Game 2 WCSF AfterThoughts: If It Were Easy, Everyone Would Do It

And it most certainly will not be easy

Winnipeg is a very different team from Colorado.

The Jets aren’t the offensive dynamo that Colorado was, but that doesn’t mean they’re any worse. In fact, a quick look-see at the NHL standings tells me that every other team in the league was worse than the Jets this year. Whaddya know?

Still, Dallas has shown why they were hot on Winnipeg’s heels for a minute there down the stretch, despite missing Miro Heiskanen, as they continue to do. The Dallas Stars are a deep team that can do things with multiple lines that many team can only do with one, if any.

Put it this way: at 5-on-5, Dallas has had the better of play in both games of this series. The metrics, the shots, and the scoring chances have all been solidly in Dallas’s favor when each side has a full line and defense pair on the ice.

In fact, at 5-on-5 in Game 2, Dallas held the Jets to just 1.15 expected goals. That’s a total lower than anything either Dallas or Colorado ever put up in the last round, including Dallas’s pitiful Game 4 drubbing when Oettinger was pulled after two periods, when they mustered 1.24 in expected offense.

Granted, the Jets stopped pressing quite as hard in this one after they had a 3-0 lead to sit on, but Game 1 wasn’t all that much better for Scott Arniel, as the Jets only put up 1.98 expected goals in the Stars’ victory.

They aren’t a team that levels the cannons at you from the drop and dares you to get into a track meet with them. The Jets are calculated and deep, and they stack the blue line when defending zone entries and try to kill you on neutral zone turnovers with their very good group of middle-six forwards, and if that doesn’t profit them anything, they can always just wait for their fantastic top line to generate the offense for them.

And they had plenty of time to wait, because this game was one where Dallas looked slow early on, and they played slow to match. A big part of that is going down two-rip just seven minutes into the game, and no matter how you feel about the good fortunte

They also, with Josh Morrissey back in the lineup, have a group of defensemen playing very, very well. Dylan Samberg is a revelation, and Neal Pionk, Dylan DeMelo, and even Haydn Fleury have all been playing better than I would have expected, had you asked me to predict their performance back in November.

So I guess this is just my way of saying that the Jets may have gotten more than enough fortunate bounces in this one to balance out Mikko Rantanen’s deflected hat trick goal on Wednesday, but they also looked like the better team for long stretches, and that’s kind of the idea. They did not win the Presidents’ Trophy¹ by accident.

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And yeah, now that Winnipeg have Morrissey back, Dallas is nothing going to get much for free. That means capitalizing on chances and not getting too gun-shy, which is always the risk when facing a goalie that is feeling confident and has the talent to back up that feeling.

If Hellebuyck were an easy goalie to solve, someone would have done it by now. Everyone talked in the last series about how Hellebuyck doesn’t deal as well with screens, and how his glove hand is somewhat vulnerable. Tonight, his glove hand made a ten-bell stop on Dadonov, and he didn’t have to find many pucks through screens, because the Stars didn’t get many there.

And with the Jets’ transition game looking much better with Morrissey back (and the power play even moreso), the Stars are going to have more periods like the second one from this game, where they’re generating chances, not scoring, and surrendering some really good ones themselves.

Jake Oettinger was really good tonight, truly; this game wasn’t a failing by him at all, and he looked almost annoyed at times, but poised just the same. Hellebuyck has shown he’s susceptible to getting rattled when another team starts solving him; Dallas just needs to give themselves more than 17 seconds to do that, next time. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?

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Winnipeg’s power play has been the big weapon up front to balance out their top-tier goaltending, and despite the favorable bounce on the blocked shot/post/bounce that led to Vilardi’s tap-in goal, their power play was dangerous in a way that Colorado’s rarely was.

As for the Stars, they had two power plays in the first period (and no more until garbage time), either of which might have gotten them back into the game. But they saw only two good chances on the first set, and they didn’t even get so much as a blocked shot off during the second power play before Jamie Benn’s “trip” on Adam Lowry cut it short.

If Connor Hellebuyck is back to his old self, then Dallas is going to need to find a way to capitalize on their best chances, which means the power play. Because, and I don’t know if you know this or not, Connor Hellebuyck has studied goaltending a lot.

How much, you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked, because here’s what Hellebuyck said last round after some of his struggles against St. Louis:

For the Stars, in a way, this was probably as good a game as any for Connor Hellebuyck to put up this kind of performance. With the goals Winnipeg got to stake them to that early lead, you probably aren’t mad about pairing them with the Vezina-winning (surely) goalie’s best performance of the postseason to date. Get all the bad stuff over with at once, you know?

I mean, think about it this way: how frustrating would it have been if the Stars had crawled back and tied it, only for Winnipeg to win on a goal like the Esa Lindell bank shot? This is way better. You should be glad for this, is what I realize I am now saying, so maybe I should find a way out of this sentence nope too late.

