Game 34 AfterThoughts: This One Hurts

Let’s start off with perhaps the most apt clip I can think of for how this game ended, given the frustrations that have persisted throughout the season thus far:

I mean, what else can you say? It hurts, man. This was a game where the Dallas penalty kill was rope-a-doping the Minnesota power play for an extended stretch where Minnesota had like six shots through half the game. The Stars were embarrassing a Wild team without their star player, and then they…well, here’s what Jamie Benn said they did:

“We just pissed it away,” said Benn. “We played good for two periods, and [long pause] that’s a tough one to give up.”

That sentiment captures the mood of the fanbase pretty accurately, I’d say. The first 50 minutes of this game felt like a validation of their whole process, but the most crucial ten minutes contained a calamity ice cream packed into a waffle cone of wailing and gnashing of teeth. It is only fitting to use metaphors as tortured as that overtime felt.

I asked Benn after the game if these games are times where they’re looking for someone to “be that guy” and get the game across the finish line. His response was pretty telling, and fair.

“Yeah, I mean, we all want to be that guy,” said Benn. “We can definitely go home and look in the mirror, and see what we can do as individuals to help this team win.”

For much of the game, Benn’s line was that guy, or two of them. Evgenii Dadonov (who talked postgame about the perils of a two-goal lead, and how the team failed to respond when Minnesota got the first goal to build momentum) was fantastic in this one, as was Wyatt Johnston. The two players made two great plays capped off with two great shots, and that was the entirety of the Dallas offense in a game they dominated for long stretches. That’s just not good enough.

Really, in this one, Dallas did the exact thing they’ve been doing that I wrote about this afternoon: getting way more chances, but somehow failing to capitalize on enough of them to decisively win the game. I mean, how many times this year have the Stars had a chance to capitalize on a reeling team and failed to do so, either in the season or within a game?

• The Rangers were in the midst of dismantling their leadership group when Miro Heiskanen and the Stars got Matt Rempe’d out of their own building.

• Nashville was last in the NHL with a disaster of a season before they once again found a way to start a turnaround after playing Dallas, though this year’s version was far less enjoyable for Stars fans than the U2 edition.

• Chicago is looking like a worse team every night, but that’s the same squad to which Dallas served up one of their most embarrassing performances of the year…right after blowing a lead to Carolina after looking like the better team for most of the game.

• Toronto had Auston Matthews playing on one leg, but Dallas let that game get away from them and never mounted the push they always seemed to find last year.

I would go on, but the thing is, we’ve already talked about this pattern. It’s not new, and it’s certainly not getting any more entertaining to dissect. The problem is simple, and yet impossible.

“I would have liked a little more run support,” said Pete DeBoer after the game. “I think that’s been a little bit of an issue here, ongoing. If you’re only scoring two a night, your power play’s gotta get one, or you gotta get another one at five on five. We had some opportunities on both those situations to get another one.”

Yes, opportunities. If the Stars are a door, then opportunity has practically pounded their hinges off all year. They’re one of the best teams in the league at creating scoring chances and dangerous shots, but only based on where and when the shots are taken–not where they go.

“You know, in the third period, it’s not like we sat back,” said DeBoer. “It was not even two mistakes. One’s a seeing-eye shot off a leg. The other one we made one mistake, and they got some numbers on the rush. But I don’t think it was a case of us sitting on a lead or anything like that. Shots were eight-seven in the third, and they stuck two in the net.”

And that’s really the story. When you put up horse collars on the power play, the time when you have the most obvious advantage, you’re just asking for one or two bounces to turn the game upside down. It’s what we all moaned about under Ken Hitchcock 2.0, when the team was trying to strangle games into submission but rarely extending leads. The failure to establish big leads is just as dangerous as the propensity to give them up, if not moreso! Goals are the way you win games. Preventing goals is great, and nobody’s better at it than Dallas, but that will only get you so far.

Jason Robertson hit a post on the Stars’ first power play, and he nearly set up a dunk right after that. It was so close to being a cure what ails them, but it wasn’t. You want to will the team over the finish line, to see them bank another solid win against a good team like they did a few games back against Washington. But instead, they’re doing the same thing they’ve done all year: one step forward, 0.6 steps back. And that’s a very precarious place to be.

Dallas is seventh in the Western Conference in points, and sixth in points percentage. Those games in hand are starting to look a lot less like a luxury, and a lot more like a necessity. And it’s always dangerous when you find yourself having to win to keep pace rather than set it.

