Game 31 AfterThoughts: Special Teams Need Special Teams

The Stars won another road game

The Stars are now 11-1-4 on the road this year. They’ve now one 9-0-4 since dropping their fourth game of the season in St. Louis, picking up points in every single contest away from Dallas since October 18.

How they’ve done that is perhaps less complicated than you might expect. On nights like Tuesday in Winnipeg, for example, the recipe for their continued success was so prosaic as to be almost unbelievable: They killed every penalty they took while scoring two power play goals, and they got scoring from two defensive defensemen at 5-on-5 with traffic in front of the net.

Not exactly, ah, rocket surgery, is it?

True enough, the Jets had the better of 5-on-5 play in this one, and Gulutzan repeated what he’s been saying lately after the game: the Stars need to pick it up a bit at 5-on-5. But with the Stars defending a lead for the last 59 minutes of the game, you can also forgive them a bit for perhaps allowing Winnipeg to get revved up on score effects and chasing hockey.

The Hintz line (with Benn and Robertson) was very good all night, with Hintz continuing to look as good as he ever has, even outside of his power play goal. But the big boost for Dallas was seeing Thomas Harley looking smart and poised again in his return to the lineup. Gulutzan said he thought Harley settled in on a pairing with Alex Petrovic really well after his first shift, and indeed, those two players were the only ones with a positive plus/minus at the end of the night, as both made plenty of good reads and won enough wall battles to frustrate Winnipeg.

Given Gulutzan’s comments about the pairing after the game, I’m curious to see if Harley-Lundkvist returns any time soon or not. Because that pairing seemed like something the Stars were set on trying to begin the season, only for both members of that duo to go down with injuries early on. But hey, if Harley and Petrovic can keep this up, why wouldn’t you keep them together?

Nils Lundkvist had a less memorable game himself, with an ugly turnover to spark the Jets in a 3-0 game the Stars ought to have been controlling more carefully. But he was still joining the rush and playing active, smart hockey as the game went on after his mistake, so that’s a credit to him and the coaching staff for moving past the moment. He is not 22 years old anymore, and it shows.

Matt Duchene also looked more confident in his second game back, and it had to ease the pain from getting whacked in the mouth a tad when the Stars’ power play scored on the penalty he drew. It was very good to see him looking more like his old self, especially when he would come over the boards with the fourth line, giving the opposing skaters a bit more than they were probably expecting to have to handle when facing the Stars’ Faksa line. (Though of course he played with Johnston and Rantanen quite a bit, too.)

Eric Comrie got outworked by Casey DeSmith as much as outdueled, I think it’s fair to say. Sure, DeSmith faced a lot more shots, but Comrie looked behind the play or hopelessly screened even on chances that didn’t go in tonight. The Jets really aren’t the Jets without Hellebuyck, whereas the Stars are just as much the Stars regardless of goaltender. That’s the biggest compliment any backup can get, I would think.

Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell played over 7 minutes of the 8 minutes in penalties the Stars’ took, generally waiting until the final 10-15 seconds before heading for a much-deserved rest. It’s easy to focus on the more-active forwards on the penalty kill, but those two are being asked to carry a smaller version of the Niedermayer/Pronger load in Anaheim, at times. And they keep answering that request affirmatively, and successfully.

On the power play, Gulutzan said the Stars did have to adjust a bit after the first unsuccessful chance, switching the side they were operating on and taking more shots than usual under the duress of an aggressive Jets’ PK unit. But Jason Robertson also said postgame that a lot of the plays they were making weren’t necessarily planned or drawn up—in other words, they’re playing road hockey on the power play. It’s fun to watch, I must say.

So, Dallas banked two more points. Colorado and Nashville are currently tied 2-2 in the second period. But right now, the Stars are rocking a 21-5-5 record that has exceeded even the most optimistic expectations anyone had to start the year.

I think Glen Gulutzan might have been a good coaching hire.

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The first shift of the game was a dominant one for Dallas, as the Johnston line kept possession in the offensive zone for multiple looks. It got even more dominant after a couple of shot attempts, as the puck fell favorably for Lindell, who stepped up and whipped it short side past a screened Eric Comrie for the early 1-0 lead.

