Game 22 AfterThoughts: A Nervous Breath of Fresh Air

The Stars and Avalanche have a lot of history. Some of it is good, like the 1999 and 2000 playoff series, when Ed Belfour led Dallas to two 4-3 series wins over Patrick Roy. Those were special ones, and if you were around for them, you’ll never forget them.

In college, I also remember Dallas playing the Avalanche, back in the first season after the 2004 lockout. The 2005-06 season was when Jason Arnott and the Dallas Stars finished as the 2nd seed in the West behind Jussi Jokinen and Marty Turco’s shootout savvy, only to wind up facing the same Colorado team that had eliminated them in that ’04 playoff series by a humbling 4-1 margin.

And 2006 didn’t go much better, as the Stars fell to 0-3 in the series before Dave Tippett took the team for a drive up into the Colorado mountains (this is all what I remember reading after two decades, so forgive me if I’m botching the details here) for some reflection. The Stars responded with their first win of the series, but they would go back to Dallas and lose game five in overtime on an Andrew Brunette backhand goal. That was in spite of outshooting the Avs 50-30, getting like seven power plays, and generally deserving far better than they ended up getting out of a series and a season.

Oh, and three of Colorado’s four wins in that series in 2006 came in overtime. It was a brutal loss. So when Dallas’s 2020 Joel Kiviranta bubble victory was followed by last year’s Matt Duchene overtime winner, you can see how the temperature on this particular Central Division rivalry has picked up. And that’s a good thing for everyone.

By the way, two of Colorado’s healthy scratches in that final game in 2006 were former Star Pierre Turgeon, and current Jokerit co-owner Ossi Väänänen. Small world.

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As for the present, Friday night’s game could’ve been very different if Nathan MacKinnon had scored a minute into the game. Logan O’Connor picked Esa Lindell’s pocket coming out of the corner, only for the post to save the Stars’ bacon. It was one of three posts Colorado hit on the night, but sometimes one break is all you need to turn a bad game into a cathartic one.

Pete DeBoer said after the game that it was important for the Stars to “stop the bleeding” after the last two games, and you have to give them credit for finding a way to do that. As DeBoer said, the group found a way to respond to adversity, starting with Jake Oettinger. That’s what good teams have to do.

The defense was a total scramble bamble, which is a nonsensical rhyming term from a television show I watched like 15 years ago that I will not be explaining further. But the point is, Nils Lundkvist came back into the lineup and played more even-strength minutes than Ilya Lyubushkin, who was initially slated to play with Miro Heiskanen, who played fewer minutes than Esa Lindell. Anyway, it was a wild one. But Lindell and Lundkvist were even in plus/minus on the night, which is always an accomplishment against Colorado, so you can’t really complain.

Mavrik Bourque got moved back down to the fourth line wing in this one next to Oskar Bäck who was playing center again, which was interesting. DeBoer praised that line by name in the postgame conference tonight, admitting they didn’t get as many minutes despite playing well, but you wonder if Bourque will be back up with Benn when Stankoven is ready to go again. One suspects not, but we shall see.

Sam Steel played up with Benn and Dadonov, giving that line three left-handed forwards, with Benn and Steel splitting the faceoffs and doing fine. We’ll talk more about Steel in a moment, though.

The Stars only managed to be up 3-1 against Carolina on Monday when they ought to have extended the lead further. That ended up biting them when the Hurricanes exploded for five goals in the third period to steal the game back, despite the Stars eventually getting a Miro Heiskanen fourth goal to momentarily draw even before losing the game in the final minutes.

On Friday, Dallas found that fourth goal early to make it 4-1, and that hill would end up being just steep enough to prevent a dynamite Colorado third period from ssinking the Stars twice in a week. And even more appropriately than that, it was a power play goal that proved to be the game-winner.

Roope Hintz scored the Stars’ second power play goal of the game, but it was an even rarer thing than that: it was a power play goal scored by someone who wasn’t a member of the Duchene line when the Stars were set up in the zone. That’s what the power play really needs to get with consistency if the power play is going to be a dangerous weapon for the Stars, and it turned out to be the decisive one tonight.

(Also, credit to Wyatt Johnston for that great assist to Hintz. Those two have found something, I’m beginning to think.)

The Colorado comeback attempt started when Artturi Lehkonen scored off the rush, after both a pass and then a shot ticked off Dallas Stars sticks. Here’s the shot Lehkonen ended up taking, where the puck deflected off Lyubushkin’s stick and into Oettinger’s five-hole:

In watching the video, it seems clear that Lehkonen is shooting glove side before the puck deflects the other way. Oettinger actually mentioned at morning skate today that he used to scout players’ tendencies more when he was younger, and that sometimes he would end up getting caught overplaying their tendencies. This isn’t that, I don’t think, but it’s an example of how goalies can look bad when things don’t go according to plan. And don’t we all, really?

The Stars couldn’t really complain about those bounces, however, as they could some help of their own on Mason Marchment’s goal. And those were after a really bad decision by Nathan MacKinnon to pinch here, with three Colorado players already trapped below the puck.

It didn’t work out, as Matt Duchene easily found Miro Heiskanen, and with Marchment properly positioned at the far blue line, the Stars had a 2-on-1 where MacKinnon never even really got close to the puck until it went in.

