Game 3 WCF AfterThoughts: Odd-Man Rushes and Evening the Score
Some good, a lot more bad, and a few players in-between
Some playoff games are heartbreakers. A team loses in overtime on a rough bounce, and you feel like it was that close to going the other way.
Other games are thrillers, where two great teams open it up or lock it down, but either way, you have to appreciate both teams’ execution, and you know the win is going to whoever makes a great play first.
Then there are games like Sunday afternoon, where one team appears to have shown up to a water fight with one of those old Super Soakers with a giant backpack of extra water, only for someone to brain them with a perfectly-placed water balloon every time they turn their head. Someone eventually goes running home crying, threatening to tell on everyone else, and you all kind of realize it’s time to go shoot hoops or something, and scatter.
You don’t need me to tell you which one this game felt like, for Stars fans. It was a dispiriting way to spend a Sunday afternoon, unless you live in Texas, where it’s already gotten so hot that staying inside to watch even this hockey game was at least a mild reprieve.
But in this game, no reprieve was ever to be found for Dallas. Edmonton is like that kid at summer camp who’s really good at foosball, and even if you play the game of your life and control play and make some nice saves, all it takes is one bad bounce to feel like the table is tilted steeply in your direction. Then your hands feel slow, the ball seems heavy, and that sound of the ball slamming into your goal over and over again triggers deep rage and shame that you end up paying lots money to deal with in therapy ten years later.1 You know, like that.
Dallas did a ton of good things in this game, and Pete DeBoer said as much. Edmonton got the only two power plays of the second period (on two clear penalties by Dallas), but for all that, the Stars outdid them 22-7 in shots on goal, 19-7 in scoring chances, and 11-2 in high-danger scoring chances (all numbers per Natural Stat Trick). It was a period where Dallas was flying, cutting through Edmonton’s neutral zone coverage with ease, and using the space Edmonton allows higher in the defensive zone to create great looks.
I mean, look at this chart of shots in the second period.
It’s absurd that the Stars exited this period without having made up a bit of ground, but absurd was the name of the game on Sunday afternoon. And when two Stars pushed up high in the zone to try to will a puck out of the zone and it slipped past them right to McDavid, he made the absurd look routine, as he always does: bang, you’re dead. 3-1 Edmonton.
Fans looking for Dallas to take a run at Darnell Nurse were disappointed on Sunday, as the Stars looked decidedly uninterested in doing so.
Many of you will feel that this shows Dallas is “soft,” that they aren’t ready for big-time playoff hockey like Florida, where scores are settled and revenge is exacted with injurious plays in both directions, whatever the cost.
Dallas isn’t that sort of team. At least, not overtly. But don’t be caught looking foolish by saying they aren’t taking the Hintz injury personally. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The thing is, Dallas also needs to make sure this is a series where such a revenge can be exacted without costing them a game. And when you’re constantly trailing, you don’t really have such a luxury, unless you wait until late in a blowout, when penalties get stiffer and punishments from the league tend to increase.
In other words, if Jamie Benn takes a swing at Connor McDavid’s knee to stick up for his buddy, the Stars are going to suffer some pretty stiff consequences. And as ostensibly nice as the momentary catharsis of going full Gorilla Mode with their lizard brains might be, they all have their sights set on the Stanley Cup. And throwing away a game in this series (not to mention a lengthy suspension for the player in question) is just not an appetizing prospect.
Also, I happen to think eye-for-an-eye when it comes to injuries is, like, morally wrong. Yes, throw big hits and mix it up after the whistles. Challenge Nurse to a fight, if you want, and throw some haymakers. But the 6-foot-4, 215-lb defenseman isn’t exactly a sapling, and do you really want to ask Lian Bichsel to try to fight such a player, given his recent concussion?
The most likely response in this series, if we see one, will be one of two things, I’d guess: Either Benn or Marchment goes after Nurse with a big hit, or one of them challenges him to drop the gloves (probably Benn). But that’s a time-and-place sort of thing, and you don’t want to try to rush such a thing before the time is right and have Nurse get the better of you.
Of course, the most poetic end to this whole thing would be for Roope Hintz to return and lay a big hit on Nurse. But that would require his foot to be able to play hockey, and it’s clearly not quite there.
After the game, DeBoer said this about Hintz’s foot:
“He tried to warm up, but no, he wasn’t close. If he was close, he probably would have played.”
Note also DeBoer’s pointing out that Robertson had some good signs in this game, with five shots on goal. If Robertson can break out in Game 4, Dallas suddenly looks a heck of a lot tougher. But time is running low for him right now.
A word about comportment, for a moment. When you’re experiencing a game like this as a fan, it brings out the worst in everyone. I had to ignore a huge chunk of Twitter mentions for a couple of hours (and still now), because people were in there saying vile, hateful things about any manner of what they thought I was saying. But there is no peace to be found in shouting back or dunking on them. The internet is not real life, which is something to be very thankful for when you read what people feel comfortable writing but would never say to your face.
