Game 37 AfterThoughts: Dads and Deciding Factors

A lot of fun was had in Dallas tonight

Today was a fun day in Dallas Stars land. The players (and some coaches and staffers) got to welcome their fathers for the beginning of what I’m going to capitalize as the Dads Trip, and the Stars kicked off the festivities with a bang.

Eventually, at least. Initially, that bang was more like a shy squeak, or maybe an “excuse me” cough to inform that person at the coffee shop that they actually just cut in line. The Stars had somehow managed to establish a 1-0 lead after two periods despite being outshot by a nearly 3-to-1 margin and giving up four power plays, including three in the middle frame.

But whether polite or meek or just bashful, the Stars eventually asserted themselves by doing what they keep on finding a way to do: Scoring at the right time while goaltending prowess keeps things from getting out of hand. Oettinger stopped 27 of 28 shots, and more than a couple of those were high-grade attempts.

“You never want to waste a goalie performance like that,” Gulutzan said afterward, giving proper praise to Jake Oettinger, who began the night with a breakaway stop on a player who scored 69 goals two years ago, and ended it with the crowd roaring for him to shoot a puck into the empty net.

But the reason Oettinger had to be good is that the Stars, after a tight first period, started to lose their way in the second.

“Jake had to save us in the second,” Gulutzan said. “I thought the second [period] was poor, one of our poorer periods. Jake held the fort, made some saves. We took some penalties, we got some big kills, but we certainly got out of rhythm.”

Gulutzan added that the Stars “regrouped” in the third, but he also changed the forward lines, moving Sam Steel up to the left wing of Wyatt Johnston, while putting Matt Duchene back at his natural center position. And the moves paid off, as both lines would score in the third period, with Steel’s deflection early on giving the Stars a 2-0 lead, and Jamie Benn’s deflection restoring said two-goal cushion after Scott Laughton put the only puck of the night past Oettinger on a 2-on-1 shortly beforehand.

But you probably saw all that, so you know about how the Stars found ways to get those gritty goals, to do what Toronto couldn’t. And man oh man, Toronto is surely in shambles right now, as the Leafs’ third loss in a row comes after a game where they easily could have pulled out a win, if not for failing on the power play four times and, well, getting scored on by Sam Steel. These are the things that decide the fates of coaches and players and even GMs, sometimes.

The mood couldn’t be sunnier in Dallas, however. Glen Gulutzan said that one of the dads was leading tequila shots for the group, and all of the postgame media interviews were conducted with players’ fathers standing around and chatting, or just taking it all in, soaking up an atmosphere that has to be extremely special, because even the normally taciturn Jamie Benn recognized as much.

“It’s a special weekend,” Benn said. “A lot of new dads, some billets, some brothers, some mentors, and some familiar faces as well. I think I’m getting closer to the dads’ ages than my own teammates. We were talking Tragically Hip and Nickleback. It’s getting bad now.”

One of those new dads (besides Benn himself) was Jake Oettinger, whose stop on Auston Matthews on a breakaway set the tone for a night where the Stars’ goaltender refused to let his teammates pay the price for their mistakes, and they eventually rewarded him for holding the fort with a few insurance goals.

“Everyone wants to play well in front of their dad,” Oettinger said. “Not anymore, but back in the day, you used to be scared when you played bad, and the car ride home with your dad. I think everyone just wants to play their best, and it makes the plane ride a lot more fun tomorrow.”

As for his part in the victory, the typically self-effacing Oettinger said the stop on Matthews was a bit of a makeshift one, but he’ll take it.

“I honestly thought he was gonna go five-hole, and then just kinda went down and threw my glove out. I think he maybe missed his spot, so I got lucky there. Whenever you get a save like that early on, you feel like the juices are flowing. Just kinda feel like it might be your night, so I was happy to come up big. That’s my job, is to make those saves.”