In fact, the puck ended up going into the Avs’ net with all five Avalanche players nearby, albeit unable to do anything as Marchment eventually powered in the rebound from Heiskanen (though it took the league a while to figure that out).

This picture is a pretty good metaphor for what it must feel like to be MacKinnon on this team sometimes. If he’s not the one doing what needs to be done, it far too often isn’t happening.

By the way, Cale Makar played 30(!) minutes in this game, with MacKinnon and Rantanen hitting 26. All three are very special players, and you can see how a coach would be sorely tempted to lean on them when your team goes down 4-1, but man, it’s crazy how uneven Colorado have looked this year. Maybe they should get a goalie.

In fact, I wonder if fatigue was a factor in Makar’s giveaway to Marchment for the empty-net goal, as Makar tried to play a fancy one-touch pass that he fumbled on the bumpier ice at the end of the period, though he admittedly didn’t have a lot of options here.

Really though, Makar is on another planet as a player, and he’s worth the price of admission when he’s on the ice with players who can play with him. Just watch that Mikko Rantanen goal that made it 4-3 if you don’t believe me. Makar took advantage of the Stars during a line change, and he diced up their defensive structure like a cartoon ninja, making ten slices and waiting for everything to cinematically fall apart on cue before finding Rantanen with a gorgeous seam pass. Those plays are really special, regardless of whom you’re rooting for.

Oh, and a lot of credit goes to Josh Bogorad, who got tabbed to the TNT play-by-play broadcast tonight, for calling the heck out of that Makar goal the way a national broadcaster should. The Stars are loaded with on-air talent, and it was cool to see Bogorad getting due recognition for what he brings to a game.

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DeBoer gave Sam Steel a lot of credit for his play on the Jamie Benn goal. Steel is a player that has earned this coaching staff’s trust, and you could hear DeBoer singing his praises (and rightfully so) after this game as a “Swiss army knife” who can play up and down the lineup, center or wing. If there’s such a thing as the Platonic form of a Pete DeBoer player, Steel might be it.

Here you can see Steel, after traversing the neutral zone, gaining the blue line and backing up before finding the trailer in Miro Heiskanen with a pass surprising enough to just barely get through the lane. Heiskanen’s shot would eventually fall kindly for Benn to stuff home.

Speaking of Jamie Benn, we also have to talk about Tyler Seguin, who scored another power play goal (you are reading that correctly) in the game to give the Stars the initial lead after weathering a bit of an early flurry from Colorado. It was a great bit of synchronicity from the Stars, with Evgenii Dadonov aiding the entry and feeding the puck back up high early before Mason Marchment found Seguin with the sweet backhand pass that resulted in the photo at the top of this piece.

Dadonov also had a crucial backcheck on the power play that prevented the Avalanche (Parker Kelly, I think) from getting a higher-quality shot on a shorthanded rush against Oettinger. Dadonov is one of the oldest players on the Stars’ roster—he debuted in the 2009-10 season—but he’s still digging in with everyone else. It’s hard not to be thankful for that sort of player if you’re a coach, I’d imagine.

But on the topic of long-time veterans, Benn and Seguin have both been on the Stars for over a decade now, and it’s really special to see them continuing to mature both personally and professionally as they adapt to a changing league and their own changing bodies. These are players that make a team more than just laundry, more than just the convenient local sporting concern. When you have two players who have identified with the Stars through as much as those two have, I have to think every goal means just a tad bit more for them. Certainly it does for fans. They will not be here forever, but they are here now, and it’s a privilege to see them scoring goals, just as they did 11 years ago.

Val Nichushkin is back with Colorado, and he was also scoring goals with Benn and Seguin 11 years ago, so of course he was going to score a goal against the Stars in this one, as he did to tie the game up for the last time Colorado would be level. But in a way, this was the best-case scenario, because who in Stars fandom doesn’t want to see Nichushkin find a way back to being the player he finally found out he could be after receiving help from the NHL Player Assistance Program?

For all of the hardship that his life has involved (and we don’t know the half of it, I promise you), Nichushkin still appears to be trying. None of us really knows what it’s like to fight the battles he’s had to fight (and probably is still fighting), but if he’s really trying to get back on track, then a goal that probably doesn’t affect the Stars’ playoff chances is a drop in one bucket, and a balm to another bucket that is, for the purposes of this convoluted metaphor, a heart, or love, or something. It is Thanksgiving weekend, folks. Let’s rejoice when other people rejoice, if only for a moment.

The Stars definitely had the better goaltender in this duel, but that’s been the case in a few of the games they’ve lost this year, too. Tonight, Dallas found a way to calm the fears of their fans and score on the power play. And they did so on home ice, for once. In fact, Michael Dixon said the Stars doubled their home power play goals total in this game alone, so that’s either really good or really concerning, but I vote for the happy one, given the dour nature of the preceding games.

Winnipeg will bring yet another chance for some redemption on Sunday, and the Stars look about as primed for such a chance as you could hope for. And hey, Winnipeg lost to Vegas in regulation on Friday, so maybe they’re finally deciding to come back into the troposphere, at last. Thank goodness for small favors.