It was nice work by Sam Steel to position himself where he did, and I think it’s pretty clear Comrie loses the puck as a result.

They nearly went up 2-0 thanks (again) to Sam Steel, after he got a shorthanded break all alone. But Steel couldn’t do the Lindellian alchemy required to change a Kyle Connor pizza into a goal, and his backhand effort got shut down by Comrie as the Stars proceeded to accomplish yet another successful penalty kill.

The Hryckowian line atoned for their early penalty by drawing a call of their own during a good shift in the offensive zone. It was a chance to take the wind out of the Jets’ sails after they’d mounted a decent push after the early goal, but despite a couple of shots from Robertson with danger present, nothing came of the opportunity.

Winnipeg mounted 11 shots on goal in the first frame, but DeSmith saved the two or three dangerous efforts, and the others came from outside the home plate area. So after Rantanen drew a tripping call (that looked more like just good defense by Winnipeg), the Stars had a 1-0 lead and most of a power play to work with, heading into the first intermission.

And with that carry-over power play, the Stars would do some damage, when a bit of a broken play ended with Hintz filling an empty net:

If Johnston’s backhand had gotten through more cleanly, it probably would’ve been better for Winnipeg, actually. But when you’re having a tough time like the Jets have been lately, these things always end badly no matter what.

Speaking of which, the Stars’ third line made life worse for Winnipeg when Mavrik Bourque got a puck off Logan Stanley on the forecheck, and his eventual feed to Alex Petrovic was put through more traffic and behind a blinded Comrie to make it 3-0.

And really, that should’ve made life easy for Dallas for a long time. But Nils Lundkvist, in his second game back after missing a couple of months, let Winnipeg pick up the scent again, as Mark Scheifele finished a chance that never should have happened:

It was a moment of overexuberance for Lundkvist, as there’s really no reason to force an outlet pass up the middle there with two forwards planted on the forecheck.

DeSmith then came up huge on Alex Iafallo after an incredible Dylan DeMelo leaping keep at the blue line, somehow squeezing the puck with every Jet salivating on the doorstep. It felt like the hockey equivalent of a shutdown inning from a pitcher when the Stars needed it.

Wyatt Johnston asked a bit more of his goaltender late in the second when he took a one-minute hook on the hands that turned into a two-minute minor. And while the Stars did technically kill it, a broken Heiskanen stick as the penalty expired led to a worse break for Dallas, when Scheifele once again fired a one-timer that DeSmith got a piece of, but not quite enough to steer it wide.

Dallas did have a couple great looks in spurts down the stretch of the second period, with the Robertson-Hintz-Benn line in particular nearly breaking through a couple of times. But with the Connor-Scheifele-Iafallo line doing all the pushing for Winnipeg, Dallas needed to muster more pushback than they’d been able to going into the third period with a 3-2 lead.

The Jets were also capable of taking ill-timed penalties, however, as Iafallo caught Duchene’s face with his stick, sending Dallas’s power play back to work. And work they would, as they found the look they wanted and insisted upon it.

Here’s the first time they nearly scored, when a puck rolls off Robertson’s stick:

Here’s the time they did score, after grinding the Jets’ penalty kill into a fine powder:

This is what power play coaches talk about when they say it’s about keeping things simple: When you out-pass the defenders, it really can be this easy.

Not that anything Jason Robertson does is easy, per se, but you know what we mean.

Then the game transitioned from pretty to ugly, as DeSmith couldn’t come up with a second shutdown inning when a scrambly sequence of loose pucks led to a Logan Stanley two-for-one chance, and he slid the rebound in from the periphery of the chaos to bring Winnipeg back within one.

From there, both teams buckled down. Adam Lowry plowed into DeSmith on a half-breakaway that DeSmith was able to save, and then the Jets got another power play off a Petrovic hook. But yet again, the Stars’ PK came up aces, with a slick pick-off by Esa Lindell to clear the puck late in a long shift.

