Game 30 AfterThoughts: You'll Never Guess What the Stars Did, Again

(They came back to win a game)

This postgamer is packed with a whole lot of stuff on Duchene, Lundkvist, Rantanen, and more—so I’ll cut the preamble for now. The Stars beat the Penguins in a shootout after the penalty kill kept the game within reach, and Jake Oettinger was perfect in the shootout.

The coach’s takeaway? Same as most of the players we spoke with after the game, it turns out.

“Today, 5-on-5, they were better than us, and we got the [extra] point. So we’ll take it and try to get better,” Gulutzan said.

That’s about the size of it. Dallas did enough to hang around, and the got a 6-on-5 goal late to force overtime.

Which, you know, is something really good teams find a way to do. Teams like that are tough to put away, tough to totally shut down for a full 60 minutes. And Dallas, after 30 games of this NHL season, appears to be, by all accounts, one of the toughest teams in the league. One of those teams that division rivals watch with anticipation, hoping they won’t find a way to come back so that they can actually gain a tiny bit of ground, for once.

But again and again, Dallas refuses to stop piling up points. Look at it. They just aren’t that easy to smother, even if their power play doesn’t contribute, or if Jason Robertson isn’t scoring a hat trick. This is a team with a very high floor, and an almost tantalizingly high ceiling, one suspects.

And with two reinforcements finally returning tonight, they may have gotten even tougher.

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From the outset, the pace of this game was fast and frantic, with some sloppiness mixed in for flavoring.

In other words, it was the polar opposite of the first period of the San Jose game on Friday.

Dallas probably ought to have tallied at least once, given the chances they got. Erik Karlsson set up Jason Robertson with a glorious chance out of nowhere early on, but Robertson apparently couldn’t believe his luck, and he wasn’t able to score.

The other great sequence for Dallas early started with a smart Mavrik Bourque step-up and ended with a Petrovic shot off the crossbar: itself a prime example of the frenetic nature of the opening frame.

But it would be the Penguins who had the lead after one, after Petrovic stepped up and delivered a hit when Pittsburgh tried to counter with a quick stretch pass, but the puck eventually got through Petrovic in the neutral zone. Blake Lizotte was able to send the resulting puck over to an open Dewar, who stepped up, wound up, and thumped the puck through Oettinger’s five-hole like he was trying to knock over rigged pins at a carnival game:

That chance felt like a lot of what Pittsburgh did in the first period, where they went for 50/50 plays and the Stars were able to shut down most of them, occasionally generating rushes the other way. But Pittsburgh eventually got a bounce that burned Dallas, and the scoreboard reflected it after 20 minutes.

The chances kept coming for Dallas, as Jamie Benn and Hintz got a 2-on-1 (after a strong play by Robertson to spring them from neutral) 15 seconds into the middle frame. But Benn didn’t get all of the one-timer on Hintz’s dish across, and Jarry was able to hold on for the whistle.

Fortunately, Robertson wasn’t done doing, uh, that. Because a minute later, he would do exactly the same thing, and send a flying Hintz in on another 2-on-1. And this time, Hintz and Benn finished the job.

The tie was short-lived, however. It all started going wrong when Alex Petrovic got stuck on the ice for a 2:36 shift, and Sidney Crosby (he’s good) used the space that exhaustion lends the other team to his advantage, setting up Letang with Novak sitting on top of the crease to deflect it past Oettinger, which I’ve linked on the off chance you want to watch that kind of thing.

It was, quite frankly, a sloppy sequence from Dallas, with repeated chances to get the puck deep to allow Petrovic to get off the ice, only for the Stars to miss passes or try less ideal options. I suspect the up-and-down nature of this game (at times) kind of lends itself to those sorts of decisions, where players’ eyes get wide looking at possibilities instead of dealing with the present reality of their situation. Or, you know, stuff just happens.

“It wasn’t our best game,” Gulutzan said afterward. “I thought they were better than us tonight 5-on-5, especially in that second period. We actually didn’t generate a ton. It’s [been] a couple of times in the last week, I think the New York Rangers game was a little bit similar to this. So we gotta find our footing here, whether it’s a little bit more rest, or a couple practices to get a little sharpened up.”

Things could have gotten worse shortly after that, when Benn took a hooking penalty to put the NHL’s top power play on the job. But a nice save from Oettinger and some even nicer work from (you guessed it) the Stars’ PK saw the two minutes pass without further incident.