Part of my process is to try to make the odd joke, and to remind myself and others that luck goes both ways, and that referees are human beings worthy of respect and grace, too—and in some cases, more worthy than most.
It is true, as always: you have to steel yourself for the NHL playoffs. These games will tear you apart and ruin your day when they go like this, if you let them. And this game was created from the atomic level on up to raise your hopes and dash them against the rocks they used to build Connor McDavid’s weird supervillain house.
The Oilers will have their own complaints, as teams always do. I’m told some fans think the Petrovic hit on Connor Brown was “cheap” or a “heatshot” or something, but I don’t know what to say, other than what the NHL always says: the head has to be the principal point of contact, and Petrovic pretty clearly delivers a check to Brown’s entire upper body, including his chest and head, after Brown plays a waist-high puck and turns into the hit at the last second.
Brown is eligible to be hit there, and the hit the (much taller) Petrovic delivers is one the league consistently shows they want to keep in the game, even if I personally think players need to start being penalized for hits like this if they really do want to protect the head. But if the NHL starts handing out discipline or penalties for those hits, it will be both a way to make the game safer, and a gigantic surprise to me, as it stands now.
Best wishes to Brown for a quick recovery, who was already fighting something just to play in this series. Playoff series are better when everyone is healthy.
The Stars are still generating tons of chances. They score a ton, these Pete DeBoer Stars, and they’ve gotten past two good teams in the first two rounds as a result, for three straight years.
The questions about “what’s wrong with this team” I’m seeing are just kind of silly, to be honest. You don’t get this far unless your team has done a whole lot right, and you don’t keep getting this far unless your team is one of the best in the business. The Stars are clearly that, even if they aren’t all healthy right now.
But the Oilers are also one of the best hockey teams out there. They’ve leveraged a decade of abysmal hockey and some fortunate draft lottery results into a core filled with top-8 draft picks who are all in their prime right now:
Connor McDavid: 1st overall
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins: 1st overall
Leon Draisaitl: 3rd overall
Evan Bouchard: 8th overall
Darnell Nurse: 7th overall
That’s a pretty good place to start. In fact, it’s kind of ridiculous it’s taken Edmonton this long to build a Cup contender, especially when you realize they had other top-ten picks like Philip Broberg (8th overall), Jesse Pujijarvi (4th overall), and Nail Yakupov (1st overall) who aren’t even around anymore. In a way, it would be criminal if Edmonton didn’t win a Cup before McDavid turns 30, with a stacked group like that.
Dallas has had just one top-8 pick since 2010, and that’s Miro Heiskanen, whom they lucked into by moving up from eighth to third in 2017. But because of the possibly three-time GM of the Year in Jim Nill, Dallas has built a team that mustered a 2-1 lead against these Oilers last year before slipping on three straight banana peels (presumably left by Alex Radulov, who recently won a championship himself).
So anyway, back to this series. Edmonton is now up 2-1, and maybe that’s a good thing, if last year is any indication. Dallas hit four posts in the first half of the game, including a power play one-timer by Mikko Rantanen that would have tied the game early in the second. The margins really are that close, this time of year. You heard it from both coaches in the Winnipeg series: getting that first goal and forcing the other team to play catch-up is huge when the teams are this good, and they are that good.
That skill was most evident in the odd-man rushes, which Dallas gave out like candy in a parade after trailing while Edmonton kept both defensemen and often a forward back, back, back until one of their other forwards cleared the way up the ice for them. You can do that when you build a two-goal lead in 36 seconds during the first period, you know. Pete DeBoer has said many times this year that the Stars will open up the game more when they’re trailing in order to allow more chances, and that can cut both ways. Or at least, it’s supposed to.
The game was opened wide in the second period, and Dallas was more prepared to take advantage of it. But as chance after chance somehow, miraculously, stayed out of the Oilers’ net, it became clear that a win just wasn’t in the cards today. Of course McDavid would score, and of course the puck would squirt right to him. If you’re a fan full of angst, this game felt like it was designed to trigger every bit of it.
As for the first two goals, those are easy to diagnose. Yes, Dallas got hosed by all four officials missing the clear delay of game on Brett Kulak, but that doesn’t mean you’re legally obligated to illustrate just how costly a blown call can be in the immediate aftermath. The Wyatt Johnston line lost a faceoff and lost coverage up the ice, and bouchard was wide open to step into a clapper that did much the same thing as it did in Game 2, boring a hole downhill before getting buried in the net at the exact moment two players skate in front of Oettinger.
Too easy. But then, Lian “Jason Robertson” Bichsel would score on a similar chance for Dallas later, so you can say those sorts of goals evened out, at least until Klingberg’s sixth goal in garbage time (after a garbage penalty call).
