-line forward on the other team.
Narratives are easy things when you have depth players scoring big goals, but there’s truth in this one: the Avalanche PK got the better of the Stars’ top forwards, and they paid the price for not capitalizing on it.
Thankfully, that narrative about depth players and goals would come back to bite the Avalanche in the end.
By the way: what does this remind you of?
For me, it was this goal from December 1:
They say these things balance out.
The Avalanche had a few different moments in the early portion of the game where a defenseman stopped behind the net with the puck, while the Stars forechecker was content to wait for them in the low slot, with the crowd booing the patient/stubborn defenseman holding the puck and standing still.
It seemed like a new wrinkle in the teams’ respective breakout/forechecking strategies, with Dallas determined not to get beat up the ice as easily by sitting back in their 1-2-2 with a tad more space.
Or, you know, it’s just something that happens all the time, and the playoffs make everything seem more meaningful. You decide.
When things got moving, this game felt really sloppy, though no less great for being so.
At one point, I asked a couple of people if they thought the ice was bad or something, because it seemed like an unusually large number of players were falling or losing pucks.
Jared Bednar didn’t think the ice was exceptionally bad (or at least didn’t want to say so):
“No, I don’t know that the ice was bad, I’m sure it’s deteriorating throughout the course of the game like that because you’re covering so much of it,” Bednar said. “But I just think in general you have to keep your nose over the puck, you have to take a split second to settle pucks down and you have to be making the right decisions. The ice is not an excuse for 90 percent of the turnovers. Or misplayed pucks. You got to have the poise and wherewithal to know your surroundings and the awareness and make the right decision with it.’’
Cale Makar said that the ice in Dallas is “usually not one of the better ones,” but he likewise didn’t blame it, pointing out that it was the same for both teams.
I wanted to add one quick note about today’s media meeting with Tom Gaglardi. I was there along with a few other local media members, and I’ll have more about the conversation later this week.
The Dallas Morning News broke it into a few different stories today, if you’re anxious to check out some of the raw quotes. There were some interesting nuggets from Gaglardi, but I don’t think anything was said that is absolutely urgent, so I’m going to find the best way to package a 30-minute group interview into something worth reading. Stay tuned for that.
Lineups
The Stars began the game with this lineup
Granlund-Hintz-Dadonov
Marchment-Duchene-Seguin
Benn-Johnston-Rantanen
Bäck-Steel-Blackwell
Lindell-Ceci
Harley-Lyubushkin
Bichsel-Petrovic
Oettinger in goal
The Avalanche, as you may have heard, made a lineup change today, inserting…Miles Wood.
Gabriel Landeskog returned to the ice for warm-ups for the first time in three years, leading to rampant announcements about his return. But after some crafty cloak-and-dagger stuff, Jared Bednar ended up scratching Landeskog.
My bet continues to be that, if he can play at all, he’ll return in Game 3 in front of a home crowd to delirious celebration.
Game Beats
Valeri Nichushkin had the first decent look for Dallas after a neutral zone turnover led to him rushing in one-on-one and testing Oettinger’s blocker side, but the puck was swallowed up.
The hitting ramped up early, and the Stars’ fourth line got into it during play, with some post-whistle disputes after Oskar Bäck put a puck on net.
Artturi Lehkonen then got a slick feed from MacKinnon and rushed in all alone, but Oettinger made a crucial and huge save with his right pad along the ice on a terrifying scoring chance.
Colorado had the better of play early, with Dallas having to chip pucks out and make 50/50 plays at the far blue line too often for comfort. But then, they say it’s not how you start.
Dallas finally threaded with a good bit of work from the Johnston and Duchene lines back to back, but a couple of pucks slid across the crease, while a low-high one-timers got sent wide of the far side by Granlund.
Would you believe that Mason Marchment took an unnecessary tripping penalty after the Stars turned a puck over on a hopeful neutral zone pass up the ice? Well, you should, because they did.
And then a far-too-simple shot from MacKinnon from the circle beat Oettinger.
You can see the makings of what happened above: the puck squeezed just underneath his glove, on a shot he’ll want another crack at. But then again, that’s exactly where MacKinnon wants to put that—it’s a lot easier to move a glove up quickly than down quickly, you know.
The Stars nearly evened it up when this rebound from Rantanen made it to Johnston, but because time is endlessly cruel, its waves caused a bump in the ice, and the puck jumped over the stick of Johnston:
The Avalanche continued getting great looks, including a glorious one by Erik Johnson, who beat two Stars forwards down from the point for a wide-open chance. But then again, it is Erik Johnson, and he is not the most dangerous shooter at this point in his career, which is to say Oettinger Handled Things.