That’s not to say the Stars played well in the second, however. It is, in fact, to say exactly the opposite of that. Because Pittsburgh owned the middle frame after Benn’s early goal, with Dallas not even mustering a single shot on goal for nearly 18 minutes after Benn scored 1:27 into the period.

So when Heiskanen got sent off for hooking he had to take with four minutes to go, it felt pretty much deserved. And without Lyubushkin in the game to kill penalties—he’s day to day with a lower-body injury suffered on Friday, by the way—everything looked primed to give the Penguins an insurance goal.

But once again, the Stars survived, though Faksa barely did after a nasty collision from Rutger McGroarty that sent him to the ice in a lot of pain, after which he managed to get to the bench, where he stayed wincing in pain until the second intermission. He would return for the third period, mercifully.

And then things finally tilted Dallas’s way late, when Ryan Shea decided to copy Erik Karlsson, but not in the good way: he served up a piping hot supreme of his own, this time to Mikko Rantanen. But again, the Stars couldn’t convert the gilt-edged chance, as Rantanen decided to:

(Pick one)

A) Do his best Blake Comeau impression
B) Pass to the teammate he thought was right behind him currently on a 2-on-0 (What he actually is thinking, I believe)

Thus, Pittsburgh headed to the room with a lead for the second straight intermission.

Once again, the Stars got a good look early in a period, when Sam Steel nearly got free for a breakaway after a nice feed. But his attempt to switch forehand and fire was stick-checked at the last by Wotherspoon, and the shot trickled harmlessly wide.

With 7:34 to go, Esa Lindell drew a slashing call on a good bit of pressure from Dallas, as they finally began to cause some discomfort for the visiting team. And while that ensuing power play didn’t feel like it was the Stars’ last chance to really get back into things, it was certainly their best one thus far—not counting the great setups from McGroarty and Karlsson, that is.

But Pittsburgh’s top-five penalty kill looked every bit the part, with an early feed in front from Robertson that didn’t connect and a dangerous shot from Rantanen that Jarry blockered away being the only notable moments in the two minutes of advantage time.

But after Gulutzan pulled Oettinger after Pittsburgh iced it with 3:00 left to play, the Stars managed to keep the 6-on-5 pressure on without allowing a clear, and the Penguins eventually had to collapse a bit and cede space up high. And that allowed Miro Heiskanen to one-time a simple shot with traffic, and the puck got a friendly bounce on its way toward the net:

That looked to have sealed overtime, but both sides actually had very good looks in the final 90 seconds, with Johnston nearly backhanding in a slick Rantanen pass from the front porch not too long after Oettinger had been forced to squeeze a tricky shot on goal in the Stars’ end.

But in the end, the Stars found a way to get to overtime against a cross-conference opponent, and that’s never a bad thing in today’s NHL. In fact, I would argue that getting a point in any game is a very good thing.

As for overtime itself, both sides had looks, but Dallas had the best ones, with Jason Robertson in particular getting two Grade-A looks and zero goals, somehow.

The first stop was a shocker, with Jarry using a sort of in-between pad stack to rob one of the best goal-scorers in the NHL:

The second one was, it turns out, all Robertson, as he tried to roof it in tight, only to put the puck high into the netting:

Generally speaking, shootouts are coin flips (unless it’s 2006 and you have Jussi Jokinen, Sergei Zubov, and Marty Turco). And this time, the coin fell kindly, as the Stars got one goal and three saves, which will win you the shootout every time.

But surprisingly, it wasn’t Robertson who scored the Stars’ lone goal—though he came close. Here’s how it went down:

Robertson: Crossbar

Rust: Glove save

Duchene: Pad save (five hole attempt)

Crosby: Blocker save

Rantanen: Score. Over the pad, under the blocker.

Letang: Glove save

Pretty? Not terribly, no. But as Rantanen said after the game, you won’t remember much about this one in a few weeks other than the two points.

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Getting Matt Duchene and Nils Lundkvist back into the lineup was always going to be a huge boost for this team regardless of how the game finished. In fact, Lundkvist may have been able to return to action sooner, if not for some nagging issues during his skating sessions.

“In his initial skates, he was having some pain,” Gulutzan said. “So it slowed down his skating progress on how long he can skate. And then over the last seven days…has been pretty much pain-free.”

Lundkvist said after the game that you could look around the room and find almost half the lineup that has been out with injuries at some point already this year, including himself. He added that, while you never want to see injuries, he’s appreciated having other teammates to work out with while he recovers.