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Wyatt Johnston’s line again played the bulk of their time against the Winnipeg top line. And Johnston, Robertson, and Marchment/Dadonov (a later swap after Marchment was moved back up with Duchene) actually did really well.

That red dot on the left rink is the goofy Esa Lindell skate goal, but otherwise the house was pretty well protected, whereas you can see the shots “against” on the left rink are pretty weighted against Scheifele.

On specials teams (the right-side diagram) it was of course reversed, as you’d expect, with that Vilardi goal noted in red again. But If DeBoer takes home ice and basically does the same thing Scott Arniel did by choice tonight, I wouldn’t fault him for it.

Jason Robertson, by the way, looked really good tonight. He looked like one of the few players with jump, and he had a couple of great chances that came from aggressive reads at the right time (and a 2-on-1 given up by an aggressive play at a very bad time, admittedly).

There’s something there with that Johnston-Robertson duo, and I’d bet we see it with Dadonov again in Game 3. How Marchment and Benn get sorted out after Benn’s rough start to the series is anyone’s guess, though.

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Bichsel, Rantanen, Benn, and Seguin all had stick fouls for penalties tonight, if Bichsel’s cross-check belongs in that category.

I don’t know what a coach does to avoid losing their mind when players take penalties like Seguin’s in the first period, but I hope DeBoer has some sort of calming routine for his blood pressure’s sake, as much as anything. I know I’d be struggling to keep a cool head after the power plays Dallas has given away at times in this postseason. “Self-inflicted” and “unlucky” were two terms he used afterward, and that seems about right.

Speaking of which, DeBoer sounded a bit frustrated at the end of the night when a reporter asked him how the Stars can avoid having to flip the puck out rather than exit their zone with possession. DeBoer declined to answer it.

However, Seguin drew two power plays as well, so give him credit for a discount version of the Marchment Experience tonight, if you’d like. If that Duchene shot goes in rather than off the post, maybe things feel a whole lot better for them after 60 minutes. Who knows?

Anyway, Dallas needed Seguin’s line to win a game last series; they can’t wait for Mikko Rantanen to win another three in this one.

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Dallas’s best chance to get a power play goal early came on a very smart read by Rantanen, who saw what Winnipeg’s PK was doing and exploited a weakness.

Here, Harley has just fed the puck down to Rantanen, who one-touches the puck across to Duchene, seeing that both defenders are cheating low to guard against the pass to Hintz at the crease.

It catches Winnipeg’s penalty kill flat-footed, and you can see Demelo (#2 in blue), rather than attacking the puck, turn and close on Hintz at the net, realizing Duchene might try to send it right back for a far-post tap-in. They very much did not want Hintz to score.

So Duchene takes the space down low and edges into a prime area of the low slot before firing a puck that his left-shot self doesn’t have the optimal angle for. It rings the far post, and goes wide.

Winnipeg’s power play post was the right angle for them to score on, and Dallas’s wasn’t. Sometimes it just that simple. But that was a great bit of passing from Rantanen, and whether it was from pre-scouting the Jets’ PK or just reading the setup in the moment, the Stars will need more of that sort of brilliant passing to punish Winnipeg’s aggressive penalty kill (what team isn’t bringing an aggressive PK these days?).

Oh, and also, Hellebuyck robbed a couple of players with brilliant saves, too, including that glove-cheater miracle on Dadonov. Sometimes it’s also that simple. Great players do great things, like Rantanen did last game.

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As for Oettinger, though, he never really had a chance in this one. That first goal is a raw deal, where the Stars had killed 3:18 of a double-minor right off the bat, only to have a Cody Ceci block turn into a re-do before Oettinger could reset from flinching to stop the initial shot, and that allowed just enough of a gap for the post to be visible, and that was all that was required.

The second goal was just dumb, and don’t you dare say Lindell did anything wrong there. He absolutely can’t let that pass get across to the back door for a dunk, and his skate is turned almost perpendicular to the goal line.

But a puck is a disc, and it’s spinning, and physics are tough to do at high speeds. I don’t think Lindell could put that puck in if he tried nine times out of ten, but maybe not trying was the trick in this game.

The third goal was a goaltender’s nightmare a hard shot that deflects wide of the near post, only to rebound off the backboard and pop out to the other post. You can’t possibly track that entire journey once it goes behind you, so you have to try to turn your head the right direction after it bounces behind the net (again, after being deflected on its way in) to make sure you don’t abandon your near post and look foolish if it rebounds back the way it came.

Honestly, given all that, Oettinger does pretty well here. But wait, why is Lyubushkin on his knees?

Well if you go back just a tick, you can see that Lyubushkin tracks the puck as well, except he catches Oettinger’s stick in his gut as Oettinger has to counterbalance to push across (you can picture what that arm motion looks like if think about it), and that stick to the tummy slows down Lyubushkin just enough to prevent him from closing on Lowry with his stick, as he otherwise would have been able to do.

