Game 35 AfterThoughts: Oettinger Celebrated, Celebrini Motivated

Team Canada might be good this year, folks

First off, Macklin Celebrini looks every bit like an elite player right now. If Hockey Canada sees fit to make him part of their Olympic Team, I don’t see how you end up regretting that decision. The kid is dominant right now, and his two assists tonight felt like almost a disappointment, given how electric he was. Canada didn’t take Sid back in 2006, but they have time to rectify that, right now.

But hey, this place isn’t called Macklin Celebrini Thoughts (not yet, at least), so let’s get back to the guys in green.

Of the two games of this back-to-back, this is the one you’d say Dallas “ought” to have won, going in. They had two days’ rest (for the first time in forever), and they were playing a young team playing a little better than they kind of feel like they have any right to do. That should make for a pretty simple recipe for the second-best team in the league to fly into the Bay Area and do a little stompin’ and rompin’, right?

Well, maybe the Stars did that. Maybe. Each of the 2-0, 3-1, and 4-2 leads Dallas had looked just like a team following that recipe, but man, the Sharks just do not stop coming at you, and it took a Birthday Bash from Jake Oettinger to ensure the Stars escaped with the victory they scored (just) enough goals to earn.

“It wasn’t our best effort. They outplayed us for good stretches of this game,” Gulutzan said. “Credit to them, they kept coming.”

Gulutzan was a bit dour after the game, even saying that the top line gave up a few chances as well as generating some. The Stars have set a very high bar these days, so scraping together a win against San Jose is hardly cause for hanging a banner or anything, sure. But Gulutzan also gave a lot of credit to the penalty kill and Jake Oettinger, as one should after that game, and I think tomorrow will see the Stars feeling better about this one than they might have at times tonight.

Seeing John Klingberg rise to the occasion and play as a number one defenseman is a joy I never expected to experience again, to be honest. Seeing him play with Celebrini looks every bit like a player rejuvenated, and I imagine Celebrini just sort of has that effect on anyone he shares the ice with. Mike Modano said something to that effect about playing on a line with Jamie Benn back in the day, you may recall.

This game was a case of Wyatt Johnston playing like a star player, Mikko Rantanen making a couple of beautiful setups, and of the defense and the penalty kill refusing to let the Sharks build any un-earned momentum. Had any of those power plays brought goals for San Jose, Dallas could have found it tougher to contain this group, but as it was, they did enough to get the two points. More than enough, in fact.

The reunion of Harley-Lundkvist was overall pretty good, I thought. Lundkvist even sorted out a potential 2-on-1 after the puck bounced past him, and despite a shaky moment or two, the duo looked overall like a pairing looking to Do Things, rather than one looking to avoid Having Things Done To Them. That’s a good place to be.

Dallas’s style of play doesn’t really lend itself to a ton of penalty calls lately—this is the fourth time in eight games they’ve drawn just one power play. Certainly Miro Heiskanen will feel like the Stars deserved more than the one call they got, but you can’t start looking for calls or feeling aggrieved when you don’t get them, as anyone who watched the Marc Crawford days knows all too well. If the Stars can get their game back in good shape and own the puck more often, the calls should take care of themselves. (A good penalty kill is a good security blanket, though.)

And if things aren’t taking care of themselves, it’s also good to have a goalie like Jake Oettinger behind you to clean things up. And Oettinger did just that, saving the Stars’ bacon on more than one occasion in an affair that could have been more hectic than it ended up being. If allowing three goals can be a good night for a goaltender, I thought this one qualified, as Oettinger really did make a lot of key saves at the right times, including a couple of wicked shots by Celebrini. When Oettinger is dialed in, it’s fun to watch. And this game was that, even if it wasn’t a coach’s dream. Sometimes, it’s okay if coaches are unhappy. Entertainment and perfection are rarely the same thing.

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Thomas Harley nearly wore some goat horns (lowercase) after a burp-up early on, but Jake Oettinger came to his rescue:

Mavrik Bourque then nearly gave Dallas the lead in what was shaping up to be an entertaining game early, but his snap shot hit both posts and stayed out. They say breaks even out, and I suppose sometimes it’s an immediate thing.

After a couple of (we’ll call them) Grade-B looks for each side, Sam Steel got tagged for slashing on a pretty routine puck battle where a stick broke, and that’s how that rule gets called, so what are you gonna do? Sit for two minutes, is what. Jake Oettinger had to make some big stops on the first part of the kill, but Dallas took care of the second half without incident, and they would end up living to tell the tale of how they scored the game’s first goal.