Also, if you are going to blame goaltending for this one in either direction, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Dallas has put the opposing goalie into contention for one of the three stars far too often this year, and at a certain point that’s not just excellence by the opposition. You need to break the goalie’s will eventually, to force the issue with the skill you have. And Dallas has plenty of skill. They’re built to be deep, fast, and score-y. And right now, they’re injured, and the fastest player might be their oldest one. That’s not a bad thing for Dadonov at all, but it’s not a good thing for the top line.

Oettinger is not the reason Dallas is scoring two or three goals a night at best over the last month. If your goalie has to put up a 1.8 GAA to win you games, you’re just not doing things right. And to the coaching staff’s credit, they take their share of the blame for that. Here’s Pete DeBoer on the scoring issues this year:

“The power play is something that, you know, that’s on us. We have to find a way as a coaching staff to find some offense there and some goals. You know, we hit a crossbar today, I think, so we need something to go in and hopefully get it going in the right direction. The five-on-five scoring, I think, it’s been a little bit of an issue all year. We lost some five-on-five scoring with Pavelski and Seguin out of the lineup, and we need some other guys to chip in and play up to the capabilities that they have. We’ve got some veteran guys here that we need to score.”

One way you might translate this is—and this is just my speculation—something like, “It’s our job as coaches to give the power play preparation and strategies to help them, since we have more control over those plans and plays. But it’s the players’ job to score when they get the shots we’re trying to create, and we have veteran players who haven’t done that enough.”

I don’t think anyone would really argue with that translation, and maybe it’s not even necessary. But I thought it would be worth re-phrasing to highlight what’s really going on here: the coaches are more than willing to take the heat for some of the scoring issues on the power play, but they can’t possibly take the heat for all of it (even though coaches always end up taking the heat for a team’s record if it goes south, regardless of the why). And there have been too many issues with too many players this season for the Stars to stand in good stead, especially with injuries that always hit during the season.

We’ll see what else they have up their sleeves, both on the bench and on the ice. But this team won’t be able to build on their last two campaigns if both groups aren’t at their best. That’s what accountability looks like: everyone has to answer for it, fairly or not. And that includes your favorite player as well the coaches. This team will only get as far as their depth will take them, and they are deep indeed. But somehow, it’s often the other teams’ boats that are floating.

***

Mason Marchment had to go to the hospital tonight after getting hit with a puck, and that was a scary moment. Hockey fans can be so accustomed to seeing a puck draw blood when it catches a player up high that the possibility of more servere injury doesn’t always occur, but in this case, it was bad enough to send Marchment there. DeBoer said Marchment is “okay,” but that he doesn’t know how long he’ll be out. Obviously this isn’t just a case of getting stitches and getting back out there. That could mean anything from a broken nose (which is bad already) to something worse.

First and foremost, we hope Marchment ends up all right. On a far less important hockey note, we should find out more at practice tomorrow afternoon before the Stars fly out of town to play Chicago. This also means that Duchene will likely have two new linemates to play with, as opposed to just the one in Colin Blackwell (who looked good in this one).

***

Things started so well, too.

Jamie Benn found a streaking Wyatt Johnston midway through the first period, and he covered half the ice with one pass. Johnston then treated Jonas Brodin like a hologram and snapped a puck right through him and onto the tape of Evgenii Dadonov, who didn’t have to miss a step in his stride. Dadonov went in all alone and beat Filip Gustavsson over his blocker to give Dallas a 1-0 lead they had thoroughly earned. That made it feel like this time it would be different, and doesn’t pain always start with hope?

Oskar Bäck and the new fourth line then drew a power play when Brock Faber tripped Bäck on a netfront scramble for a rebound. The power play started off looking sharp, with Jason Robertson hitting a post right off the bat, then nearly setting up Jamie Benn for a tap-in on the back door. But things went south when Stankoven tipped a point shot that bounced up and into the unfortunate face of Mason Marchment, whose face immediately started leaking as the play was immediately blown down. Thankfully, Marchment was able to skate off with some help, holding a towel to his face, and leaving a puddle of blood behind him before heading to the hospital.

You have to feel for Marchment, whose scars had just healed from the puck to the face he took in Winnipeg earlier this season. Any injury is scary in hockey, where the physicality and speed are so overwhelming, but a puck to the face that requires serious medical attention is something you never want to see. All the best to Marchment for a quick recovery.

After all that, the first period ended with Dallas having the exact lead they deserved: 1-0.

It was a familiar story: Dallas dominated a team early and probably should have had more to show for it. But they deferred the compensation for their great effort, and ultimately failed to cash the check.

***

In Marchment’s absence, Roope Hintz double-shifted on the Duchene line to start the second period, and Steel and Robertson also took turns up there later on. The biggest cheer early on in the frame was from the Stars’ penalty kill after Hintz got sent to the box. The four Stars played keep-away from the Wild in the offensive zone for an extended period of time, with both Johnston and Harley having quality looks at the net during the sequence. The crowd was roaring its approval for the 4v5 dominance, and when the Wild finally regained the puck only to ice it, the Stars received another round of applause. It was that type of game through the first 30 minutes.