After a few more points shots with traffic from both sides (more by Colorado than Dallas), the Stars got their chance to even things up with 2:27 to go when Roope Hintz drew a penalty by beating Parker Kelly down the ice on a two-on-one to force a hooking minor.
Rantanen would hit the post from the circle through a screen, but nothing came of it. The second unit came out with 40 seconds to go, but after an Avalanche forward fell on the entry, and Jamie Benn just kept carrying the puck unimpeded until he got to the net.
He curled underneath and found Marchment for a good shot…but the forward made a great pass: to Tyler Seguin, who unleashed the Tyler Seguin One-Timer to tie the game.
Blackwood actually got a piece of the shot, but because Seguin’s one-timer is stronger than the average one-timer, the puck got through anyway to tie the game.
The Stars nearly took the lead a few seconds after that, when Colin Blackwell fended off a backchecking Makar to put a dangerous shot on Blackwood, with Steel following up for a rebound.
The puck couldn’t get stuffed in, however, and the Stars had to be content with taking a tie game to the intermission.
If you felt like the Avalanche had more shots in the first period, that’s because they did. But if you look at the locations of said shots, you can see a definite pattern:
The Stars had maybe three shot attempts from above the circles, whereas the Avs had ten. There’s just more willingness to fire from distance with Colorado.
Second Period
Evgenii Dadonov swapped places with Mikael Granlund on the Hintz/Benn lines, reuniting the classic Benn-Johnston-Dadonov line to start the second while setting up the all-Finland line up top.
But it wouldn’t be a forward who would be the story early in the second. After some hard work by the fourth line, Sam Steel found Thomas Harley in the middle of the ice. The puck actually slipped of Harley’s stick, but that worked out well as it led to Coyle going down to block a shot that didn’t happen. Harley grabbed the puck back and stepped aside, firing again, and finding the net past Blackwood’s glove.
It was a big moment for Dallas—its first lead in the series—but it wouldn’t last long.
The Avs’ fourth line countered with a great shift of their own, as they won the puck quickly in the corner off a 2-on-2 rush, and Logan O’Connor found Jack Drury with a gorgeous backhand saucer pass, which Drury quickly fired over Oettinger’s glove to tie the game back up.
The puck might have ticked off Rantanen’s stick and sailed higher as a result, but it’s tough for me to see, so you decide.
The Stars had a huge, huge kill shortly after that when Mikael Granlund got tagged for tripping, but some very solid work from Oettinger and a couple of missed shots by Colorado (which could be a theme in this series) let them off the hook.
Mason Marchment then put Joel Kiviranta on the hook when he got cross-checked into his own man, putting Dallas back on the power play. Or, uh, something like that. Marchment may have, uh, helped the call happen. Look, you can’t prove there was a power play, and watching those two minutes wouldn’t help support any such theory. The Stars failed to get anything set up whatsoever, and both teams were 1-for-2 with seven minutes remaining in the period.
Brock Nelson had a chance to make a big impact after Harley lost the puck in his own zone, and Nichushkin was able to poke it over to Nelson for a chance on the doorstep, but Oettinger smothered it with his big frame.
The Stars got another chance to pretend like there was a power play happening when Josh Manson got nailed for interference against the Finnish Line. And this time, the Stars remembere they had an extra skater, as Hintz set up Duchene for a great tap-in that Blackwood’s right pad rejected.
The end of the power play got exciting, when both teams failed to corral pucks on rough ice, which led to rushes for both, including a 2-on-1 for Colorado that Nichushkin (I believe) put wide of a cage with space.
The end of the power play featured another penalty drawn when Logan O’Connor got a stick into Granlund’s skates, during which the Stars generated a dangerous slapshot with the extra attacker that Blackwood gloved away.
But it was all part of O’Connor’s plan, because after another two minutes of either great penalty killing by Colorado or listless power play work from Dallas (the crowd booed its disapproval), O’Connor got out of the box and joined a 3-on-3 rush, eventually fighting through a Marchment check to score the Marchment goal against Winnipeg on a high backhand shot with his back to the net.
It was a dagger goal by Colorado after Dallas failed to score on three straight power plays in the final ten minutes of the second.
3-2 Colorado was the score with a really important third period awaiting Dallas.
Third Period
From the drop, it was apparent the Stars were going to have trouble gaining the Avalanche zone in the final period. Multiple dump-ins weren’t recovered, and the Stars took four or five attempts at getting possession in the final third, in the final third. (That’s not a typo.) Colorado was well and truly digging in.