The feather in Oettinger’s cap came when the Leafs’ net emptied for an extra attacker, and he collected a puck behind the net. The crowd was urging him to shoot, but he decided to hand it off to Esa Lindell (never a bad idea, that) who cleared the puck up off the glass and down the ice—where Mavrik Bourque would ensure the puck found its home, giving Oettinger his first assist of the season on the play.

“I was thinking about shooting that, then I was like, the risk/reward didn’t feel worth it,” Oettinger said with a smile. “So I made the right call, I think.”

It was a goal well-deserved for Bourque, who looked every bit like the sort of player the Stars are hoping he can be tonight. So, too, was a fifth goal scored with 16 seconds left, when Justin Hryckowian pounded home a rebound just to finish grinding his heel into whatever shards of Toronto’s pride might not have escaped to the locker room before the final buzzer.

Hryckowian was a key figure on the Stars’ penalty kill, which Oettinger and Gulutzan credited for its 4-for-4 performance, just the latest instance of Alain Nasreddine’s group coming up huge when the team needed them.

But of course, you can’t talk about this game without talking about the Robertsons, as Jason and Nick faced off against each other with their dad in attendance.

Incidentally, Jamie Benn smiled fondly in the postgame media interviews when he was asked about what facing his brother Jordie was like, and he said with a smile that it’s “important,” and that you always want to beat your brother. And Jason Robertson is no different, I am sure.

(It’s worth watching Benn’s postgame interview when the Stars put it up—everyone was in a very good mood tonight.)

Robertson knows all about Bill Guerin’s comments, and about the rep that seems to haunt him about his not being quite in the mold of a desired international tournament player. And he is certainly looking to prove everyone wrong about that.

“I wanna be stronger on my skates, definitely,” Robertson said. “It’s a physical game ou there. Just the way the game’s going. Try to win more and more puck battles.”

And that’s exactly what Robertson did on his goal to open the scoring, when he outbattled Jake McCabe to win a puck and collect it twice before making a slick move to beat Dennis Hildeby for a lead the Stars might not have earned, but badly wanted.

“I knew I had a step on him,” Robertson said. “I knew we were onside. I’m just trying to play through a check, and just took it to the net.”

That’s what Dallas did as a whole, too. They won a battle when they needed to, or got a save (or three) when they goofed up. They played like a team, and the sum of their parts was greater than what Toronto could muster.

In one sense, it’s almost unfair, given how hard the Leafs worked at times. But this game isn’t about fairness. It’s about one team beating another. And the Stars finally rediscovered the formula for playing as a team when it mattered most in the final period. That’s something every one of their dads has to be proud of.

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As for the game, both sides got chances early that could have turned into something, with Jamie Benn firing a snap shot into Hildeby’s pad on a half-breakaway early, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson stepping into a loud one-timer at the circles that whistled just wide of Oettinger.

Still, Dallas was getting the better chances early, until a Thomas Harley turnover in the worst of spots to Auston Matthews gave the Leafs a Grade-A+ chance to grab the lead. However, Jake Oettinger’s glove doesn’t operate on a graded basis, so he stared down his USA teammate and snared the backhand to keep things level and bail out his defenseman.

The neutral zone was far from sluggish, and Dallas kept getting chances to enter the Toronto zone with speed. But as the first period went along, pucks just weren’t getting to either net. John Tavares blocked one such puck, and he had to leave the ice briefly to get attention.

That’s when Miro Heiskanen put a pretty routine puck over the glass from his own zone, sending Dallas to the first penalty kill of the game. It loomed as an unearned chance for Toronto to grab the lead, but big blocks from Lyubushkin, Lindell, and company got the Stars through it. And right after the kill, Oskar Bäck sent a clearance down the ice that Jason Robertson outfought Jake McCabe to grab. And from there, he was home free. 1-0, Dallas.

Oettinger had to make one more big save before the intermission, but Dallas would survive their mistakes and capitalize on a big chance of their own. When have you heard that before?