Actually, about that call: Kelly Sutherland immediately whistles down Thomas Harley for a bump after the whistle here, after Zach Hyman skate by smiling as he bumps into Jamie Benn.
It’s objectively not a penalty, but the “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” call Kelly Sutherland dished out was pretty obviously as “we aren’t going to have a bunch of garbage in garbage time, boys,” and it led to a power play goal for Edmonton that didn’t matter.
You shouldn’t care about this call, even if it’s incredibly soft. It’s game management by a veteran referee looking to stamp out just this sort of nonsense before it turns into a brawl, and I guess you could say it succeeded. But you shouldn’t care about it because the game was over long before this point. Let us never speak of it again.
The second Oilers goal was the killer, though.
Cody Ceci is off-screen to the right, and he has no idea what he’s about to face. But you can see Harley’s thinking here: with all three forwards below him, if he can get the puck, it sets up Rantanen and Robertson to get a great 2-on-1 down low. That’s the upside.
But the downside, as we talked about postgame, is what happened: he pushes up at the exact worst time, when the puck pops out, and he’s caught in between, and shortly thereafter, behind.
Is Harley just trying too hard to even the game back up there? Possibly. He’s always been clear that he feels very comfortable playing lower in the zone, and in DeBoer’s system, Harley has permission to do so. But this is pretty clearly a situation where the upside, with the entire game to be played, is not worth the downside. Time and place and opponents on the ice are the factors he doesn’t quite balance out here, and he would be the first to tell you that he made the wrong call here. It happens. It just doesn’t usually happen at quite so horrible moment as this.
I’m not really interested in relitigating the fourth, fifth, or sixth Edmonton goals. In fact, one of the reasons for splitting up Postgame Beats and AfterThoughts is so I won’t have to do that, and I’m not gonna. But I am going to mention one other moment.
John Klingberg, tying up his old defense partner, Esa Lindell. This was a cool moment.
Podkolzin would come down to support, but Lindell would rip his stick away from Klingberg’s stick (clamping down onto it), and he would take the puck down low.
Lindell would find Sam Steel on the doorstep, and Steel would get a whack at it.
It was a simple little play, but it was a puck battle Lindell won against a player he knows extremely well, and it created two shots from the front porch for Steel, both of which he put into Skinner’s pads with Rantanen tying up Klingberg behind him.
Dallas got fairly few chances off the rush (and even fewer odd-man ones), which is a testament to how structured this Edmonton team can play when they’re sitting on a lead. They forced Dallas to get overeager, and from their second goal on in, they capitalized on their Grade-A rushes, while Dallas had to be more surgical.
This play was surgical, even if it started with brute force. And usually, more than one of these sorts of chances gets converted. Dallas created chances like this a lot today, by taking the puck low and outpassing Edmonton’s in-zone coverage. It worked, and I would bet you a silver dollar that they had specific sorts of shots they were looking for when they did so. DeBoer is a very insightful tactical coach, and the Stars’ tactics were better than Edmonton’s through 40 minutes, when they didn’t drop the playbook and scramble.
The question is, are those tactics and Dallas’s available personnel enough to get a vital 2-2 split in this series on the road, presuming Edmonton doesn’t get another three free uncalled penalties per game?
Well, that depends on, I think, three things: Mikko Rantanen, Matt Duchene and Wyatt Johnston.
Johnston has been on the ice for zero Stars goals and four Edmonton goals at 5-on-5 so far. He generated a couple of looks in this one, and he had a shorthanded chance as well. But none of the results are going his way, and his underlying numbers bear that out: he has the worst xGF% on the team right now (low forties), below even Cody Ceci, who is tasked with the toughest defensive duty. Johnston has to at least break even in the tough minutes he’s asked to play. He is about to start making the big bucks for a reason.
Rantanen has been creating offense for Dallas. He’s been on the ice for 18 high-danger shots for Dallas, and only 10 against, but he’s only seen one 5-on-5 goal during his 50+ minutes at 5-on-5 in this series so far. That is absurd. Much like the Colorado series, you’d expect him to break out any minute. But that minute needs to come soon, if he’s to have more minutes after it in which to turn the tide.
Duchene has been creating tons of looks this series. Shot attempts are 56-34 in favor of Dallas when he’s on the ice at 5-on-5, and his line has had 60% or more of the scoring chances and high-danger shots when he’s been out there, too.
And the Stars are -4 during that time.
Duchene’s line has scored just one goal and given up five. That means they need to burn some sagebrush or whatever around the Edmonton net, because when Seguin’s shot bounced off Skinner and into the netmouth, you have to move heaven and earth to put it away there. You have to.
