Game 20 AfterThoughts: Giving Specials Teams the Third Degree after Third Period Implosion

We need to spend some time talking about special teams play in this one. Frankly, we could spend all of the time talking about it. Because Dallas lost a 6-4 game where they outscored Carolina 4-1 at even-strength and got more power plays than the home side. That’s a pretty unforgivable sort of game to lose, and to lose it in regulation is especially humiliating. And painful. And infuriating. Pick one, or all of them.

In fact, the Stars don’t have any loser points for overtime/shootout losses this year, and while that’s sometimes indicative of extra-time dominance, for Dallas, it has too often been a sign that they can’t squeeze more out of games when things go wrong. And boy howdy, did things go wrong in this one.

The Hurricanes gifted the Stars three power plays, with a couple of Too Much Mans minors and a Delay of Game to boot. Not only did Dallas go Ohfer on theirs, but they really went -2-for-3, given the two shorthanded goals (effectively) they surrendered. Meanwhile, Carolina went 2-for-2 on their power plays, because of course they did.

First, Matt Duchene’s dump-in attempt got knocked down on the Stars’ second power play, but it shouldn’t have resulted in the scoring chance it did, as Miro Heiskanen was with Sebastian Aho, and it looked like Logan Stankoven had caught up to Seth Jarvis. But a perfect pass from Aho eluded Stankoven, who had stopped skating in order to get on the puck side of Jarvis. And Jarvis immediately put the puck back against the grain on Oettinger almost blind, which worked out well for Carolina, as Oettinger had begun to slide across to his right, with Jarvis now all alone with the puck cutting that way.

Here’s a screenshot that I am just now realizing has Victory + time controls not all the way faded out on it, but hey, I won’t charge you for this one, so what’s it to ya?

I think Stankoven felt he had caught up to Jarvis here and started gliding to give himself more maneuverability to block the pass, but one more stride from Jarvis gets enough separation for Aho to find his tape with a slick saucer pass, and that left Stankoven on the outside looking in.

It was a sobering moment, as the Stars would end up not scoring on the remainder of the power play, meaning they had scored an early goal, then gotten two power plays on the road to an elite team, only to be stuck at 1-1.

This would be a good place to insert the tired old joke about “can they decline power plays,” because the Jarvis-Aho combo would burn the Stars again as Dallas’s third power play expired. A Carolina clearance rimmed around the boards, and only Thomas Harley went back to get it, as the rest of the Stars went to change, all of them presuming that Oettinger would stop the puck for Harley. But the puck eluded Oettinger, continuing to the far corner, and suddenly Harley found himself defending a 2-on-1 against the same pairing Heiskanen had faced earlier.

Harley attempted to block the pass, but Seth Jarvis is also an NHL player, and they tend to be good and passing. He easily nutmegged Harley, and Aho had no trouble punctuating the Stars’ power plays impotence for the second time in the game. It gave Carolina life, which ended up making the third period feel very different from the first two.

It was a completely inexcusable goal to allow, once where Dallas took Oettinger’s stopping the puck completely for granted, while Carolina busted up the ice and got rewarded. I haven’t yet heard DeBoer’s postgame comments, but you can bet he is going to focus on the lack of effort on that goal against. It’s just not something an NHL team can allow to happen, full top.

The power play can’t continue to fail to score, no matter what bounces do or don’t happen. The Duchene line has scored a ton of goals at 5-on-5, but this game was an example of how even an outstanding performance by one forward line can get easily negated if your special teams play isn’t going well. The Stars’ power play doesn’t have to score every night, but they can’t keep asking the rest of the team to carry them. And they definitely can’t shoot themselves in the foot.

We’re 20 games into the season, so I think it’s fair to say that, while Dallas’s power play is generating chances, they are absolutely not meeting the standard to which the power play on this team has been held under DeBoer’s tenure. And that has nothing to do with Steve Spott, and everything to do with the execution by the players. They simply have to be better.

Of course, I should mention that the Aho goal was technically an even-strength goal, but it happened like a second after the penalty expired, and it was all set up by the power play’s fruitless ending, so I’m going to go ahead and count it as a mental shorty for our purposes here.

Special teams ineptitude tends to have a knock-on effect, as you saw when Logan Stankoven absolutely got hooked on a crazy back-and-forth chance with the game tied in the third period, but with power plays at 3-0 Stars, NHL referees are always gonna look for a reason to turn a blind eye to a play like that. And when Heiskanen’s stick broke, only a brilliant Esa Lindell poke prevented the Canes from immediately countering.

