Game 3 AfterThoughts: Another Dramatic Third Period, Fortunately and Unfortunately

Matt Duchene did not return after a big hit, but the Stars held on to win their third game in a row

Lian Bichsel and Mavrik Bourque arrive for the Dallas Stars’ home opener. October 14, 2025.

Looking at the Stars’ schedule to open the season, you probably would have been considered reasonable if you projected them to take two or three points from their first three games. Starting off with two matchups in Colorado and Winnipeg, only to come home to face a Wild team that looked as dangerous as ever coming into Tuesday? That’s not exactly easing your way into the year, so you’d expect them to drop at least one of those, and maybe make it to overtime in another. Reasonable, right?

But the Stars, to their credit, found ways to win all of those contests—including a flat performance in Colorado and an almost-blown lead in Winnipeg. Their inherent strengths rose up to counterbalance their mistakes, and they’ve done what every coach preaches in getting out to a great start. There are still flaws, yes. But as DeBoer’s Stars showed for the last three years, building a cushion makes it a whole lot easier to fix things on the fly than doing surgery under a bright lamp in an interrogation room. There are six metaphors in there somewhere, but it’s almost 1:00am on Wednesday, so you figure it out.

The Stars have collected six points in three games against the Central Division in a performance that Vin Scully would call “a modest thing, but thine own.” Let’s talk about it.

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Like their prior two victories, the Stars showed that scoring five goals doesn’t take all the drama out of the game. Because after killing the Wild’s first two penalties of the game to cool a scorching-hot power play, the Stars gave up two more power plays, both of which were converted by Minnesota to draw within 3-2.

As a result, the Stars were outshot 16-4 in the third period, including a 9-0 run by the Wild to start the frame. Dallas would need two empty-netters from Hintz and Faksa to salt the game away in the final minutes, but it was a nervy thing for a while there, which Glen Gulutzan admitted gives them some things to keep working on.

However, Gulutzan also made a distinction tonight about what he thinks is—and isn’t—causing the problems.

“Some of the system changes aren’t causing some of the problems,” Gulutzan said in response to a question about systems and adjustments. “Simple problems like puck play, that was a problem I thought, today. Being sure-handed at the lines was a bit of a problem today. Unforced errors were a bit of a problem in my mind, today. Our breakouts were a bit of a problem. So for me, those are the things we need to continue to clean up.”

In fact, Gulutzan said he’s seen helpful things from some of the newly implemented approaches.

“I mean, the shots on goal, that doesn’t always tell the story. But you don’t want to be taking in as much as that. But some of it is perimeter water, too.”

Still, it’s impossible to dissect the third period with any honesty without mentioning a clear turning point: the hit on Matt Duchene that knocked him out of the game, and maybe longer. From there, a game the Stars had well in-hand turned into a “hold on for dear life” period that looked a little too much like what ended up materializing in Colorado last weekend.

Here’s the hit from Middleton. You can argue about points of contact or whatever—Duchene’s head snaps back pretty violently as the shoulder hits him, but it’s tough to disentangle exactly how much hits where—but overall, that’s a hit a team needs to see a response from, and Alex Petrovic provided it, dropping the gloves and going after Jake Middleton.

But unlike Justin Hryckowian the other night, Petrovic was assessed an instigator penalty for his choice, which comes with not only a two-minute minor, but also a ten-minute misconduct. And that ended up steering the game in a very different direction.

Gulutzan said afterward that he liked the response from Petrovic to stand up for Duchene, but that the response from the Stars after said fight wasn’t strong enough. It was similar to what Gulutzan said about the lack of energy from the Stars after Lian Bichsel’s fight in the final preseason game against Colorado, too.

As for Duchene, Gulutzan had no update after the game, saying only: “We’re gonna have him evaluated.”

On the hit itself, Gulutzan had stronger words.

“I didn’t like the hit,” Gulutzan said. “I thought it was high. My history here is they usually run on the side of [being] more aggressive in their call there, but they didn’t. So they saw it differently.”

On the Minnesota side, Jake Middleton called it a “perfect storm” and expressed his hope for Duchene to be all right.

