Game 25 AfterThoughts: Staying on the Beam

It's about where you end up

Last year, Winnipeg ran away with the Central Division and the Presidents’ Trophy. No matter what Dallas or anyone did, the Jets just kept cooking, with the best power play in the league up front and the best goaltending in the world back in their own net.

This year, Colorado is off to a similarly infernal start, in the eyes of the rest of the Central. They’ve been playing as close to perfect hockey (in regulation) as you can ask for, and they’ve only lost a single game in regulation out of their first 24 contests. One! That’s just bonkers.

Yet, as we keep pointing out, the Stars keep hanging around.

Sure, Dallas has continued to hand out 2-0 leads to opponents like they’re on the hook for some kind of on-ice customer service mandate, but the regular season is a log-rolling competition, if it’s anything. It is all about who falls off, not who happens to be spinning their log oh-so-perfectly. You either stay on top, or you splash around for a bit.

And the Stars have stubbornly refused to piddle around in the lake this year, posting a .720 points percentage. If you still find that a little hard to believe, then this game is a pretty good example of why you should probably start believing. Because despite the truly insane heater the Avalanche are on right now, the Stars have been doing some holiday cooking of their own.

They have the league’s best power play, converting chances at an almost ethereal 31.9% after adding another two PPGs on Friday. And that 31.9% mark just so happens to be double what the Avalanche are doing when they’re up a man, which is to say that Colorado, after firing their power play coach following their elimination to Alain Nasreddine and Dallas last year, have discovered that Dave Hakstol may not be the power play genius they were hoping he would be.

If anything, he’s been the opposite. Because it’s truly unfathomable what’s happening in Denver, where the Avs are coverting fewer power plays than the Nashville Predators, Buffalo Sabres, or even Hakstol’s old friends up in Seattle.

Now, the Stars didn’t play Colorado last night, and of course the Avalanche are such an unholy terror at 5-on-5 that they don’t really need the power play to do much of anything. But the power here is that the Stars overhauled a lot of their coaching staff, including an entirely new power play look. And with all that upheaval, they’ve roared out of the gates like the Jets did last year when up a man, exploiting their advantages to enormous success. Colorado, meanwhile, appears to get hit with a shrink ray each time an opponent heads to the box.

It’s still just 25 games in, so there’s no point arguing about whether relying on the power play this much is a tenable approach in April, because the Stars are showing that they fully intend to be a different team in April than they were in October. But it is an enormously encouraging thing, I am sure, for a team to know that their top dogs can hop over the boards in any given game and punish another team. You’re never out of a game when your power play is as ferocious as Neil Graham’s unit has been this season. And that’s not something any team should ever take for granted—even if it has Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, and whoever else on the job.

Last night, it was Roope Hintz and Wyatt Johnston (both courtesy of primaries from Mikko Rantanen) putting up two huge PPGs. Hintz really has begun to thrive at the net-front after being moved there (by Steve Spott last season!) in recent times. As much as Hintz is a wonderfully toolsy sort of center to watch, his ability to use his size and dexterity in tight spaces might be even more impressive these days.

But man, the rotation on this unit makes it so impossible to defend, as many AHL teams found out when facing the Texas Stars last year. Because Rantanen can sometimes be found low along the goal line, dishing passes across the slot, or else he might be taking one-timers from the point like he’s Philippe Boucher, who wore a jersey awfully similar to the one Rantanen and Hintz did last night:

It’s so simple, but that’s the beauty of having great players: simple is the idea. Complicated is the enemy. And that’s something Glen Gulutzan has clearly been working on teaching this group all year—but the power play picked it up perhaps before anyone else did.

And speaking of dexterity and simplicity, take another look at Johnston’s 5-on-3 goal, where the Stars have clearly learned from the Calgary swing-and-miss up two men, scoring twice at 5v3 since then, including this finish from Johnston yesterday:

It’s a fantastic touch-pass from Rantanen that reminded me every bit of Sergei Zubov, who I am almost positive found Jussi Jokinen with exactly that sort of pass in a game I watched some 20 years ago. (Update: I believe the second Jokinen goal in this clip was what I was thinking of.) It’s also a bit of skill from Johnston, who knows he can win a contest of strength between his shot and Vaněček’s flailing blocker, so long as he fires it hard enough and at a sharp enough angle upward—and he does just that.