Yes, Duchene is outnumbered with his stick on the wrong side here, and he gets mobbed immediately by three Oilers who find a way to force the puck out. But this chance would’ve made it 3-2 and given Dallas life. Instead, it went right back the other way after Alex Petrovic made a foolish pinch of his own, forcing Bichsel to switch over to support and swat a puck back into the zone.
Except, that swat would go right to Nugent-Hopkins along the boards, who fired it right back down the ice to Hyman before Petrovic could recover or before Seguin reached the red line. You’ll note both Duchene and Marchment still in the low circle there, well behind the play.
Yes, this probably doesn’t matter, but it stung a bit extra, given the so-close to oh-no sequence. That line generated so many good looks, but they feel so cursed right now.
Fun facts so far in this series:
Sam Steel has been on the ice for 2 Dallas goals and 0 Oilers goals so far at 5v5
Tyler Seguin is the only other “plus” player, having been on the ice for 2 goals and 1 against at 5v5 so far.
This hasn’t been a very fun series for Dallas since the first game.
Without Hintz, it was intriguing to see what DeBoer did with the lines, moving Robertson up and asking Granlund to play center with Rantanen.
On paper, that should be a great trio—three bona fide top-line players, two of which have topped 100 points in recent history. But they saw two goals go in the wrong net, and generated none themselves. They broke even in all the underlying numbers, but the overarching problem remained the same: Edmonton got Grade-AAA chances and finished them, while Dallas got Grade-A chances they didn’t. That was it.
Still, Rantanen deserves credit for the goal Dallas did score, as he and Robertson were on the ice with Duchene sticking around from the prior shift, and Rantanen was all over the offensive zone, setting up Bichsel for two different shots from the point as he freewheeled around the zone with powerful precision.
Yes, the Stars need more from Rantanen, but he’s not been silent or absent. This is just the stage of the playoffs where you need your team to show why they deserve to be here. Carolina is falling flat in the East, and so you’re going to keep reading and hearing comparisons to Dallas doing the same in the West. But don’t fall for it. This is a series night-and-day more compelling than the Eastern Conference Final. All Dallas has to do now is mash the RESET button on Tuesday night.
The Stars have lost two games and won one. That’s probably about what they deserve, given the hockey they’ve played. But just a bit more from the rest of their lineup, and they can get back to Dallas with a brand-new series. The whole point of home-ice advantage is the assumption that the series might get to the point where that fourth home game matters.
Regardless of how you feel about this game’s result, one thing is absolutely true: After Game 4, Dallas will have the series they deserve, one way or the other.
Hypothetically speaking.
Why didn't Benn do or say anything about the high stick?! I mean, that could have at least given us some life. We also need to start taking the body on McDavid. No one is finishing checks on him. He's just allowed to free flow. The Stars are allowing him to be way too comfortable out there. I feel like we played a good game. Our mistakes were fatal. Otter needed to make a couple of big saves. He just looked slow to challenge and was beaten clean too many times. There's only so much we can say about the officiating.
Come back and take game 4. It's as simple as that. Remember that you're playing Stuart Skinner, not Dominik Hasek.
Another awesome hockey post.
Robert, reading the Internet comments on the X dot com hellsite is almost always a rookie mistake. Take it from me. 😂
The analytics are telling me what I saw with my eyes yesterday. This was in no way, shape, or form a 6-1 game. The Stars were the better team in pretty much every way except finishing chances. They lost because they didn't convert their chances and got burned a few times when they had to start playing high risk, high reward hockey in the 3rd period. A good baseball analogy would be going 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position while their opposition went 5 for 7. That's sports. I would not be shocked if there is mean reversion on both sides and the Stars end up stealing Game 4 and regaining home ice advantage. They have done it before against both the Avs and Jets. Goal differential means a lot to GMs and the analytics people during the course of the entire season, but in the playoffs only the wins count.
Wyatt Johnston is playing some of the worst hockey of his career right now. Part of it is the opposition -- he is being asked to play against the likes of Nathan MacKinnon and Conner McDavid (weird guy with a weird house, but with the part Finnish girlfriend I have an idea here for Jim Nill to pursue in the offseason...but I digress). And part of it is that he is being asked to play with linemates who themselves are slumping. But I also think that his defensive play is getting exposed a bit in the playoffs. He's still basically a kid and he is playing like a guy who is both mentally and physically tired. DeBoer trusts him in every situation, and I would trust him in every situation, but he's definitely slumping, especially mentally.
I also think that Thomas Harley might be finally hitting a bit of a wall. He is also making mistakes and most of them seem to be mental.
The Moose is just fine. Don't change a thing with him, but his linemates need to step it up. Robo is still showing signs of getting there, but he's not quite there yet.
I didn't have Stuart Skinner (FFS) outplaying Oettingerer so far, but that's the case in the last two games. The same thing happened last year, too. Here, too, I hope for a bit of mean reversion in Game 4.
Anyway, I can go on and on, but this comment is already way, way, WAY too long.