Game 27 AfterThoughts: Asking a Lot and Paying Dearly

Tyler Seguin is the latest one to suffer

This was a frustrating game early for Dallas, because New York had a fair amount of sloppy moments early that the Stars didn’t punish them for, and the Stars got great enough goaltending to win this one outright. But overshadowing the result was a play that caused yet another injury for a key Dallas player—and this one looked entirely avoidable.

The latest misfortune for Dallas came when Vladislav Gavrikov fell onto Tyler Seguin’s leg for no reason that I can understand, as the defenseman turned before impact and fell squarely onto Seguin’s right knee, causing Seguin serious pain before he was helped off the ice. Seguin would not return.

After the game, Gulutzan didn’t have any update beyond what you’d expect.

“He’s gonna get re-evaluated tomorrow,” said Gulutzan, “So we’re hoping for good news like we always do. But we won’t know until tomorrow where he’s at.”

One person suggested to me that Gavrikov was trying to draw a tripping call there by falling, but he might just as easily be turning in an attempt to hip check Seguin to avoid letting him get past him, only to stumble because Seguin isn’t where he was expecting him to be. But either way, this play led to a terrible result, and I can’t imagine Seguin or the Stars feel particularly great about the process behind it—especially given how many injuries they’ve already dealt with just 27 games into the season.

It’s hard to overstate how much Seguin means to this team, too. If the Stars end up losing him for any length of time, it’s almost certainly going to have a very noticeable ripple effect throughout their lineup. They had two top lines clicking for all of last month, and now one of the key members of that group could be gone for a bit. That’s a bitter pill for the Stars, and even more so for Seguin, who has put in countless days of rehab work on both knees over the past five years to become a key player for them once again. It just feels so wanton, so miserably pointless. But then, I suppose all injuries do, really.

In Seguin’s absence, Gulutzan started doing a couple of things with the forwards. Mavrik Bourque got a couple of looks in Seguin’s spot, (during one of which the Stars scored), before Benn was moved down with Hintz and Robertson for the second period, with Sam Steel returning to Johnston and Rantanen’s left wing. Then Rantanen and Robertson took a turn or two double-shifting on the fourth line before special teams took over late in the second.

But overall, the Stars just didn’t feel like themselves for most of this game, and whether that was the injury, the opponent, or a combination of all of that and some travel, it led to them getting a point, but probably leaving a bit more on the table against a team that had only won two games on home ice before tonight.

But that’s how it goes sometimes. Colorado has had some overtime games against Vancouver, Utah, and San Jose, because it’s a long NHL season, and you aren’t going to blow out the other team every night. Especially when you don’t play your best, as Gulutzan admitted the Stars didn’t.

Still, there’s no such thing as a bad point during the NHL season.

---

Wyatt Johnston got two doorstep chances on Shesterkin on the Stars’ first power play, but because tonight began with some kind of weird curse, neither one got past the Rangers’ netminder, and the power play only got worse from there as the night went on.

After their first one, however, the puck would squirt free just as the penalty expired, and a fortunate bounce off Kyle Capobianco’s stick fell to Noah Laba, whose shot trickled through DeSmith in the right trajectory for Carson Soucy to whack it home right after getting out of the penalty box.

But Capobianco would get some revenge, as he collected a very friendly Gavrikov clearance attempt and put it past Shesterkin through traffic to even the score with his first goal as a Dallas Star, with some nice screen work from Robertson at the net front to help.

It’s worth giving Mavrik Bourque some credit for his work here, too. If you have to jump on a line in place of someone like Seguin, this is the kind of patient, hard work that you need to bring, and Bourque kept the most dangerous part of the play going instead of just jamming it at the net when he had it off to the side.

That was it for goals until the third period, when the Big Moment in this game came. The Stars had to kill a double minor with ace penalty killer Sam Steel unavailable [hockey crimes] for the entirety of it. DeSmith was outstanding throughout, however, and the Stars even came close to finishing on the positive side of the ledger after Colin Blackwell got a breakaway that Shesterkin did well to stop after a nice move to the glove side:

But after the Rangers hit a post late, the Stars made it through the kill, and they got some jump from it that only got jumpier when a J.T. Miller turnover fed perhaps the two most dangerous players on the visiting bench: Wyatt Johnston and Mikko Rantanen, who made short work of Igor Shesterkin.

The Stars nearly got the horse into the barn in regulation, but the Rangers really cranked things up after falling behind, and when they pulled Shesterkin with two minutes and change remaining, Will Cuylle finally got a second chance he was able to stash. Rebounds would be the only thing that could beat the locked-in DeSmith after the first period, as it turned out.

There’s not much to say about this one, as Cuylle banks it off the inside of DeSmiths’s left pad as DeSmith flashes out the right pad to seal the near post. If that was Cuylle’s plan, then well done by him. But my guess is that he was probably trying to go cross-crease with a pass here.

In any case, the game was tied, and overtime arrived.

In the extra frame, the Stars won the faceoff, and even got an initial look with Heiskanen and Rantanen creating a dangerous look. But eventually, the Rangers would recover a puck Rantanen lost along the boards, and New York would work their way back into the zone, crossing up the Stars a little too easily for my money. Hintz finally jumps to attack Panarin, but nobody else would cover the wide-open—yes—Gavrikov, who finished a rebound to rub salt in the Stars’ collective wound.

Really, the Stars probably got what they deserved after asking DeSmith to make 40+ saves tonight, including 11 on the penalty kill (all of which he stopped). In the third period in particular, shots on goal were 18 to 3 in favor of New York. It’s hard to throw your backup goalie under the bus much more than that, but credit to DeSmith for not collapsing in the face of that effort (or lack of effort, as Gulutzan labeled his team’s work afterward).

