Game 23 AfterThoughts: Token Resistance
They did want to build a snowman
Strategy in hockey is a little different from other sports. Broadly speaking, each team knows what the other is doing or is going to try to do. Systems are pretty easy to decipher at this level, where you know what coaches tend to do, and who is capable of beating you within their system.
So, having a coach move from one team to another shouldn’t be that much of a liability, in theory. There aren’t Bill Belichickian state secrets being disseminated here, so it’s not like Glen Gulutzan came to Dallas, plopped a couple of folders on Jim Nill’s desk, and promptly revealed how to stomp the two-time Western Conference champs into pumpkin pie. It doesn’t work like that.
But you could be forgiven for thinking it might work like that after what the Stars did to the Oilers in Edmonton Tuesday night, racking up 8 goals that were split evenly across the two home goaltenders. If Gulutzan brought a cheat sheet, this is exactly what it would have looked like.
But maybe there was some fatigue for Edmonton after a seven-game road trip on which the Oilers went 3-3-1 (finishing with a 6-3 victory over Florida a few days ago). Or maybe it was the two-day layoff after getting home, and Edmonton got just a bit too comfortable in beautiful Alberta in November. Hey, it might even have been easy for the Oilers to think that the Stars, without Mikko Rantanen, Matt Duchene, and Thomas Harley, wouldn’t be in much of a fighting mood.
Whatever it was, the Oilers looked like a team expecting everything to work like it did it May, only to find Dallas lurking around every corner with an abundance of gratitude for Edmonton’s gifts. Evan Bouchard in particular looked completely outmatched in this game, despite scoring a goal in garbage time with a point shot to “cut” the deficit to 6-2. Connor McDavid was almost a nonfactor entirely, which is hard to believe. They just didn’t keep up once Dallas got moving, and the goaltending will be the story. But make no mistake: Edmonton’s defending was pitiful for far too much of this game, and Dallas got great looks as a result, many of which no goaltender outside of Devin Cooley is going to stop right now.
Yes, there are many goals to talk about from this game, but let’s start with the first one, which is also Jamie Benn’s most recent one: his 400th career goal, in fact!
Sam Steel did some nice F1 forechecking, and Wyatt Johnston’s precision—he was as good as anyone in white and green tonight—created the look, which Benn found a way to finish by going up into the top of the net. But man, Evan Bouchard was just absolutely inconsequential here, more or less stopping once he engaged with Steel, expecting someone else to win the puck. But Steel fought with his skates, and Bouchard ended up watching Johnston pick up the pill and feed Benn cross-crease.
Take a better look at the shot itself from Benn, just for good measure:
Sure, 400 goals isn’t 500 or anything like that. And yes, it’s taken ages (though Benn did score a massive playoff goal in the interim, lest you forget). But this goal meant a lot to everyone, even if Benn will say he doesn’t care about it too much. And that’s because everyone else has been watching while Benn has done that sort of thing over and over throughout his career.
But getting this box checked off had to be a relief for the entire team, especially after Benn nearly scored a couple of other goals that would otherwise have been a bit more frustrating. With his latest milestone reached, those chances will disappear into the ether as Benn’s career moves on.
Outside of the opening goal, the first period ended up being a slaughter for Dallas, but it didn’t necessarily start that way.
Jake Oettinger had to come up huge in the first period when Jack Roslovic got a breakaway that this defense pair almost never allows. Don’t undersell the flinch-blocker save by Oettinger here:
If that puck goes in, the first period could have changed drastically. But instead, it changed drastically in the other direction, as Dallas piled on goal after goal. Roope Hintz was able to tally on a revitalized power play (more on that goal down below) to make it 2-0, and the Oilers never had a real sniff of the game again.
Oettinger looked calm and ready for just about every shot tonight, and it meant Dallas got to benefit from their multi-goal lead in the third period as a result, with Heiskanen getting what basically constitutes a night off for him these days, playing “just” 23:08, not even a minute more than Alex Petrovic.
That rest feels big, given that Thomas Harley still isn’t nearing his return, and other games will surely require Heiskanen to scare 30 minutes again here and there.
Okay, so just how many goals did the Stars end up putting in? Well, put it this way:
Welcome to the Nathan Bastian Show
Bastian made it look like he hasn’t been scratched from the lineup for 10 days in a row, as he scored two goals in a single period—one of which was too skilled to be allowed1, and the other of which came off him deciding not to pass on a 2-on-1 after the Stars won one of their many wall battles in the first period, thanks to a final poke from Radek Faksa. And Bastian beat Skinner (as did many tonight), adding a celebration that deserves four seconds of your time:
And clearly Bastian was annoyed about the other goal being taken away for being high-sticked, so he ended up adding it back on the board for posterity in garbage time, scoring the team’s second and eighth goals of the night, while a certain Hart Trophy Winner couldn’t execute a simple play from behind the net:
When a player who doesn’t play on special teams and has been healthied for the last few games waltzes in and puts three pucks in the net, he is officially Having Himself a Night. Even if one of them didn’t count.