“You always have more fun at the rink when more guys are there,” Lundkvist said.

As for his own journey, Lundkvist acknowledged it’s been tough.

“It’s been tough for sure, with the injury last year that ended my season, and then coming back, I feel like it was a pretty good start of the year, and we were rolling pretty good, and then kind of a freak accident, and that keeps you out for, I don’t know what it was, like seven-and-a-half, eight weeks.

Gulutzan said Lundkvist’s conditioning wasn’t an issue, so once he was able to skate pain-free, the last step to get him cleared for today’s game was to get him into some contact and battle drills, which they took care of this weekend.

As far as his return to the lineup tonight, Lundkvist said it was a little extra special playing against Erik Karlsson, in particular.

“It’s cool. You grow up idolizing this guy,” Lundkvist said. “Especially for me, I’m from Sweden, right-handed defenseman. He was in his prime when I was growing up, and he can still play pretty good, right? So it’s cool playing against those big names.”

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As for Duchene, Gulutzan said it was a similar process in terms of clearing up those final, lingering issues. And the team was especially careful, given that Duchene took “a step back” after initially returning to play for one game following the hit he took from Jake Middleton back in mid-October.

“Just some actually good progression for both guys in the last four days,” Gulutzan said, “Where they’ve built on a good day and then kept getting better the next three, and then everything’s a go.”

Duchene spoke after the game with his usual candor, and he confirmed that he was, unfortunately dealing with the aftermath of a concussion.

“Concussions are really weird things,” Duchene said. “Everyone knows how complex the brain is, and I found out firsthand.”

At this point, it seems pretty clear that Duchene was not initially diagnosed with a concussion, but that more severe symptoms set in after he came back and played against St. Louis on October 18. But after that game, things got worse in a hurry, and from the puzzle pieces we have to put together right now, it seems clear that the onset of subsequent symptoms led to Duchene’s later being diagnosed with a concussion.

“It was pretty easy not to rush back [after the St. Louis game], because I was feeling that brutal, and that ‘not right’,” Duchene said. “Again, I won’t go through the whole thing, but it was a lot, and there were a lot of hours put into trying to get back on track. And there’s still some things that will come back to me from that injury from playing games. Again, it’s super complicated. I don’t even 100% understand it either.”

It’s important to stress, I think, that as far as we know, nobody did anything wrong here. Concussions aren’t something you can diagnose like a virus, where you can test positive or negative with a swab. It’s a tricky thing to disentangle symptoms from daily aches and pains, especially if the patient is a hockey player who hasn’t gone through this sort of thing before. I know people who aren’t athletes who have had concussions misdiagnosed initially, too. We know so very little about the brain compared to most other parts of the body.

That’s why concussion protocols are in place: to take those tough decisions out of the hands of players and coaches so that medical professionals can do what’s best for everyone’s health. And once the symptoms started really showing up, it seems pretty clear that everyone did the best they could to take it slow, and make sure Duchene was ready before he got back into game action.

But that doesn’t mean it was easy.

“That’s the hardest injury I’ve ever had to come back from,” Duchene said frankly to start his postgame media availability. “I won’t bore you guys with the details of the last eight weeks, but it’s been a lot, and that’s a really tough recovery.”

Duchene said he was grateful that Gulutzan put him in tough situations in the game, and that it was helpful in alleviating his anxiety about getting back up to speed. Duchene acknowledged that he had a coverage mistake earlier in the game, but that he thankfully didn’t feel like it was too rough overall.

In fact, Duchene said he talked to Jamie Benn about the Stars captain’s own recovery, and Benn told Duchene that it took him about three games to truly feel comfortable again after the long layoff—so he expects a similar timeline.

“It’s gonna take a little bit more time,” Duchene acknowledged about getting back up to full speed. “Kind of the process of getting back to normal is getting back into some games.”

To that end, playing a game against a good Pittsburgh team is as good an acclimation process as any.

“It felt like about six months that I was out. I know it wasn’t, but it felt a lot longer, so it was great to be back.”

Esoteric Song of the Game

Lineups

Dallas rolled this lineup:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Kolyachonok-Lundkvist
Capobianco-Petrovic

Oettinger in goal

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Pittsburgh had these lines:

Novak-Crosby-Rust
Mantha-Hayes-Brazeau
McGroarty-Kindel-Koivunen
Dewar-Lizotte-Acciari

Wotherspoon-Karlsson
Shea-Letang
Graves-Dumba

Jarry

AfterThoughts

• Tom Hicks passed away yesterday at 79 years old. The team held a moment of silence in memory of Hicks before the game, and the former owner of the Stars, Texas Rangers, and Liverpool F.C. has received a lot of tributes today, from folks like Ralph Strangis, Daryl Reaugh, Brad Alberts, Gary Bettman, and Tom Gaglardi. But if you just read one, I might recommend Tim Cowlishaw’s in particular.