Mattias Maccelli took an early penalty in the second, putting Dallas on the power play with a chance to take a 2-0 lead. But despite some good looks, they never really forced Hildeby to do anything spectacular, and Robertson was nailed for a hooking call that looked less like an actual hook than like a justified penalty for some loose puck play and reaching.

Thus, Dallas had 1:30 of their own penalty to kill after going 0-for-1 on their opening power play. But despite some frantic defending, the Stars survived long enough for Auston Matthews to lose a skate blade when his teammate’s shot hit him at the end of the Leafs’ advantage, and the period resumed at 5-on-5.

Oettinger’s night got busier after that, and he made a couple of key stops on Nylander and Tavares as the Stars’ zone saw more traffic. But once again, the Stars counterpunched at the perfect time, as Mavrik Bourque collected a rebound at the netfront and put it in—except, it didn’t count, as the Leafs successfully challenged the play for offside. Just another thrilling episode in the annals of the Best Rule In Sports.

The cruelest part of the play is that Hintz’s stick is probably what slows the puck down at the last minute here

And yet, Bourque nearly got a valid goal a minute later, when some good work behind the net by Bäck resulted in another chance in front. But Hildeby broke Bourque’s heart again, and the score stayed 1-0.

The game really got loopy after that. A Nylander breakaway got foiled by Lindell at the last minute, and then Robertson drew a second power play for Dallas, during which the Dallas bench certainly thought Toronto committed at least two other penalties that weren’t called, one of which saw Robertson get dragged down to the ice, and the other of which looked like a clear cross-check into the boards. The fans protested, but no second penalty was called, and a full power play shift in the Leafs’ end saw no goals. A Tavares out-of-the-box rush after the penalty expired nearly evened things up, too.

Toronto got their third chance on the power play when a Lyubushkin point shot was hammered into the shinpads of Scott Laughton, and the Stars’ defenseman desperately hauled down his man to prevent a breakaway—not realizing the puck had rebounded so far back that Oettinger could have easily gotten to it.

Yet again, the Stars’ penalty kill bowed up. But yet again, they re-loaded the Leafs’ power play, as a Thomas Harley effort resulted in a turnover and a high-sticking penalty all in one go. It was not the best of nights for Thomas Harley, and it would get worse when he exited the box only to turn another puck over in his own zone in the final 30 seconds of the middle period. But thanks to some more heroic work by Jake Oettinger, the Stars didn’t pay for it.

Dallas took a 1-0 lead (and a 22-8 disparity in shots on goal) to the third period, and it looked for all the world like the Stars would either cash in a stellar effort from Oettinger, or waste it entirely. And genuinely, I couldn’t have told you which was more likely. It was a weird game that felt mysterious. But I suppose at this point, you’re usually going to be smart to bet against the Leafs when it comes to fate.

Mavrik Bourque got his third great chance of the game in the opening 1:10 of the final period, but a turnaround swipe at a plump puck on the doorstep didn’t get through Hildeby. At the time, it felt cruel. Little did we know.

What did get through Dennis Hildeby (we’ll call him Dennis if it’s easier for you to remember) was an Ilya Lyubushkin point shot that Sam Steel—newly back on the top line—swiped at, getting just enough of a piece of the puck to make it dip below the goalie’s glove hand. 2-0, Dallas.

And it turned out to be a good thing Dallas got that goal, because the Leafs would come right back at the end of a subsequent power play (Dallas really could have used a power play goal tonight) and rush back 2-on-1 against the second unit, upon which Scott Laughton would score a goal a fraction of a second before Harley’s poke check arrived.

Dallas has given up a couple of these late-in-the-power-play odd-man rushes this year, and they always seem entirely avoidable.

But hey, it made for an entertaining final 10 minutes, which kicked off with another goal, when Jamie Benn tipped in a Heiskanen one-timer after a nice bit of stickhandling through traffic by Matt Duchene:

It restored the two-goal lead for Dallas, and just as importantly, it took the wind out of Toronto’s sails just when they were mounting a comeback.