Jason Robertson, meanwhile, is having himself a month, after scoring a goal in his seventh straight game by wisely standing next to the net when he heard Tyler Seguin call “Bank” and letting Number 91 do his thing, which has lately been “earn primary assists by passing to Jason Robertson.”
Robertson still sound like he might be doomed not to make the Team USA roster for very dumb reasons, but then again, scoring a goal in every single game has to change people’s minds eventually, right? Certainly he is doing everything he possibly can, and that’s a dream scenario for Dallas—and for Robertson, whenever he signs his next contract.
That aforementioned goal came after Justin Hryckowian drew one penalty and Mavrik Bourque drew another on the second half of the power play when he got hooked after receiving another great pass from Tyler Seguin, who was dealing tonight.
And once again, the Stars’ power play didn’t mess around. Robertson scored on the 5-on-3, then Johnston scored on the remaining power play to make it 6-1, thoroughly extinguishing any hopes the Oilers might have started to nurture after someone named Connor Clattenburg scored his first goal to make it 4-1 early in the second.
The Stars’ power play, in fact, went 3-for-3 before Edmonton finally got a kill in the third period to ruin Neil Graham’s perfect night. Call that resistance if you want, but it felt more like the law of averages than anything else, as Edmonton simply looked tired. (In fact, they looked an awful lot like Dallas has looked a couple of times this year when they’ve had to weather a big storm, come to think of it. Probably nothing, don’t worry. Probably.)
Anyway, it cannot be overstated how dispiriting it is for a team to give up another goal after trying to will themselves to play hard with a big deficit and finally getting on the board. It just lets all the air out of the balloon, and that’s what happened, as the Oilers’ penalty kill looked every bit as hardworking as their 5-on-5 play in the first period, which is to say not at all.
Sure, Edmonton got two more in the third, but so did the Stars, as Justin Hryckowian and Bastian completed the two-point conversion to complete the embarrassment in Edmonton. Home fans threw something on the ice at one point (I couldn’t tell what—didn’t seem big enough to be a sweater or anything), and it was basically the perfectly villainous return for Glen Gulutzan.
Wyatt Johnston scored on the residual penalty following Robertson’s 5-on-3 tally, and it was a similarly “if you insist” sort of tally2, with Johnston getting to a rebound with a lot of Edmontonians standing around and witnessing his work. And Justin Hryckowian, a period later, made it 73 by again being quicker to find a rebound than the home side.
The Oilers’ third goal was a bit of a weird one, with the Stars perhaps not defending quite as diligently when up 7-2, and a shot off the post turning into a perfect pass. You can watch it here, if you want.4 But like the other Edmonton goals (or the performance of their blue line) it doesn’t really reward further scrutiny unless you’re looking for problems to find.
This game wasn’t a problem so much as a proof of concept: the Stars aren’t just winning because they’re getting opportunistic scoring (though they are) or timely goaltending (also true) and power play dominance (it’s white-hot). They are winning because, night after night, they’re showing that their roster’s abilities and tactics are sufficient to get points out of games. That is the job of your team in the regular season, and the Stars have managed it with unbelievable excellence, as they’ve now crept within spitting distance of the mighty Colorado Avalanche (who beat Edmonton 9-1 a couple weeks back, come to think of it) in total goals for this year.
The Stars still have some warts, because all teams do. And both Jim Nill and Glen Gulutzan have been careful to point out that there are still things they want to be doing better, because they aren’t oblivious to the underlying numbers, either. The Stars’ dominance hasn’t come anywhere near as easily as Colorado’s this year, which also means it’s probably less sustainable, should nothing change.
But the team is pretty clearly still trying to make changes and improve the process, and they’re doing this all with some pretty major pieces out of the lineup. For goodness’ sake, Vladislav Kolyachonok just got his first point of the season in the Stars’ first game in Edmonton this year. Cool for him, absolutely, but that is a striking statement about the state of a banged-up blue line right now.
An even more striking statement, however? The score. Because hanging a snowman on the board isn’t something any quality NHL team should ever allow. And the Oilers have now allowed it twice this month.