Dadonov then returned the favor to Johnston on the counterattack later, after a nice Ilya Lyubushkin play to cause a turnover popped the puck out, and Dadonov led a rush the other way. A drop pass at the blue line for Johnston set up the Stars’ best forward of the night, and he fired the puck past Gustavsoon for what felt like a commanding 2-0 lead. And don’t miss Lyubushkin following the play and finishing it atop the crease as the puck sailed in, either:

Drop it like [the line's] hot pic.twitter.com/JPpI46yH7O

— Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) December 28, 2024

It’s a shame the game ended the way it did, because seeing the oldest and youngest forward on the team combine for two points apiece was a really neat story. Johnston looks like the best player on the team when he has nights like this, but you can bet those goals weren’t much of a balm for the Faber burn in overtime.

***

Lian Bichsel also had a steady game, with a couple of nice moments early in the second period as well, including a nice rush up the left wing and a cross-crease pass, as well as a good hit on Yakov Trenin along the wall. This was a game where you would’ve liked to see him give a bit back to Foligno later on when the two went at it, but you can also understand his reticence to take a penalty in a tied game late. Oh, spoiler alert for this one, by the way.

The period ended with the universe agreeing with the Stars’ efforts to that point, as two breaks went Dallas’s way. First, Yakov Trenen missed an empty net after getting a loose puck from a rebound and…putting it into the outside of the near post from two feet away.

The second break was Marcus Foligno tipping a point shot squarely off the far post, but out. Clearly his stick is far less useful than his pants, and the Stars took a 2-0 lead to the second intermission that they had also earned, albeit that they had nearly let slip away. (NOT A PORTENT OF DOOM AT ALL.)

Sometimes, you get the bounces. Unfortunately for Marchment and the Stars, sometimes those bounces go right back into your face.

The third period started with a couple of nice Jake Oettinger double-save sequences that reminded Minnesota of the 2022 playoff series. But Roope Hintz would give the offense a chance to salt the game away early when he drew a tripping penalty in the neutral zone. But once again, the power play couldn’t quite get that one final killer pass. Once again, Dallas had to ask Oettinger to be perfect in order to win a game. And overall, Dallas’s power plays seemed to get less threatening with each successive opportunity, which is not a great trend.

Jonas Brodin showed why it’s good to score power play goals in a game you’re controlling when he found Jake Oettinger’s five hole with a shot off the rush. Mats Zuccarello (you may remember him from such films as the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs) fired a great cross-ice pass just inside the blue line, and Brodin walked in with space and ripped it through Oettinger’s five-hole. It wasn’t a great goal, but it was also an odd-man rush of sorts, and those are good scoring chances for a reason.

But the play all started when Duchene went down low to receive a Blackwell pass at a very unfortunate moment and got caught below the puck, leading to the 3-on-2 rush the other way when the exchange got turned over.

You can see Duchene getting caught just as Blackwell’s pass gets blocked and pops out to Zuccarello here, and then the rush went the other way with numbers (and a helpful push in the rear end from Brock Faber to really get Zuccarello going):

Things got worse right after that when Foligno tipped a Jared Spurgeon point shot off his inseam with a brave, brave tip that you had to see to believe:

And after a frustrating sequence where Marcus Foligno appeared to throw a left glove into Lian Bichsel’s face along the boards and take him down to the ice to give him the business, Foligno was officially back on the Dallas naughty list (as if anyone could have forgotten after the 2022 quarterfinal series). It was the sort of game designed in a lab to infuriate a fan, to take the joy of the first 50 minutes and dash it all on the rocks of overtime. Get hyped for overtime, by the way.

It was always going to end in the most painful way possible once that Foligno goal went in, though. And what could be more painful than for the player bringing the most delight in this game to get beaten for the game-winning goal?

Wyatt Johnston got caught just a tad-bit flat-footed in the first overtime sequence, and Brock Faber made a nice move to pull Oettinger out of the net with Johnston trailing him, and score on the wrap-around to break the hearts of the local faithful.

BROCK CALLED GAME#MNWILD | #NHL pic.twitter.com/MLOEgDORzf

— FanDuel Sports Network North (@FanDuelSN_NOR) December 28, 2024

It was a somber mood in the building after this one, indeed. And now the Stars have to figure out a way to bounce back and regroup without Mason Marchment or Tyler Seguin after falling another point behind Minnesota.

The New Year can’t get here fast enough. Hopefully it is not the same as the old year.