  • Glen Gulutzan began today’s pre-game press conference with a word on Tom Hicks as well:
    “Certainly I know everyone in the hockey world knows Tom Hicks. All our best to his family. He was here when I first started around here in 2011. Just a tremendous person in the community, and I just wanted to make sure we all acknowledged that.”

  • One recent but lasting memory of Hicks, for me, will be last year’s Dallas Stars Hall of Fame Gala for the inductions of Brenden Morrow and Jim Lites, which Hicks attended. The team held a live auction after the main proceedings, and there were a couple of items that didn’t draw any initial bids, at least not quickly. But multiple times, a paddle came up to ensure that the Dallas Stars Foundation would still receive donations for whatever item was up for bid. And more than once, that paddle belonged to Tom Hicks—someone who still loved the team and the organization even well over a decade after he had lost it.

• Special Teams were a big focal point coming into this game, with Pittsburgh holding the NHL’s top power play (34.4% coming into Sunday’s game), and Dallas sitting at 3rd (31.9%).

  • On the penalty kill, Dallas has rocketed up to 10th in the league since going Full Turbo Mode a month ago, while Pittsburgh was 4th in the league. That’s a whole lot of special teams aptitude.

  • This graphic from Victory+ combining the two numbers is also telling:

    

    Screencap from Victory+

  • If you care about underlying numbers, something interesting is that Dallas’s PK really has been one of the best in the league for a while now (along with its power play). Special teams can cover a multitude of sins, and probably a similar multitude of injuries.

    

    HockeyViz.com

• Oh, right: The game.

  • Well, it began with chances at both ends, with the best one of the first five minutes being this pepperoni pizza served up by Erik Karlsson to Jason Robertson that somehow didn’t end up in the net:

  • The Penguins had their own Grade-A chance early that they missed,, when Anthony Mantha got a plump rebound off to the side that he couldn’t finish, though Oettinger did well to get a piece of it, somehow:

    

• Gulutzan said before the game that they opted to start Duchene on the fourth line wing for the same reasons they started Jamie Benn there when he first returned from his prolonged absence. But Gulutzan also said that if Duchene showed he was handling things all right, there was every chance he’d be given more responsibility as the game went along—which is also what we saw with Benn in his debut.

  • And of course, Duchene took a shift in Steel’s spot on the top line before the first period was over, in a spot he would return to as the game wore on—even taking one of the shots in the shootout.

  • After the game, Duchene said playing wing wasn’t too tough for him, as he’s done it quite a bit in his career. He said that there are some things that are more “autopilot” about playing center, since that’s what he’s done for the last two years, but that he has “no problem acclimating” to playing on the wing, for however long he does so.

  • And when it comes to forward positions, it sounds like center vs. wing is far from a hard-and-fast separation anyway: “With our lineup, we kind of all share it all anyway,” Duchene said.

  • Duchene played 15+ minutes tonight. Now we wait to see how he handles the next day. Because I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but it’s all about stacking good days on good days.

• Matt Dumba got his own welcome back on the PA during the first stoppage of the game, and he gave a bit of a smile from the Pittsburgh bench. The Jamie Benn hit he took in the corner was perhaps a more memorable welcome, though.

• It’s not often you see Esa Lindell get beaten 1-on-1, but Erik Karlsson pulled off a nice move early in the third that would’ve played on highlight reels for a long time, had he not then hit Oettinger square in the chest with his shot:

• Kolyachonok had another active and positive game, this one coming against his old team on a pairing with Nils Lundkvist. They say you always have a bit of extra jump against the team that traded you, but that adage seemed much truer for Kolyachonok than for Dumba. Really positive game from the youngster, I thought, as he (and Lundkvist!) even got a brief PK shift to relieve Lindell and Petrovic when Heiskanen was in the box.

• Rantanen said after the game that he tried going high blocker a second time on Jarry in overtime after being stopped on the power play, hoping Jarry wouldn’t expect him to try it again. But unfortunately Rantanen missed the overtime shot.

• However, Rantanen did not miss his final shot of the game, as you might recall: