Game 3 WCQF AfterThoughts: Wyatt Johnston Outwaits the Universe

Now I’m somewhere east of Tulsa
Got another place to play
Lord knows I’ve got problems
Won’t face ’em today

***

Look, it is past 2am, and I am tired. We’re all fighting it, and each one of us is day-to-day, to paraphrase Vin Scully. Rooting for a team in the Central Division means being beholden to the television schedules of coastal executives. But you know who doesn’t care about time zones?

Wyatt Johnston tonight:

•23:28 TOI
•2 goals, including OT winner
•15 shot attempts
•8 shots on goal
•I had him down for 11 scoring chances
•Stars had 91% of expected goal share in his minutes via NST

— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) April 28, 2024

I don’t think a large portion of the fan base has caught up to how good Johnston has been. He’s effectively become Dallas’s most consistent and best forward, and even as a teenager last year, he showed how little he gets fazed by playoff pressure.

His patience on the winning goal was telling, just as Dadonov’s patience to set up the Stars’ second goal was. Dallas finally found a way to avoid charging into the brick wall that is the Knights’ 1-2-2, and they found it early and often. Johnston may not have scored on most of his chances, but he stayed focused and calm enough to take advantage of his final chance in a crucial moment, even if the angle made it look like one of his lower-tier scoring opportunities, relative to so many others he got during the game.

Some people are just like that, immune to whatever stress we mortal humans feel. When Johnston was faced with what seemed like the Stars’ 100th scoring chance of a maddening game, he channeled Jason Spezza in 2016…or perhaps himself, last year against Seattle.

Wyatt Johnston's OT winner against Vegas looks a lot like his goal from Game 7 against the Seattle Kraken last year. The 20 year old is dangerous. #TexasHockey #OneStateOneTeam pic.twitter.com/3OiO4DR6RA

— T a y l o r. (@THN_taylor) April 28, 2024

Some players just see the game in slow motion, and Johnston has proven himself to be a card-carrying member of that group. Jack Eichel is also in that category, or at least I’m assuming he is, based on how time seemed to slow down the way it does during an action movie sequence involving the death of a hero’s best friend.

That’s a good reminder of how much our emotions taint our observation, though, because Dallas well and truly dominated this game in every way except the most important one. The Knights didn’t score a single 5v5 goal tonight, and Dallas scored three, but it should’ve been closer to twice that. Dallas outchanced Vegas in embarrassing fashion, with sites like Natural Stat Trick putting the edge at 23-4 in Dallas’s favor for the game.

That accords with the series trend, too. Vegas has gotten three goals at special teams as well as looking much more dominant at 4v4, while Dallas has just the one power play goal. But at 5v5, the Stars have been outrageously better, even before tonight’s battering ram of a victory. Dallas has over twice as many expected goals as Vegas at 5v5, but Logan Thompson clearly failed to read his analytics briefing before the game, and it took nearly everything Dallas could muster to avoid a third straight loss to an opponent who didn’t really seem to bring their A-game, and almost didn’t need to.

I’m not going to list all the chances Dallas had, because you saw them all. Tyler Seguin could’ve made it 3-0 in the first all by himself, only to get stoned by Thompson time and time again. Then Wyatt Johnston took more of a safecracking approach, scoring “just” two goals despite trying nearly everything imaginable to unlock Thomspon’s beset-but-effective style. Breakaways, 2-on-1s, shots through traffic…nothing seemed to work. Dallas finally got to a rebound in Johnston’s opening goal, and then Miro Heiskanen took a beautiful Seguin feed off the rush and put it just inside the post for the 2-0 lead. Everything else, Thompson saw or sat on.

Jake Oettinger deserves more credit than he’s getting. Because of the out-of-his-mind performance by Thompson, fans grew frustrated when Oettinger surrendered two goals in the middle frame. But really, Oettinger has been good enough for Dallas to be in command of this series. The Stars just haven’t been able to outscore the Golden Knights. Don’t overlook how difficult it is to hang in there, as Oettinger did, making huge stops late in the third period and in overtime. So many teams and so many goalies collapse once a hard-earned lead evaporates, but Dallas stood strong and stayed patient, waiting for chance after chance to come.

Those chances did come, but it took (fittingly) well over a regulation game for Dallas to get enough of them to convert into a win. This really was a game out of 2007 vs. Luongo, where the goalie starts to get into everyone’s head, where each scoring chance feels equally useless. Disaster seemed so obviously to be lurking around every Brayden McNabb shot, every Eichel rush, every random puck flung from the point. It was all Vegas had, but it was nearly enough, more than once.

We’ll look at more details later, but for tonight (this morning), just relish the good stuff. You’re lucky if you get any playoff overtime wins in a given year, and Dallas just got a really special one. These sorts of goals tend to outlive their context, and regardless of where Dallas’s playoff run winds up, Johnston’s goal meant a whole lot to a whole bunch of people.

Vindication, justice, hope, whatever you want to call it; the Stars did everything you could have asked of them on Saturday night, but it felt for all the world like it wasn’t going to be enough, like it was all leading up to an inevitable disappointment. Instead, Dallas fans got a memory for the ages.

Think back to the overtime goals you remember. Of course Hull and Morrow are up there, but also Langenbrunner, Ott, Radulov, Klingberg, and even Gurianov. I may even one day accept the fact that Corey Perry scored a Stanley Cup Final overtime goal for this franchise, but I think we’re still a few years away from that day. I hope so, anyway. Someone has to maintain standards around here.

The newly minted fourth line was solid and energetic, and the Stars really did look like a top team shaking off the amnesia. Things tightened up later on, sure, but anything less than a career night by Logan Thompson and the Stars are locking down a three- or four-goal lead after 20 minutes, rather than fighting for their lives with a series hanging in the balance. Dallas found a new game plan and some new forward lines, and they made hay. Vegas is going to hit back, and hard, but don’t think for a second that this was just a weak team giving a dead cat bounce. This was the team that won the West consistently carving up the defensive structure of the reigning Cup champions. It was close, because all games in this series (like that 2007 series) have been close. But that means Dallas could win another one with just one more good break. With this Stars team, you can’t cede an inch, or they’ll run you into the ground over the course of a mile. Vegas may have just wound up in a marathon when they were hoping for a short steeplechase.

This goal may be a punctuation mark, or it may be a turning point. We can’t know that just yet, nor should we try to guess. Some gifts are special enough that they force you to stop and rejoice, and this is one of them. So relish it, re-live the ride, and listen to Josh Bogorad crush this call with a catharsis we all needed. Some things are better than sleep.

CALLING ALL STARS FANS

We want to see your reactions to Wyatt Johnston's GORGEOUS overtime winner from tonight! #StanleyCup

Send your videos here https://t.co/spRr6pVPsC pic.twitter.com/ZNaHaq7hV3

— NHL (@NHL) April 28, 2024