The story goes, Mikko Rantanen turned a routine rush into a goal after using every bit of the neutral zone, after which Matt Duchene and Esa Lindell kept the play alive smartly, allowing Rantanen to find Hintz for a tap-in:

That’s a pretty good argument for putting Duchene on the top line, right there. As Gulutzan has said more than once, putting smart (and skilled) players together tends to result in good things, and it surely did there.

After what looked like a missed penalty for closing a hand on the puck, San Jose then looked like they had scored a goal. But after a reviewed, this tip by Zack Ostapchuk (say it five times fast) was reviewed and summarily waved off:

Ryan Reaves’s initial tip probably would have been allowed, but the second deflection was definitively above the crossbar, and Dallas retained their 1-0 lead.

The Stars decided to extend said lead when the top line (Duchene-Johnston-Rantanen) spent a full shift in the offensive zone, with Heiskanen eventually finding Johnston, who then discarded John Klingberg and fired a puck top corner to make it 2-0:

To start the second period, Jake Oettinger made a fantastic save on Macklin Celebrini. But right off the next faceoff, the Sharks would get a bounce off Ilya Lyubushkin’s skate that did what they couldn’t, and it was 2-1:

The Stars have had a few of these sorts of goals against lately, and they never stop stinging. But I suppose faceoffs are like games: you can’t win ‘em all. (In this case, Ty Dellandrea did win one, but he’s not on the Stars anymore, you may have heard.)

San Jose kept pushing after that, and you had the sense before the halfway point of the game that this was not ending 2-1. You had that sense even more when Shakir Mukhamadullin took a high-sticking penalty against Colin Blackwell, putting Dallas on their first power play of the game.

And that’s when Mikko Rantanen and Wyatt Johnston combined to restore the two-goal lead, after an aggressive Sharks penalty kill couldn’t close down the most dangerous player on the ice in time—and Johnston didn’t need much to begin with:

San Jose would get their second shot at a power play when Sam Steel capped an extended shift for all five Stars players with a tripping penalty. But despite a couple of frantic moments, Jake Oettinger held the fort, despite some very good work from Klingberg and Celebrini (which Razor compared to Modano and Zubov from back in the day, and you could see why).

However, the Stars wouldn’t make it much beyond the expiration of the penalty before surrendering another goal. Once again, a faceoff loss led to disaster, though this time it felt a bit more avoidable—which is to say, maybe it would have been a good idea to someone to stick around in order to cover the wide-open Colin Graf on top of the crease, and Graf got time and space to finish the job after Oettinger made the initial stop:

Lyubushkin was paired up with Harley coming off a penalty kill here, presumably to add some defensive help on a DZ draw. But given the way defensemen line up on the faceoffs, I don’t think this coverage was on either blueliner. Blackwell (who was likewise added to this line after a PK shift jumbled the forwards a bit) got completely beaten on the faceoff (Celebrini, man) and one of the forwards probably ought to have stuck around to hand off Graf before leaving him alone here, too. Lots of things to deal with, there.

But as it happens, one of those forwards would get the chance to immediately atone for any mistakes they might have been responsible for. Justin Hryckowian made the most of his chance, when Alex Nedeljkovic passed him a pizza that the Stars’ forward housed like he was answering a dare:

Josh Bogorad mentioned on the broadcast that it was Hyrckowian’s first point since November, and yeah: He’d gone nine pointless games since last hitting the scoresheet. Hey, ‘tis the season, right?

(Meanwhile, Mavrik Bourque has one assist in his last eight games. Sometimes there just isn’t enough pizza to go around.)

Through two periods, the Stars had capitalized on their chances despite some decent pressure from the Sharks. But as the Penguins could tell you, a multi-goal lead against a young team with nothing to lose is no sure thing in the third period.

Speaking of no sure things, the Sharks immediately drew within one after another non-call on the Sharks (in the Stars’ view) led to an odd-man rush and a one-goal game.

Sure, it’s a nice play to feed Colin Graf here, but if you’re Dallas—who had only one power play to this point—it’s pretty rough to watch Heiskanen get hooked and then taken out like that without a call whatsoever. Heiskanen was arguing pretty vehemently after this goal went in, and that’s not something you see very often. But it sure looked like Heiskanen had a case for something here, which he made (to no avail) after the goal.

Heiskanen’s lobbying didn’t pay dividends down the road, either, as Rantanen was called for hooking on what looked like a pretty tame play, to make power plays 3-1 in the Sharks’ favor, much to Rantanen’s, ah, chagrin:

But the Stars responded to that adversity just as well as they did against Los Angeles, with what was their most aggressive kill of the game, including some decent shorthanded puck-ragging time in the other zone, as well as a highly entertaining Colin Blackwell clearance utilizing both gloves after he’d lost his stick.