“It’s a tough position because I know he doesn’t see me and I’m still trying to take the body on him,” Middleton said. “I know he didn’t come back to the game. I hope he’s OK. There was no ill intent towards the hit. It was just kind of a perfect storm really the way it transpired.”

Indeed, the hope will be that Duchene bounces back quickly, and that any concussion tests come up negative. But the fact that he needs further evaluation could mean he’ll be entering concussion protocol, at least initially.

We should hear more on Duchene at practice tomorrow. And if you’d like to learn more about such an eventuality, you can read the whole tome from last season about the process from when Lian Bichsel went through it.

When Can Lian Bichsel Return: I Read the NHL Concussion Protocol So You Don't Have To

As for the Stars, they won this game thanks to two power play goals of their own, and a great play from Roope Hintz to set up Esa Lindell. And, much like they did in Colorado, they also got some huge saves from Jake Oettinger to keep things from getting out of control. Sometimes the goal is not to stem, but just to slow the tide enough to hang on, and Oettinger once again did that, only allowing two goals through traffic that came off good power play work from the NHL’s hottest man-advantage. The Stars goalie was excellent for the first ten minutes of the game, and he didn’t break when the team was bending for much of the third. That’s what you hope to see, all things considered. Good enough is great, when you hold the lead.

The penalty kill’s work on the first two power plays was also great, and crucial as it turned out. Sure, going 2-for-4 on the kill is never ideal, but in this one, the Stars’ lone tally at evens was enough to make that number a winning one.

You can only win the game you find yourself in. And in this case, the Stars ended up having to roll three forward lines and five defensemen against a desperate Minnesota team. That’s never the easiest way to get the horse into the barn, but they found a way to make it happen.

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What made matters tougher, however, was the second Blackwell penalty in the third period to give Minnesota a premium chance to draw within one, which they took. While Blackwell was working hard to stick with Zeev Buium initially, he ended up falling and taking down Zeev Buium in the process, giving the Wild their fourth power play of the game. That could well fall into the “unforced errors” category of play Gulutzan was talking about. Minnesota then cashed in to draw within one goal.

Blackwell also iced a puck with three minutes to go, when a better touch would have allowed the Stars to change after a long shift in their own end. In past years, I’d say that you could point to that as a “reason” for the coaching staff to scratch Blackwell for Erne in the next game, but we’ll have to see how the new regime looks at these sorts of things. There was still a fair bit of good from Blackwell in this game, including a near breakaway that he created with his speed. And if the Stars end up being without Duchene for a bit, they’ll need every forward they have.

Overall, the Stars can take a pretty good amount of consolation from the fact that they have played three imperfect games while getting the perfect amount of points from each. Winning is a pretty nice consolation prize, paradoxically. If they can find 79 more ways to win like they’ve done thus far, they will break every sports record in history, and also give their fans a whole host of blood pressure issues in the process. Preferably, the coaching staff will find a way to implement slightly more boring hockey for the sake of everyone involved—record books be darned.

Esoteric Soundtrack of the Game (ESotG)

Lineups

The Stars began with this lineup:

Steel-Hintz-Rantanen
Hryckowian-Duchene-Seguin
Robertson-Johnston-Bourque
Blackwell-Faksa-Bastian

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Petrovic

Oettinger in goal

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Minnesota began with this assemblage of players:

Kaprizov-Rossi-Boldy
Johansson-Eriksson Ek-Tarasenko
Foligno-Hartman-Trenin
Ohgren-Yurov-Hinostroza

Brodin-Faber
Middleton-Spurgeon
Buium-Bogosian

Gustavsson

AfterThoughts

• First of all, if you haven’t watched Emily Kaplan’s feature on Jake Oettinger yet, it is absolutely worth four minutes of your time. Oettinger, Mason Marchment, and even Matt Dumba spoke candidly about what it was like after everything happened in Game 5 against Edmonton. Really, I commend this video to you in the strongest possible terms. You might find yourself feeling emotional about a story of communal beard-shaving, or at least interested.

• Wyatt Johnston was asked to take the ceremonial faceoff before the game. The reason for that was pretty obvious: The person dropping the puck was Joe Pavelski.