It would only delay the inevitable, however, as the Hurricanes would finally get a power play on a Mason Marchment high stick, and Shayne Gostisbehere was able to walk in and fire one through traffic, under the bar through a ton of traffic to make it 4-3. And despite all of the chances Dallas had generated, Carolina’s three special teams* goals had them in control of a game the Stars really ought to have been in charge of by that point.

The Hurricanes would go up for good on a cavalcade of bad luck, but you have to give Carolina credit for what they did. First, Wyatt Johnston fanned on a shot in the offensive zone, then instinctively reached back and ended up taking the Stars’ second high-sticking penalty at the worst possible time. And while Dallas killed the majority of the ensuing penalty, Carolina kept the puck in the zone the entire time, completely exhausting the Dallas penalty kill.

And that meant Martin Necas had room to close in before unleashing a shot that magicked its way off skates aplenty before finding its way into the net. And while it felt like a bitter piece of bad luck, it also felt kind of like karmic justice, given all the chances Dallas had squandered. I’m sure there’s some game from like 2009 where Dallas pulled out a win like this one despite having no business getting two points, so just count this as justice. Balance must be achieved.

The power play needs more confidence right now. That means the best players need to step up and inspire confidence in the rest of the group. No coach can score it for them. It’s time for the Stars’ top line to put a few efforts together.

***

Carolina started the game by showing they hadn’t learned anything from the Stars’ victory over Tampa Bay, as a bad Carolina turnover by Jack Roslovic in the first minute of the game to the Duchene line ended with the same result by the same line as the same mistake did in Tampa. M got the turnover and fed Mason Marchment, who then tried to channel Cameron Hughes’s overtime win for Texas the other night by dropping the puck behind him and shooting with his stick between his legs.

Marchment couldn’t quite convert the shot, but it ended up being a primary assist to a Tyler Seguin, who deserved a slam-dunk chance as much as anyone on the roster, given the just-abouts he’s had over the last chunk of games.

You know it was a fortunate sort of mistake, because both Marchment and Seguin had a very particular sort of grin on their faces when celebrating the goal:

Mason Marchment seemed at first to have picked up Tyler Seguin’s curse, as he somehow missed a slam-dunk of his own on the Stars’ first power play. A perfect feed to his tape by Logan Stankoven was just barely foiled by the desperate poke check from Dmitry Orlov, allowing the puck to practically circumlocute Spencer Martin without ever going into the net. Yes, this puck would go back between Martin and the far post, somehow.

In keeping with the theme of “guys scoring goals who are overdue,” Thomas Harley then scored just his second goal of the season after a fantastic play from Miro Heiskanen to bat down a puck, then whack it out of the air to send Jamie Benn the other way. Benn then curled back at the blue line after seeing he didn’t have a lane to the net, and he saw something none of the Hurricanes players did: Thomas Harley.

If this were a broadcast, any analyst worth their salt would draw four arrows from each Canes player to the puck, showing where all of them were looking (and not looking). Here’s a wider view:

Benn found the trailing player in Harley down the bottom left, and the Stars’ defensemen walked in and fired the puck off the far post and in to give the Stars the lead they really should have had all along.

Harley is at his best when he’s looking to create offense, and he was certainly well-calibrated in this one. Harley set up Duchene for a great chance with 4:30 remaining that Duchene nearly scored by channeling Wyatt Johnston’s puck-switch-shot move from the other night on Brent Burns, giving Duchene a clean shot. But for once, Duchene didn’t beat on a goalie on a great shot.

For twice would be more accurate, actually, as Duchene extended his sympathy to Marchment by taking a great feed from the same, then just barely missing the net after freezing Martin with a great fake, only to backhand the puck past the glove hand and just past a tempting netmouth. Duchene would also feed Seguin for another grade A chance to start the second period, but Martin’s blocker arm was able to stop the red-hot Stars’ line.

***

Jake Oettinger made a couple of big stops, including one on Jack Drury’s far-side stuff attempt, and a massive one on Roslovic to keep the game in check in the third period.

Carolina generated some flurries of chances early, but through the first half of the game, they hadn’t really put Dallas under siege in the way a team like them would be expected to do. Oettinger looked solid on what he saw, which was most of Carolina’s chances until the third period got nuts.