Still, Jake Oettinger had a lot of work to do, and he did it with aplomb. Toronto pulled Hildeby, and the crowd even roared for Oettinger to shoot at one point, only for him to hand it off to Esa Lindell, who fired it off the boards and down the ice, where a racing Mavrik Bourque finally, finally got a goal for the first time in a good, long while to salt the game away.

Justin Hryckowian would add more salt to the open Toronto wound with a fifth goal off a rebound, as the Leafs were defending with understandable apathy in the final minute of play. I’m sure messrs. Hryckowian were nevertheless quite pleased with the goal, as they absolutely should be.

Yet again, the Stars pulled a win out of a game they hadn’t played their best for 40 minutes. Yet again, the Stars managed not to lose the special teams battle. Jake Oettinger was strong, and they got timely scoring when they needed it.

We’re not even halfway through the season. A lot of things are still going to happen. But what has happened so far has been, for Dallas, quite a lot of fun.

ESotG

Lineups

Dallas rolled these lines:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Lyubushkin-Petrovic

Oettinger in goal

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Toronto brought this:

Knies-Matthews-Domi
Maccelli-Tavares-Nylander
Robertson-Roy-McMann
Joshua-Laughton-Lorentz

Rielly - Myers
McCabe - Stecher
Benoit - Ekman-Larsson

Hildeby

AfterThoughts

• This was a Fun Fact coming into the game:

  

• Jim Nill and the team honored Head Athletic Trainer Dave Zeis before tonight’s game for reaching 2,000 games in the league. Pretty cool moment for one of the pillars of the team’s training staff:

  

• Weird moment in the press box tonight when I walked by someone and thought to myself: Huh, that guy’s haircut reminds me of Chris Tanev.

  • It was Chris Tanev.

• Jason Robertson had not scored a goal against Toronto in his career before tonight. Now, he has scored a goal against every NHL team other than Dallas.

• Auston Matthews has been discussed quite a bit lately in Leafs Land as a potential issue, and as a player possibly in decline. All I can tell you after tonight is this: He was the most dangerous player on the ice for Toronto.

• This play by Esa Lindell looked to me like it saved a goal, throwing off Nylander’s shot just in time on a would-be breakaway. What a play.

• I really thought Harley might have settled into a rhythm after the Anaheim game, but this contest saw some of his early-season issue returning: holding onto the puck too long and/or turning it over in really rough areas.

  • This turnover late in the second (right after a penalty kill necessitated by another turnover of his) was a particularly rough play that you just cannot have there:

  • I don’t know that Harley has lost his spot on Team Canada, but as the debate about Matthew Schaefer or Jacob Chychrun or whoever continues, plays like this have to haunt Harley a fair bit. He’s better thant his, and he’s shown it. But the last thing you want to do is to start trying too hard to make up for one mistake with overtry in the next situation. These things can compound themselves if you let them.

• On the other side of things, Mavrik Bourque had a great night on the second line, and it’s a real shame his early goal was called back for offside. He created chances and got to the net at good times, but good saves and bad luck prevented him from getting a much-needed goal…until it didn’t. Not every empty-net goal is counted equal, but this one came from hustle and felt like a bit of universe self-correction. That was one empty-netter he deserved to celebrate.

• Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell. What else can you say at this point, other than to acknowledge that not acknowledging them on a night like this would be criminal. That defense pairing is magical.

• Ilya Lyubushkin and Nils Lundkvist, on separate pairings, also had very strong games tonight. For a split second, it looked like Lyubushkin had scored his second goal in two games, but Steel ended up getting a tip on it (which explained how it got past Hildeby, who had a clear view of it). Still, it’s good to see Dallas continuing to get help from their bottom-three defensemen in games where they need it. Whether it’s been Petrovic, Capobiancio, or even the departed Kolyachonok, the Stars’ blue line has been far more of a strength so far than it might have looked to be, particularly when the injuries piled up. Kudos all around.