Game 36 AfterThoughts: Stars Get Revenge, Also a Lot of Goals

Jason Robertson was all over the score sheet, too

“Y’all wanna score some goals?”

Glen Gulutzan said this morning that the Stars’ plan for this game was to control the Ducks’ line rushes. After being a bit displeased by the chances Dallas gave up against San Jose, he said the goal was not to pour gasoline on a young, offensive team’s collective fire.

But you know what’s more fun than dousing a flame? Going full Leeroy Jenkins on a squad that put up a seven-spot back in Dallas a few weeks ago and wiping the veritable floor with them. So, the Stars promptly charged in with a roar and drove out the starting goalie with a four-goal first period.

It was some kind of statement from a team playing its second game in as many nights against an Anaheim group coming off two days of rest, but what else is new? The Stars got the goaltending they needed early, and then they started scoring on every other shot until they had piled up eight goals on just 16 shots on goal. We talked earlier today (yesterday) about the Stars’ proclivity for being out-shot, but this game was a pretty good example of a time when you really just don’t care about that stat whatsoever.

Glen Gulutzan on Shots, Expected Goals, and the Delicate Balance of Coaching for Possession

Early in the season, goals were tough to come by at times, and the Stars were squeaking out one-goal win after one-goal win. But lately, things have been different, and that’s what Anaheim discovered, to their great misfortune. I’m not sure if the Ducks had some diabolical plan to confuse the Stars by overwhelming them with turnovers, but it’s safe to say it didn’t work, as Dallas kept stuffing loose pucks back into the Anaheim net, banishing a starting goalie to the phantom zone before the first intermission.

Maybe the Stars’ league-leading shooting percentage isn’t sustainable—it’s always the thing people expect to regress—but when it comes to scoring on high-danger chances, they’re the best team in the league at doing so. This game isn’t going to be that instructive for analysis purposes going forward (outside of the Stars’ final trip to Anaheim next month), but it is most definitely an example of what Dallas can do to you if you try to cut corners, or also if you hand them pucks and dare them to do something with them. Because Dallas did everything with them, tonight.

Perhaps starting it all off with an Oskar Bäck shorthanded goal was the key in this one. When you can punch an opposing power play in the mouth and have a depth forward open the scoring, that tends to bode well. And bode it did indeed, to the tune of seven more goals.

It was a pretty fun night, unless you’re Sam Steel, who paid a little more dearly for his goal than most. He’s a tough one, though.

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Jason Robertson gave the Ducks some life with an offensive-zone tripping penalty right off the hop. Or maybe Jason Robertson is smarter than any of us, and he knew exactly what he was doing, because Radek Faksa would strip Jacob Trouba of the puck behind the goal line and set up Oskar Bäck for what turned into the game’s first goal: a shorthanded one, no less.

But you may recall that these teams’ last meeting was a 7-5 gunfight, so one goal wasn’t going to be all she wrote. Anaheim tied it up quickly on a rebound play that involved a bit of contact with DeSmith and a better play by Ryan Poehling:

Dallas would immediately counter, however, as Jason Robertson made a slick little saucer pass to Roope Hintz, who ripped it past a screen and behind Lukáš Dostál to make it 2-1:

Any plan the Stars might have come in with to clamp down on Anaheim appeared to have gone out the window, as things went back and forth. But the Stars had more Forth than Back early on, as Sam Steel showed on a rush where he took a hit into the post, but also managed to shoot a puck through the normal goal mouth, which resulted in a confirmed goal to make it 3-1. It was laughable, unless you’re Steel, who was probably pretty stinkin’ sore afterward.

Dostál’s night got worse right before it ended, as he gave up his fourth goal on his sixth shot on goal, though all of them were pretty premium chances, in fairness. This one came after a good poke check by Alex Petrovic, a primary assist by Mikko Rantanen, and a wicked shot by Thomas Harley, which brought Petr Mrazek in to play goal instead:

From there, the Stars just wanted to get to the intermission and spent 17 minutes grinning at eat other while drinking Gatorade, and they accomplished that mission. Being up 4-1 after 20 minutes against a team that thumped you 7-5 in your place a few weeks back? That’s never not fun, I suspect.

Jason Robertson opened the second period by employing his tried-and-true goal-creation formula, which is to say he took an offensive-zone tripping penalty again. But the Stars let him down by not scoring another shorthanded goal, so he had to settle for a successful kill instead. I suppose one can’t have everything.

The Ducks were not so fortunate, as a Mikael Granlund penalty (two minutes for rastling Wyatt Johnston) led to a Stars power play, and Jason Robertson took a bouncing puck and tucked it around Mrazek like he was doing his last chores on a Saturday morning to make it 5-1.

Ryan Poehling decided that drawing power plays was the way to go, so he successfully drew a tripping call by doing something that looked a whole like like embellishment, grabbing for Petrovic’s stick and diving to the ice, putting Dallas back on the kill. But once again, the Stars dispatched the danger without too much trouble, thanks to some casual work by DeSmith and some broken sticks for Anaheim.