As far as the ones he didn’t see, can you blame Oettinger for staying in the center of his net on this Brent Burns shot? It goes in the narrow lane at the near post, but Oettinger is playing the percentages as he peers through four players (three of whom are on his team), and the perfect shot beat him.

***

It was a cagey game, but Dallas continued to convert its early chances while Carolina didn’t, as evidenced by this play, where Matt Dumba chose to attempt to bring the puck down, and ended up turning it over in a very bad spot, as you can see by this play in three acts:

Fortunately for the Stars, Jackson Blake–wait, hold up, are all of their players named Jack? They have Jack Drury, Jackson Blake, Jack Roslovic, and Jaccob Slavin. That’s too many, I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules, but that’s just too many.

Anyway, Blake hit the post solidly on his chance, and he would pay for it when the Stars’ offense (by which we mean the Duchene line) once again created a goal ex nihilo with some outstanding forechecking by Matt Duchene. Let’s play the screenshot game again:

Shayne Gostisbehere goes back for the puck, and Duchene makes a play with his stick to foul him up somethin’ fierce, which leads to this:

I don’t know how many of you out there are geometry experts, but Seguin clearly knows how to use a protractor, as he took the puck and wired it right to Marchment’s tape, returning the favor from the first minute of the game:

It was the Stars’ third goal on just their seventh shot of the game, but I can promise you they weren’t concerned about the latter number. Carolina is a volume-centered team when it comes to their approach, whereas the Stars under DeBoer have always been more focused on chance creation. And when you consistently have one of the best offenses in the NHL as the Stars have for the past couple years, I’m hard-pressed to argue with that approach.

***

Josh and Razor highlighted a weird moment when Sebastian Aho curled out from behind the net and sent a relatively harmless shot on goal. Heiskanen was stick-checking Aho the entire way, and Marchment came in at the last minute to get another stick on Aho right as he shot, after which Aho went down the ice, gesticulating for a hooking penalty. Apparently the back referee had initially raised his hand for a penalty, then changed his mind and gave the wash-out signal, which didn’t exactly win the Raleigh folks over, given the fact that Dallas hadn’t been penalized yet in the game.

Sam Steel made a nice play that didn’t result in anything, but it’s worth highlighting just the same. He fought down the wall, squeezing past Eric Robinson, then finding Evgenii Dadonov at the net front, as Dadonov had fought his own way through in order to get an off-balance shot from a dangerous area that Martin stopped.

It was the Stars’ tenth shot on goal of the game, but given the dominant pressure Dallas was exhibiting, it was almost shocking not to see it go in. This is a great example of how one great play by the fourth line can easily result in a goal, if everyone is doing the hard work.

The Hurricanes were doing whatever the opposite of hard work is, as they took their third unforced penalty of the game late in the second period when six guys came over the boards. It was just the latest example of Carolina trying too hard at the wrong things, as you can see from the shots-on-goal map through two periods, where basically all of Carolina’s extra shots were coming from very low-danger areas.

***

The Stars’ top line hadn’t scored, but they had a huge shift in the third period after the Brent Burns goal to show that Dallas had more than one line interested in scoring. Wyatt Johnston repeatedly retrieved the puck, and Jason Robertson even had a smart backhand from distance that had more danger to it than you’d guess. It was a vital shift to wake Dallas up, and Roope Hintz would get a breakaway later in the period where Martin reached for a greedy poke check, only for Hintz to fire it high blocker and somehow not convert the chance (which was started by a smart pass from Brendan Smith).

You really felt like that was the Stars’ chance to get back in the game, but then again, how many chances did Dallas get on Martin all alone where they couldn’t beat him? Seguin had a breakaway, Duchene had multiple looks, and Marchment had the power play chance in behind Martin. When you add the Dadonov chance and the Hintz breakaway, you really do feel like the Stars ought to have gotten more for their efforts early.

Finally, it’s worth giving Miro Heiskanen a ton of credit on the goal he manufactured singlehandedly to climb back into the game at 4-4 late in the third period. He took this humdrum look:

And made a sweet deke on William Carrier to generate a much higher-grade scoring chance. And maybe it was just the goal from the other night giving him confidence, but Heiskanen fired this puck like a man who knows where it will end up before he even shoots it:

It was a huge goal that absolutely should have gotten the Stars a point in this game. But when your special teams implode the way they did in this game, you probably don’t deserve any consolation prizes, and the Stars got their just deserts.