Power plays ebb and flow, so Dallas probably won’t be cooking at 1-in-3 all year. But right now, it’s a skeleton key for games where they haven’t done everything else right. And Gulutzan acknowledged after the game that the team was low on energy, playing their third in four nights with a hefty bit of travel (Edmonton to Seattle to Dallas). And while he didn’t mention Thanksgiving, I have to think that additional bit of disruption in routine didn’t help the Stars to shake out their plane legs terribly quickly.

When you have a cheat code, though, you can get points out of uneven games. And as the Stars crept further into this one, things began taking better shape, with the third period being a teeth-gritting exercise in stubborn defending for Dallas—no penalties for either side, and also no goals.

Jake Oettinger and company still had to be sharp, though. Because Utah was also stubborn, refusing to settle for point shots like Seattle did, even if they missed the net a whole bunch (grey shots are ones that missed the net entirely).

HockeyViz.com: third period shot attempts last night

Someday, Dallas will decide to start scoring empty-net goals again, and it will make the final minute or two of these third periods infinitely easier. But I suppose there’s something admirable about a team categorically refusing to make their job easier than it technically has to be. And hey, I’m sure Esa Lindell will start scoring these again when he feels like it. Don’t rush the man.

Speaking of which, did you know Dallas is tied for last in the NHL in empty-net goals? They still have just two early-season ones from Radek Faksa and Roope Hintz—both of which came in the same game of the season (Game 3 against Minnesota).

Since then, the Stars have gone 13-5-4, all while scoring zero goals into opponents’ empty cages. It’s a wild stat I’m not reading into just yet, but it is extremely zany. And we’re all about zany here at ST.

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Each team got a bad/good bit of puck luck, with Utah opening the scoring with just such a mishap, uh, mishappening to Lian Bichsel:

You can get really critical there if you want, but there’s every chance Bichsel takes that puck and flings it back deep into the zone, negating any rush for Utah. Instead, it looks like he makes a play he’s made a thousand times, only this time, the puck and his stick don’t quite get married up, and suddenly he has to turn around and chase, which is about the worst feeling in the world for a defenseman.

But Jamie Benn was the beneficiary of perhaps an even more unfortunate/fortunate bounce in the middle frame, when the Stars got two quick goals to tie it up.

For those of you who know that Benn still disputes whether or not he actually got a touch on his 300th goal, this celebration looked a lot more like someone scoring his 400th goal than his 401st goal. Is that because Benn is a principled man who refuses to accept (for his own record-keeping purposes) goals that he doesn’t believe he scored?

No, that’s ridiculous. Probably, players just like scoring goals, and especially ones that tie games after a big deficit. But still, Benn has to turn and figure out a way to solve the equation he’s just been assigned, and he uses some deception and patience to get the job done. That was a big goal, and the Stars added to it almost immediately, dealing out another one of their famous one-two punches to the mouth. (We’ll discuss the second punch later.)

But that’s where I give Utah a lot of credit, because they easily could have gotten something out of this game, if not for the Stars’ power play. Because another moment of misfortune from Lian Bichsel led to a wacky and (yes) zany sequence that looked like all was going to calm down, only for a schoolyard lob to make Jake Oettinger feel like he was Manuel Neuer at the halfway line.

Once again, the Mammoth are gone with numbers the other way, with a forlorn Bichsel trying to catch back up. But this time, despite some passing getting across, things don’t happen cleanly enough, and it looks like the Stars have escaped, only for this play to result in the perfect pass:

I mean, what are you gonna do, right? The puck gets swatted/whacked/flailed well wide of Oettinger’s glove, but it bumps into one of the five bodies conglomerating in the crease, and Jack McBain does what Kevin Rooney¹ did before, and finished off the play with a goal.

But as we discussed, the Stars’ power play got the last word on a wild sequence where Colin Blackwell and Sam Steel drew separate tripping penalties on the same sequence to set up the 5-on-3 that would get things done for Dallas. I really do love both of those players’ games right now, too. They’re aggravating players with speed, skating, and diligence enough to burn you when you can’t catch them, and the Stars got the game-winning power play(s) as a result.