Jake Oettinger ended the game as he began it, crushing San Jose hopes and dreams while the Stars got to rebounds and cleared them away. And the final goal of the game was just such a play, as Jamie Benn immediately collected a slick Oettinger save during a 6-on-5 set and promptly slid the puck down the ice and into the open net to seal the game:

The Sharks would push a bit more, but Oettinger didn’t budge, and Dallas managed to take a 5-3 win out of a building that has become tougher to play in this year than it used to be. That’s a good way to start a back-to-back set. The best, in fact.

Esoteric Song of the Game

Lineups

Dallas began with this group:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Lyubushkin-Petrovic

Oettinger

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San Jose did this:

Graf-Celebrini-Chernyshov
Eklund-Wennberg-Toffoli
Gaudette-Dellandrea-Cardwell
Goodrow-Ostapchuk-Reaves

Orlov-Klingberg
Ferraro-Liljegren
Mukhamadullin-Iorio

Nedeljkovic

AfterThoughts

• Big congratulations to Josh Bogorad for being named the best broadcaster in Dallas in this year’s “Best of Big D” issue of D Magazine:

  

  NB: I had no vote in this process, but I heartily agree with the results.

• Glen Gulutzan said on Wednesday that some illness was running through the team, both players and staff. If Rantanen was dealing with something, however, he sure shook it off without a problem early on. Though I do wonder if he was starting to tire later in the game a bit more than usual. Could just be confirmation bias on my part, though.

  • I wonder if Daryl Reaugh is also on that list of affected individuals, as his voice sounded a bit scratchy tonight. Good on him for fighting through it, if so.

• As we discussed on Wednesday, the Stars indeed went back to the Harley-Lundkvist pairing after giving Lundkvist three games to ease back into the lineup, à la Jamie Benn and Matt Duchene after their respective recoveries. That needs to be a solid pairing for Dallas this year, or at least they need to decide whether or not it’s viable in time to make any potential adjustments before the deadline.

• Mavrik Bourque could use a goal right now, as we mentioned. But this bit of misfortune just seems par for the course lately, as he hit both posts:

• Today was Jake Oettinger’s 27th birthday. You may have heard this a time or two, but it’s worth keeping in mind just how wide-open the Stars’ window is right now. One suspects they are well-aware of this, too.

• One also wonders if Wyatt Johnston saw tonight as a bit of a chance to remind Hockey Canada that Macklin Celebrini isn’t the only phenomenal forward that deserves a serious look at a forward spot for the Olympics. Not that he needs any extra motivation to be excellent, but you wonder if that was in the back of his mind tonight.

• Does anyone know what Ric Flair is up to these days? No reason, I just feel like I haven’t seen him in a while.

• Alex Nedeljkovic knocked the net off after an icing (which had itself followed a long shift by Dallas to pin San Jose in their own end), but he wasn’t penalized for it, probably because he was subtle enough about it to make it look like a mechanical issue:

• Good for Ty Dellandrea, who wasn’t certain to play in this game after suffering a knock the other night. He may not have turned into what the Stars had hoped he would, but he’s an easy player to root for nonetheless.

• The QueBäck line was reunited late in the second period and into the third, and man, their chemistry is just so easy to like. With Duchene playing in the top line left wing spot, I wonder if Gulutzan might go back to them more often, even if it means putting Steel on the fourth line line, as you kind of have to do as a result. But if that third line keeps playing like they’ve been, I think that’s an easy decision.

• Colin Blackwell made a heroic clearance on the penalty kill after losing his stick. This is some kind of singlemindedness, right here:

  • Does he take the puck off Lindell’s stick? Sure. Is this a play a coach ever wants to see their player actually doing? Okay, probably not. But, is it awesome? Absolutely, completely, entirely. Did you know he can touch a basketball hoop’s rim?

• Oh right, basketball. So, I don’t really see how you allow full-on jump balls to happen in the crease like this, even if the puck is up in the air, but it was permitted tonight:

  • Oettinger was fine, thank goodness, but two opposing players going into the crease, colliding with one another, and landing on the goalie would seem to fit the textbook definition of goaltender interference, but the Stars ended the game with just one power play—which they made the most of.

• I thought Ilya Lyubushkin played well tonight, even though he was asked to play on both the left side and the right, depending on what pairing he was rolled with. He had a couple of key blocks and close-downs (probably a real term), and overall looked confident and collected enough to weather the storms San Jose was frequently bringing, even with a couple of bad breaks burning him for two minuses. Alex Petrovic also looked to have a bit more jump in his step in this one, which was good to see.