ESotG
Lineups
Dallas had to rejigger their lineup in lieu of Mikko Rantanen. I would say it worked out all right:
Robertson-Hintz-Seguin
Steel-Johnston-Benn
Bäck-Hryckowian-Bourque
Blackwell-Faksa-Bastian
Lindell-Heiskanen
Bichsel-Petrovic
Kolyachonok-Capobianco
Oettinger
Edmonton did this:
Savoie-McDavid-Roslovic
Podkolzin-Draisaitl-Mangiapane
Frederic-Henrique-Hyman
Clattenburg-Tomasek-Janmark
Ekholm - Bouchard
Nurse - Regula
Kulak - Emberson
Skinner
AfterThoughts
If you haven’t seen the team’s goal montage for Jamie Benn’s 400th goal yet, it’s worth your time.
Okay, in case you missed it somehow, Dallas revealed their new third jersey today: The ‘99.
It’s pretty sharp, with the Stars going with a silver, black, and green color scheme (with white accents) on the old familiar star template:
Swapping the old logo’s gold for silver is a nice touch, but perhaps the biggest win of the design, for me, is changing the top half of the star pattern to black. That darker colo allows the primary logo patch to integrate far more seamlessly with the sweater than the white reverse retros, and possibly even moreso than the old greens, which were filled with a different sort of fabric than the jersey knit, preventing a consistent color match. I think the new sweaters have the best logo of the bunch, all told:
It also works better and (is less distracting) with the beveled star design in the middle, which absolutely pops with a glittery accent.
The Stars have long known there was a huge demand for the star design on their jerseys. That’s why the first Reverse Retro they did featured that design (albeit in white). But employing that design in the Stars’ distinctive color (green) with a black base is about as perfect as could be without just reprinting the old 1999 ones with the logos updated.
The green stitching within the numbers to separate the white interior from the silver border is a great little detail that I appreciate, as someone who has to read them from the press box on occasion:
I’m looking forward to seeing these on the ice, because as with every sweater, you don’t really know how they hit until you see them being worn in-game. But my suspicion is that the whole setup, with the pants, socks, and helmets, will really get a boost from the silver accents.
(I’m covering Friday’s game in absentia, but I’ll see them live on Sunday, so I’ll letcha know then.)
Jamie Benn nearly scored twice more in the first period, including a shot off the post on a delayed penalty. As Jason Robertson can tell you, the old ketchup bottle metaphor is a cliché for a reason.
Roope Hintz’s rebound goal on the power play was big, given that they hadn’t scored in their last eight or nine tries. But this goal was a perfect example of the rotation this power play uses, where any player would be almost anywhere at any time, if it serves to set up a good look. Robertson playing QB with Heiskanen taking the low one-timer was something else:
This stick check from Lian Bichsel at speed was nice, I thought. This is how you hold the blue line when you’ve got a 6-foot-7 reach: cover the ice and close it down.
I’m sure Lian Bichsel would never say it, but it’s funny how big milestones can be in the NHL. Because when Sam Steel poked in a Jamie Benn shot just in front of the goal line, everyone celebrated:
But when Bichsel did the same on a Benn shot in Detroit late last season, you could see how terrible he felt about it after the game. Alas, for our fixation on the base-ten numerical system!
Speaking of Bichsel, he expressed his disagreement with Adam Henrique’s approach to digging for a rebound thusly:
Bichsel is in the process of finding out how he can use his size to boss people around without drawing an undue amount of penalties, and I think scrums like this are a good example of it. Defend your goalie without going crazy. (In the NHL, this counts as sanity.)
Nate Bastian was absolutely hunting for a hat trick late in the game, and I don’t blame him one bit. Gulutzan said he had “two and a half” afterward, given the disallowed goal. But I personally would have enjoyed comparing this hat trick to Adam Cracknell’s hat trick of yore, had it happened. It did not happen, however, so I’ll just keep that comparison in reserve. For now.
Razor praised it rightfully on the broadcast, but Tyler Seguin’s passing has been elite this year. Jason Robertson has been capitalizing on it, but Esa Lindell (who pulled up on a 2-on-1) and Mavrik Bourque (who got hooked to create the 5-on-3) couldn’t quite complete their alley-oop chances. So Seguin went back to Robertson for the fifth goal, which Evan Bouchard defended with all the diligence of someone trying out the products at Rocking Chair Warehouse on a Sunday afternoon:
Down in the AHL, the Texas Stars had themselves an Oilers Kind of Night. Click at your own risk.
Jake Oettinger got screened on both of Edmonton’s goals (or the shot preceding the first one), but especially the second, in which I think Justin Hryckowian occupied his field of vision). Presumably that’s why Hryckowian scored one later on himself—gotta even things out.
Here’s a taste of exactly why I subscribe (excellent prose): “So Seguin went back to Robertson for the fifth goal, which Evan Bouchard defended with all the diligence of someone trying out the products at Rocking Chair Warehouse on a Sunday afternoon “
...our fearful trip is done.