Jason Robertson then decided he wasn’t done. Roope Hintz took yet another turnover from Anaheim (Mintyukov, this time) and fed Robertson, who dragged to his backhand and created a crease chasm, which he backhanded the puck into with a beautiful shot:

But if you thought Jason Robertson was the Stars’ only player still hungry for goals, you clearly haven’t met (checks notes) Adam Erne, who deposited Radek Faksa’s second primary assist of the night with ease to make it 7-1:

I’m not sure what Glen Gulutzan said in the locker room after 40 minutes, but I’d imagine it was a lot of “wipe those smiles off your faces, we’ve got work to do.”

But whatever that work was, Beckett Sennecke attempted to undo it with a tumbling one-timer that the Stars didn’t defend quite as ardently as they might have to make it 7-2, briefly.

I say “briefly,” because Ilya Lyubushkin got tired of being the only Stars skater not to have scored a goal, so he decided to unleash an impossible shot for his first of the year—and the Stars’ eighth of the night. Just look at this thing, man.

Things deteriorated after that. There was a Robertson breakaway chance for the hat, but his five-hole bid was saved, after which Frank Vatrano dragged him down and started throwing shots, receiving 16 minutes in penalties as a result. Robertson looked more or less fine after the tackle, though it certainly looked a bit dangerous. He also got a slashing minor on the play.

The power plays felt about like you’d expect: the Stars gave up a 2-on-1 shorthanded that didn’t get converted, and Mikko Rantanen rang the crossbar and the post for what was initially called goal number nine. But after a review, the puck was shown not to have crossed the line, and from there, the penalty minutes were more or less about killing time, particularly with no Robertson hat trick to hunt for while his penalty kept him off the ice.

Mikhail Granlund would score the emptiest of empty-calorie goals, but even garbage-time tallies are still fun, I’m sure. Thus, it was 8-3 after Granlund somehow whacked a puck through DeSmith after it initially looked to have been frozen.

The rest of the third was perfunctory at best, and the Stars are now flying back to Dallas having trounced California to the tune of 3-0-0 this week. That’s what the Pacific Division is for, after all.

ESotG

Lineups

Dallas brought this:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Lyubushkin-Petrovic

DeSmith

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Anaheim did this:

Gauthier-Carlsson-Killorn
Kreider-McTavish-Sennecke
Vatrano-Granlund-Terry
Johnston-Poehling-Strome

LaCombe-Trouba
Moore-Helleson
Mintyukov-Gudas

Dostál

AfterThoughts

• Ducks’ radio broadcaster Steve Carroll was honored with a pregame ceremony for working his 2,000th game tonight.

• It was not remotely full in Anaheim tonight, as was evident on the broadcast just from the lower bowl before puck drop. I suspect it was far emptier by the second intermission.

• Mason Marchment was traded to Columbus tonight just ahead of the holiday roster freeze for a 2027 2nd-rounder and a 4th-round pick this year. As a reminder, Dallas got a 3rd and a 4th for trading him over the summer. Feels roughly comparable, to me. Marchment isn’t having the best season in Seattle, so hopefully this ends up helping him get going.

• Speaking of which, did you know Logan Stankoven is actually behind his points pace from last year through 33 games? He’s playing center this year, of course, but the points aren’t easy to come by in Carolina this year.

  • Also, Carolina lost Seth Jarvis to a nasty injury in overtime. (I did not like that slash on his skates one bit, but it wasn’t penalized.) Rod Brind’Amour said postgame that Jarvis could be out for a while, which immediately makes you think about his spot on Team Canada.

  • In other words, Wyatt Johnston’s chances of making that team may have increased, depending on Jarvis’s timeline. But it’s a major bummer how it happened, so you know Jarvis will be doing everything he can to get back in time to make the Games, if possible.

• Once more for posterity: Look at the slow-motion replay of Robertson’s backhand. This is not a backhand move I can do. Not sure about you.

• Frank Vatrano got 16 minutes in penalties for tackling Jason Robertson: An unsportsmanlike minor, four minutes for roughing, and a 10-minute misconduct. Jason Robertson got two for slashing. Not sure what Vatrano was doing here, but it wasn’t very hockey-play-ish:

• Dallas just refuses to care about playing their second game of a back-to-back. Do they get more powerful the more they play? Should we change the schedule to a baseball style, where everyone plays six games a week? No.

• Mavrik Bourque looked good enough on the Hintz line, with Benn dropping down to play with Hryckowian and Steel on the third. I wonder if that was a bit about getting Bourque going against a defensively porous team in the Ducks—and while Bourque did get one secondary assist, it was not his night to pile up the points.

• Big wins in games like this are special luxuries, but most obviously because they allow a team to rest its big guys down the stretch in the final period. With this schedule, any chance a team gets to rest the big guys is a a golden one, and the Stars capitalized on it:

  • Miro Heiskanen played his second-fewest minutes all season, just 22:05.

  • Mikko Rantanen played just 16 minutes, also his second-fewest total if you don’t count the Calgary game where he got ejected.

• I also think this game could end up being a big one for Thomas Harley, as he looked confident and smooth in his own end for much of the night. The goal surely helps a bit, but just having a game where he can feel like he’s in command out there has to be a boost after missing a lot of time, right?

• Brien Rea mentioned in the postgame coverage that Casey DeSmith has won eight games in a row when playing the second night of a back-to-back. That’s ridiculous. Preposterous. Downright inconceivable, even.