  • I don’t think that’s the last time Wyatt Johnston will be taking a ceremonial faceoff in Dallas. Just saying.

• Johnston’s power play goal was also marvelous in this one. After some more good offensive zone work by Dallas that culminated in Jared Spurgeon getting nailed with a painful one-timer from Heiskanen, the Stars drew a tripping call to get on the power play. It didn’t take long for them to convert, as Johnston took advantage of a stickless Jake Middleton to stickhandle his way to the front of the net and fire it over Gustavsson’s shoulder.

  • Genuinely, he’s starting out this year looking like his own version of the rejuvenated Jason Robertson. The Stars have a very good forward group, you may have heard, and they are making big plays, and winning games.

• Shots on goal were 8-2 for Minnesota just four minutes into the first, with some quality chances mixed in there. It certainly looked like Minnesota was still in Game Mode after playing at home last night, and Dallas took a bit to catch up to their pace. In theory, the third period would have been when some fatigue would have shown up, but the way the game shook out didn’t really allow Dallas to take much advantage of that.

• As far as pace goes, Roope Hintz was flying early on, and his legs generated the possession that led to Dallas’s first goal, when he won the race to a puck in the offensive zone after a pretty lackluster Wild breakout attempt resulted in a turnover in neutral ice. Hintz then circled the net and set up Esa Lindell for a quality shot that beat a screened Gustavsson.

• Hintz’s legs also allowed him to score the Stars’ final goal—and I wonder if he would have let Johnston’s flip trickle in without touching it, had the Wild not been close enough to get to the puck before it slid over the line.

• The third Dallas goal was a fortunate one on another power play, as Duchene’s feed in front to Steel (who was getting cleared out) bounced off Bogosian’s skate and through Gustavsson’s five-hole. It was a tough goal for Gustavsson, who had made a couple of excellent stops earlier in the power play set. The Wild hit a couple of posts behind Oettinger while Dallas got a fortunate bounce for that goal. Hockey will hockey, sometimes.

• Mikko Rantanen’s incredible passing ability continues to astound me. About four minutes into the second period, he was waiting for a rim-around high in his own zone, and he somehow knew Robertson was breaking to the far blue line. Rantanen collected the puck along the wall and spun almost without looking, hitting Robertson in stride for a breakaway that nearly turned into a dagger of a goal.

• Lian Bichsel had a couple of overly adventurous shifts in this one, carrying the puck a bit longer than needed, then finding himself having to defend a chance against shortly afterward. It probably all comes from a good place, which is to say his confidence and skating ability, but this was the sort of game where a quieter night from the third pairing was probably more ideal. However, Bichsel also stepped up in the third period with the Stars down to five defensemen, and his work to defend Matt Boldy when the Wild were pressing hard was impressive. Overall, more good than not-good, and that’s a great trajectory for any defenseman.

• Jason Robertson had a diving play at his blue line to clear a puck, which he then stayed on top of long enough to get up, take it away again, and start the rush the other way. Robertson really does look night-and-day quicker than he was at this time last year—and of course, he is. But seeing it show up in defensive moments is a good reminder that Robertson is a more complex (and helpful) sort of winger than his scoring sometimes gets him labeled as. If he scored less, would his defensive work be praised more? These are the weird things you wonder when it’s midnight on a Tuesday. I dislike 8:45pm puck drops.

• As has been happening this season, Steel was moved from the top line down to third line, resulting in a fair few shifts of what I’m tentatively terming the Shadow Top Six, as the two groupings have been seen more frequently than the opening lines over the last three games:
  

  Robertson-Hintz-Rantanen

  Johnston-Duchene-Seguin
  
  It does tend to make for less continuity in the bottom six, as players like Mavrik Bourque find themselves sometimes on piecemeal lines. But the flexibility of having multiple line combinations that can work in-game for your top guys is probably worth the slight disruption to normalcy.

  • Bourque later got moved up to play with Seguin and Johnston in the third after Duchene left the bench following the big hit from Middleton, though he later moved next to Faksa and Blackwell down the stretch, with Steel going back up top and Robertson playing with Johnston and Seguin. Options are good things, especially in times of trouble.