Getting a point out of a game where the whole team (and especially this power play) was this far out of sync is a kind of moral victory for Dallas, but the key now will be for the Stars to shake off whatever malaise was creeping into their game at times—especially in the final period. Because the Stars will have to do it all again in New Jersey tomorrow night against a better team.

Oh, and if Jake Oettinger isn’t recovered from the illness he was dealing with yesterday, Casey DeSmith may need to get right back out there and play again. But if he keeps playing like this, the Stars should be in decent shape indeed—so long as the rest of the team matches his effort.

Esoteric Song of the Game

Lineups

Dallas did this, to start:

Benn-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Hintz-Seguin :(
Back-Hryckowian-Bourque
Steel-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Kolyachonok-Lyubushkin
Capobianco-Petrovic

DeSmith

---

The New York Hockey Rangers did this:

Miller-Trocheck-Brodzinski
Panarin-Zibanejad-Lafreniere
Cuylle-Laba-Berard
Sheary-Carrick-Raddysh

Gavrikov-Schneider
Soucy-Borgen
Robertson-Morrow

Shesterkin

AfterThoughts

• Reuniting Alex Petrovic and Kyle Capobianco made sense on paper, given the two’s long familiarity with one another from their time together with the Texas Stars. It also allowed Vladislav Kolyachonok to play on his strong side next to Ilya Lyubushkin.

• Heiskanen played 28:50 in this one, and Lindell 27:11. How fresh they’ll be tomorrow will be a very interesting thing to see. (Probably they will be okay, on account of they’re in better shape than most other living human beings, but you never know.)

• Jamie Benn played his 1,200th game with the Dallas Stars tonight, which is impressive, as the broadcast pointed out:

  

  Victory+

• Kyle Capobianco’s goal also triggered this graphic from the broadcast, showing the Stars’ equal-opportunity scoring this season next to a newly shorn Capobianco:

  

  • Trivia question: The Stars only have one skater on the NHL roster right now who has not scored a goal so far this season. Can you guess who it is without looking? (Because, you know, looking means it’s not a guess. I shouldn’t have to explain these things, folks.)

• When Glen Gulutzan first started giving Miro Heiskanen regular time on the penalty kill to start this year, I was somewhat skeptical that it was the right decision. But man, when you watch Heiskanen out there, his gaps and stick decisions are unparalleled. He’s just a ferociously smart player who refuses to let power plays execute ideal looks or get pucks off the walls cleanly. It’s really something to watch, and if he doesn’t get too worn down playing the extra minutes, I’ll certainly have to admit that I was wrong to doubt the decision. It’s absolutely been a boon to the penalty kill so far.

• The Stars gave up a couple more odd-man rushes than they have been doing lately, but the upshot is that we get to compare and contrast a couple of them, so let’s learn something here:

  • First, Ilya Lyubushkin had to play a 2-on-1 late in the first period, and he did an entertaining job of preventing a clean pass across, along with DeSmith. Results speak for themselves, but this felt a bit more adventurous than a coach probably would prefer:

  • In the second period, Alex Petrovic had to do the same, and he managed to prevent the pass and let DeSmith do what he’s been doing a whole lot of this season, which is to stop the shot. Calm and controlled as you like. Different strokes for different folks, I guess?

• But enough about lame-o 2-on-1s. Those are for babies! Let’s talk about 3-on-1s, because the Stars got two of them without really forcing anything spectacular out of Shesterkin on either one.

  • In the second period, a 3-on-1 resulted in nothing more than a low-angle Rantanen shot thunking into Shesterkin’s pads.

  • In the third, another 3-on-1 didn’t even result in a shot, though Robertson may possibly feel that Benn ought to have been more ready for this pass:

• Radek Faksa had a very strong sequence of defending on Artemi Panarin midway through the second period that was fun to watch. His strength and balance just continually frustrated Panarin’s attempts to do anything creative with the puck. Obviously you don’t want to keep having to be in that position in the first place, but if you are, better to be good at shutting down an elite offensive player while you do it.

• The Rangers’ power play without Adam Fox looked pretty rough for most of the night. I’m not sure if that’s just a curse of the five-forward setup, but the Stars’ penalty kill looked thoroughly in command during their kills until the extended double-minor in the third. And even then, the penalty kill managed to get the job done.

• But lest you start throwing stones from your glass house, the Stars’ power play looked uncharacteristically sloppy itself, with a second-period look getting easily refused by New York for 90 seconds while never getting set up. And when it finally did near the end of the power play, it gave up yet another odd-man rush shorthanded to New York. Fun fact: When you think the clip here is about to end…it keeps going:

• Dallas had another scary moment when Sam Steel took this hit and went into the boards hard, catching a stick between his face and the wall. Thankfully, Steel was able to stay in the game after getting some attention on the bench, but it looked extremely painful, as running into things with your face usually is.

  • No penalty would be called on this play, and in fact Steel would get called for hitting someone’s face with his own stick shortly afterward, sending the Rangers to a four-minute power play after Steel clipped Lafrenière up high and drew blood.

• Casey DeSmith had some incredible saves tonight, but this one was emblematic of what he had to deal with at times: Chances out of nothing, with traffic and nonsense happening all over.

  DeSmith was, as we’ve said, outstanding. He got them to overtime in a game the Stars were very uneven for, but as DeSmith said afterward, it was “too good of a game” for it to end the way it did. Life is like that, sometimes. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

  • Oh, and this toe save in particular was worth a second look:

• Finally, it was brought to my attention that the MSG broadcast mentioned that Wyatt Johnston and Will Cuylle got dinner together last night.

  • In case you didn’t know, they played together in Windsor back when both were coming up through juniors. And yes, they were both pretty good back then, too.