Bad breaks, good bounces, whatever. This wasn’t the Stars’ game. I hope you enjoyed your Friday night witnessing it.

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But forget the game for a moment, because I’ve been wanting to talk about something, and now is as good a time as any.

Edmonton has a million comeback wins this postseason, or something like that. The Stars, meanwhile, have spotted their opponent the lead eight times, with Game 5 in Dallas being the only exception.

Every team is “trying” to score first. That’s the whole idea of hockey. But aside from Wyatt Johnston going down and clowning Mackenzie Blackwood in the blink of an eye, they’ve otherwise had to come back in games after falling behind.

Psychologically, I wonder about that. I wonder if a game feels more exhausting when you’re constantly having to get back into it, but I also wonder if it’s given the Stars an extra layer of mental insulation, the fact that they’ve come back from 1-0 (or more) four different times in the playoffs thus far.

I wonder how you coach players like this group, who have plenty of playoff games under the belts of even players like the 21-year-old Wyatt Johnston (22 on Wednesday), who has scored huge goals in three different Game 7s in his career. And then he went and put a mostly open backhand chance off the post of a half-empty net in this one, presumably just because he’s annoyed he can’t rent a car yet. I tell ya, kids these days.

No, these players (outside of Tyler Seguin a lifetime ago) haven’t won it all—which absolutely changes you, I believe—but they have seen everything else there is to see. Many of them, at least.

Panic is clearly not a problem in that room. Lian Bichsel and Alex Petrovic continue to look like they could handle more minutes than they’re given, and that’s not an indictment on the coaching staff, who actually kept Harley and Lindell’s minutes within reason, in this one. It’s a testament to how deep Dallas is, that they have a third defense pairing that you genuinely wouldn’t worry about against any line Winnipeg has. They just don’t have that “ehhhhh” group of players that most teams have at the margins of their roster.

That’s a very good thing. But it’s also a very sobering thing, because it means nothing is guaranteed. You might have the right attitutde, the right approach, and even the experience. And your number still might not come up.

This is one of the hardest truths in life, I think, for us to deal with. We all want to believe that our work means something, that our suffering isn’t in vain, that our dedication and diligence will be recognized in some way, by those who matter.

In sports, you can do everything right, but you might not win. That’s a good lesson, because it’s one of the truest ones there is.

The Stars as a team are well-constructed, even without Miro Heiskanen, which is something I wouldn’t have believed they could be, six months ago. Jim Nill has found a way to build a roster that Pete DeBoer has found a way to deploy en route to 50 wins out of 82 and yet another huge first-round series against a Goliath of an opponent.

These are impressive things. The Stars, as an organization, are an impressive one

And how you handle a loss like this one, or even a goal like that second one, probably tells you a lot about how strong you are. As a player, as a coach, or whoever. And I think the Stars have shown they’re a lot stronger than most.

Nothing is guaranteed, though. For any player in the playoffs, that strength might only mean, as it did for Joe Pavelski, that they’ll be able to shrug at the end of the year, pack their gear away, and drive away from the rink for the last time in their career without feeling crippled with regret. Because when you don’t win, everything else just feels hollow, for a while.

Some players need that anger, that fear of failure, that refusal to accept anything less than everything, because they are named Nathan MacKinnon. And in the playoffs, coaches kind of demand that sort of investment from everyone. You’ve made it here, to this moment. Don’t leave anything on the table.

And maybe you get that investment from all 20 guys every night, and things still end without a parade. What then? And in the meantime, when every game feels like the most important one you’ve ever played, what does that sort of journey do a person, night in and night out? I wonder.

I’ve had a job or two like that, where a day can end with a huge accomplishment or a bitter defeat. It’s not sports, but it was still real, for me. And man, those jobs take their toll in the long run. Probably we’re all really meant to be farmers, waiting for crops to do their thing over long periods, knowing the rain is entirely out of our control all along. That at least would teach you what you really can’t control, and how prepared you have to be, all the same.

I am not a farmer, but I do think sports reflect real things back at us. And after a game like this, I wonder if the Stars might tend to play some of their best games after losses precisely because the losses are the best teachers of all, showing you just how powerless you really are. I suppose we’ll see on Sunday (afternoon!) if there’s anything to that theory or not.

And hey, Sunday afternoon is Mother’s Day. I suppose mothers know a thing or two about what you can’t control. Because let me tell you, kids these days…

1. Yes, it’s Presidents’ Trophy, as in “the trophy belonging to all of the presidents.” The NHL used to have presidents, but Gary Bettman put a stop to that. He put a stop to a lot of things, except for trying to make the NHL happen in Atlanta, which is his version of “so fetch.”