The teams then exchanged giveaways in horrible spots in front of their respective nets. But Jamie Benn made no bones about taking it to the house, and the officials had to pause for a video review after the whistle just to make sure the puck hadn’t trickled across the line. (It hadn’t.)
Play in the third period got sloppy as it went on, with multiple skaters tripping over the blue line, pucks falling off sticks of usually-reliable players like Wyatt Johnston, and even Artturi Lehkonen falling in open ice on a near-breakaway, only to recover in time to test Oettinger’s glove hand with a wicked wrister the goalie snuffed out.
MacKinnon and Bichsel got into it after the whistle, with everyone going bananas upon everyone else.
Roope Hintz made another great rush—he’s been really good in both games of this series—but his quick backhand against the grain just caught Blackwood’s pad.
What didn’t catch Blackwood’s pad was Evgenii Dadonov, who once again came up huge in a big moment, collecting a rebound on a point shot and stuffing it through Blackwood’s pads, and blowing the roof off the building.
Johnston curled and fired a puck with bodies at the net, and it pinballed off multiple bodies.
But Dadonov found it before Kiviranta did, and he stuffed it through Blackwood’s pads before getting cross-checked.
I suspect he won’t remember the pain of the cross-check.
Colorado started playing a bit nervously from there, and Dallas got a couple of chances off turnover and falling skaters—the ice must’ve been really bad, right?—with Benn just missing the near top corner, and Johnston dangling through almost everyone. Rantanen even tried to surprise Blackwood with a shot through bodies off a faceoff, but the goalie made a nice glove save.
The crowd started chanting Blackwood’s name later in the third period, and you wonder if that has any effect in a tie game, when the goalie hasn’t really allowed a soft one.
But those three fruitless power plays in the second period finally came back to haunt Dallas when Rantanen got nailed for hooking behind the Colorado net. It was a penalty you hate to see called in that situation, as Rantanen’s stick was in a bad spot, but with Manson kinda hanging onto it, as well (as players are wont to do), and it was enough to draw the call with 1:20 to go in a tied game.
The nice thing about that was that Dallas had a guaranteed whistle before the end of the power play, and they would get to it, thanks to a crucial Oettinger glove save on Nečas from the dot, and some aggressive penalty-killing that prevented prolonged puck movement. Dallas made it to overtime, but with another 34 seconds of power play time to kill—and with Colorado having 15 minutes to draw up exactly the play to take advantage of it.
Overtime
Dallas killed the remaining penalty time with nothing but a Nečas shot from distance into Oettinger’s tummy, and after that, they got a series of good looks, with Seguin feeding Marchment for a cross-crease one-two chance that Blackwood got a pad over to save, though it didn’t look like Marchment got as much as he wanted on the shot.
From there, it was typical overtime: pushes, probes, and every shot causing you to hold your breath. And without any TV timeouts, you could barely register one chance before another one happened.
When the whistle finally came to let the shovels come out to clean the ice with just four minutes remaining (well past the halfway mark when they can do so), it was because Bichsel had caught the butt-end of Miles Wood’s stick in the face, sending him to the ice, and off it. From what I saw afterward, he will be all right.
But despite all the moments of missed pucks, turnovers, and general unevenness, it was Miles Wood whose mistake would make the difference, when he turned it over at the offensive blue line to Colin Blackwell, who rushed in on a 2-on-2 look and cut to the middle of the ice, only for Blackwood to stop the puck.
But the puck would sit there, spinning like the end of Inception, waiting for somebody to grab it. And after Wood failed to get back and stop Blackwell, he ended up having to hop over a prone Erik Johnson, leaving Blackwell plenty of space to hop in and grab the puck.
He did that, firing it over Blackwood, who was off his angle after the initial save.
And if you want a great representation of how vast the space is between jubilation and despair, check out Miles Wood at the bottom of this screecap, holding his head with his hands just moments before he bends at the waist, staring into the ice after his was the mistake that happened to end the game.
The Stars fly to Colorado Tuesday, and they’ll play on Wednesday. Then they have two days until Game 4, which isn’t until Saturday.
It’s best-of-five now. Probably a good idea not to lose Game 1 of the remaining five-game series, seeing as you went to all that trouble to make it happen.
Hard to recall an OT with so few stoppages, impressive by both teams to be able to keep rolling over changes without anyone getting burned. Glad Steel was able to stop short of the crease or else I was afraid we'd have another goalie interference debate to sort out.
That might have been the best playoff OT I've ever seen