Those smaller plays are really what make coaches smile, I think. The hit by Radek Faksa on his forecheck before Benn’s goal is a good example, where his work to prevent a good first touch by Dmitri Simashev (who also loses a skate blade) eventually gives Benn the space to capitalize on his good fortune. This is F1 stuff from the coaching textbook right here.

Yes, Benn has to finish the play, and he did, as we said. But I think this goal is worth one final look with a focus on #12 in black and green. Because you don’t get the big moments or the second-best records in the NHL without a ton of hard work along the way.

ESotG

Lineups

Dallas lined up like this:

Benn-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Hintz-Seguin
Bäck-Hryckowian-Bourque
Steel-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell - Heiskanen
Bichsel - Petrovic
Capobianco - Kolyachonok

Oettinger

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Utah Mammothed like this:

AfterThoughts

• Jake Oettinger had a lot of work cut out for him on this goal. Curious what you all think: He’s having to push across to his right after the angle changes last-second with the pass here, but do you put this on the goaltender anyway? I tend to say it’s not a chance you ever want to allow precisely because it’s extremely tough to stop, but I’m sure you all have opinions. You always seem to, you bunch of weirdos.
  

• The ‘99 sweaters popped on screen, I thought. Again, I’ll render final verdicts on Sunday when I’m there in person, but it’s hard not to say these are basically a home run of a third jersey, right?

• Jason Robertson can’t keep being the subject of every write-up, but we would be remiss for omitting his goal from our discussion here. It’s a great shot and rebound by someone who times his arrivals so expertly in situations like these, and it gave the Stars their third straight unanswered goal to obliterate the memory of yet another 2-0 deficit.

  • Kyle Capobianco makes such a wonderful play here, both to activate as the de facto F1 here despite being a defenseman, and to make sure he jams the puck out to Robertson, whom he knows is coming as the F2. How many NHL teams would see their AHL power play quarterback defenseman making this play in a tie game in November? I can think of at least one, right now.

  • Gulutzan said after the game that you can’t put a lasso around players when you call them up. Capobianco is a great skater with offensive vision, and this was a clear example of his feeling free to Do Things, even if it means other players are having to cover for him back down the ice. Obviously, it was the right play. And obviously, that means you have a whole team full of healthy risk-acceptance, which allows for the occasional moment of derring-do.

• That Capobianco play is why I don’t worry too much about Bichsel’s pinch or missed one-timer on the two goals against he was on for. It’s clear that Gulutzan wants to make the blueliners’ jobs simpler in their own end while also freeing them up to add to the offensive pressure in the O-zone. That means some speed bumps along the way, but Florida is a textbook example of what can happen when you have a five-man unit just refusing to let you breathe, and I think the Stars are looking to build something similar (though not identical, to be clear).

• Clayton Keller’s father passed away the night before this game was played, and I couldn’t help but think of Mark Scheifele last spring. What are sports, in light of the tragedy of losing a parent? I cannot imagine focusing on any job, let alone one as intense as being an NHL hockey player, while dealing with such a loss. All credit to those who persevere under the weight of such grief.

  • Grief can be a lead weight, something you just drag around until the healing process begins to lighten the load, whenever it arrives (and you never quite know when that healing will start). But even after things get easier, the grief doesn’t always disappear completely. Thanksgiving in particular is a time when gratitude and grief tend to comingle, when the exhilaration and joy of being around people you love also shines a light on what you’ve lost or never had.

  • I remember the first Christmas after losing a grandmother a few years back, and everything just felt so odd. She had been an integral part of everything we did on that day (and the days around it) for my entire life. To try to keep doing those things without her there felt equal parts courageous and blasphemous, like acting out a role you know someone else really ought to be playing, but that nobody else would do if you didn’t say your lines. It was hard.

  • But that’s life, right? The further from childhood we grow, the more aware we become of the necessity of moving forward, of creating walled gardens and beautiful holidays for others in the midst of enduring grief and brokenness. And perhaps doing so is most especially crucial for the sake of children, who need to learn and know (as we older folks all need to remind ourselves) that the world is a beautiful and wonderful place where holidays should and will always interrupt (if not yet erase) even the bleakest of winters, and where hockey games can stave off even unthinkable levels of grief.

1. These are real NHL players, I checked.