Dallas had a chance to ice it when they drew a power play themselves (Namestnikov for tripping) shortly after, but Winnipeg’s penalty kill was itching to break shorthanded, so the Stars had to be slightly more cautious, and it showed.

The final five minutes of the game felt like a playoff game, with every single battle along the walls drawing a horde, and with the Hryckowian line even getting caught out for a long shift.

But just as the Stars were buckling down for the final three minutes of regulation, Mikko Rantanen had one of his trademark moments, which is to say he took a penalty:

Despite Rantanen’s protestations, the Jets would indeed get their fourth go on the power play with just over 2:30 left to play.

But as it’s done for 31 consecutive power plays now, the Stars’ penalty kill refused to give ground. And perhaps the Stars’ PK got in Scott Arniel’s head a bit, as he waited until halfway through the power play to pull Comrie for an extra attacker, rather than starting 6-on-4 outright.

I’m sure he had his logic for why he did so, but in the hack-and-slash moments of a penalty kill like that, it’s all about overwhelming the other side in hand-to-hand combat, not necessarily picking your spots. So it was that Alain Nasreddine’s group went 4-for-4, and Rantanen escaped from the box in time to celebrate yet another win on the road.

ESotG

Lineups

Here’s what both teams did:

AfterThoughts

• Glen Gulutzan mentioned this morning in Winnipeg that Thomas Harley’s foot was the thing they were waiting to see healed before he returned. I’m not sure that level of specificity was publicly stated before today.

  • Gulutzan said Harley is fully patched up now, so I suppose there was no point waiting to get him back into game action, much like with Nils Lundkvist, who was himself dealing with an injury to the lower area of leg (as is Lian Bichsel).

• Winnipeg has gone 3-6-1 since Connor Hellebuyck went down with an injury. That’s a stat that makes you realize how fortunate Dallas is to have DeSmith and Oettinger playing as well as they have.

• Casey DeSmith started this game looking sharp on a couple of good shots from Winnipeg, including this one:

  • It’s not just that DeSmith has been outstanding statistically, but that he so often makes reassuring saves like this one, kind of silencing any “the backup’s in tonight” voices before they have a chance to get moving. I wonder if that’s a bigger mental advantage than we realize, for the skaters.

• I’m torn on whether this should have been called tripping, as it was. Yes, Barron’s skate catches Rantanen’s left skate, but he had also gotten the puck in the process. In soccer, they tend to let these go, but I am being told by my producer right now that this is not an effective analogy, so skip it.

• Matt Duchene played four shifts in the first period with seven different linemates:
  

  Robertson-Duchene-Benn
  Duchene-Faksa-Blackwell

  Benn-Duchene-Bourque (residual PP shift)

  Duchene-Johnston-Rantanen
  
  This is just a reminder not to get too worked up over lines in warmup—they tend to change, as Duchene played the majority of this one with the Johnston-Rantanen duo.

• Roope Hintz took a heavy hit in this game from Adam Lowry and got a cut in his face for his troubles—though it probably could have been even worse, as Hintz didn’t miss a shift.

• Heiskanen and Lindell both stayed out for the entire penalty kill against the Jets late in the second period, though the Stars got a clear partway through to allow for one of them to change, if they wanted. But instead, the top defense pairing’s shift would go the distance, lasting until Scheifele scored right after the penalty expired.

• Miro Heiskanen played 30:50 tonight, including 6:50 on a 2-for-4 power play and 7:23 (out of 8:00) on the penalty kill that went 4-for-4. This is certainly a game I would consider sending to any Norris Trophy voters who want to know Just What That Guy Is All About. He has been everything for the Stars so far this year.

• Finally, Casey DeSmith deserves a ton of credit for keeping the Stars out of danger in this game. This was not a “clean” road game, even if the Stars were able to protect the net front for the majority of the game (though far from all of it). And DeSmith could easily have gotten rattled as things tensed up, particularly after this sequence, which did not result in a penalty:

  • If you can weather that kind of storm and shut down the Jets the rest of the way, you are probably made of sterner stuff than the average person.