Game 39 AfterThoughts: Redemption Convention

Note: I’m about to hop on Spits and Suds with Gavin, so I’m going to publish these with a bit less preamble than usual. Give that podcast a listen when it gets posted later tonight, if you would!

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This game could’ve been a huge waste of everybody’s time, given how it started. But the Stars showed a lot of determination and erased a 3-0 deficit to create a brand new hockey game in the final 20 minutes. And they made an even better comeback in the final stretch, refusing to let a late Rangers power play goal crush their spirits. If you want to try to establish a narrative about the Stars’ resilience finally coming online, this might well be the game to do it.

Of course, the big story after this one was the injury to Ilya Lyubushkin. You can watch the video here, but the pertinent images are below.

Lyubushkin was called “doubtful” to return by Stars PR in the third period, which was a interesting term to use. Hopefully that just means Lyubushkin was shaken up, but not injured in a more serious way. We shall see what happens in Philadelphia, I suppose.

Jason Robertson could’ve had a hat trick in this one, but he’ll have to settle for a goal and the game-winning assist, I suppose. If the Stars continue to get offense from both of their top two lines, they’re going to be in very good shape in the second half. But this was the sort of game where Robertson was a threat in a variety of ways, and Evgenii Dadonov is tailor-made to cash in on chances when the whole line is clicking. It’s not quite a Patrick Eaves situation, but there’s a lot of benefit to having a really skilled veteran on a line with creative players. It’s been neat to see that chemistry working, in a pinch. The Stars’ top line was just as dominant as the Rangers’ in this one, and it was a chaotic delight to see the two teams exchanging heavyweight blows.

Mavrik Bourque got some time on the penalty kill in this one, as well as the power play. He had a primary assist on Dadonov’s goal, and I thought he looked pretty tenacious on the kill, too. I wonder if that can get his game going a bit more. I know the coaches were hesitant to really lean on him for special teams work when he was coming off a groin injury from the preseason, but now that he’s healthier, it makes a lot of sense to see if he can help the Stars in a variety of ways, since the goals haven’t been coming for him. The fact that his line was trusted to be on the ice late to tie the game —which they did—after he had just the other night been benched in a tight game during that time, was pretty telling. DeBoer does not mind giving young players chances, if they look like they’re earning them. And Bourque (and company) did that.

Esa Lindell was doing a lot of heavy lifting in this game, killing the entirety of the Rangers’ first penalty, just like the old (current) times. And with Lyubushkin missing a large chunk of the game, minutes were always going to ramp up on the Stars’ top three. Heiskanen played over 30 minutes, while Lindell played 25. Harley played just shy of 25, but he also had six shots on goal to go along with a three-point night. Miro Heiskanen is always going to be on the title card for this blue line, but Harley getting going lately is as big a boost as any in the lineup for this club with the second half looming in front of them.

Finally, don’t sell Jake Oettinger short in this one. He easily could have been pulled after the quick three goals by New York, but he was left in to clean up the mess, and he kept the Stars from letting the game get away from them again, stopping breakaways and odd-man rushes in crucial situations in the second and third period. Nobody is going to call this his best night ever, but then, it wasn’t great by the team as a whole, at first. But they found a way to do what they didn’t do against New York earlier this year, and that’s the whole idea in the regular season. You find a way to win games, even when you don’t play perfectly. And sometimes, they end up being a whole lot of fun, even if they have an odor to them early on.

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Dallas generated a couple of really nice looks early, with Nils Lundkvist getting a shot blocked by Adam Fox after a nice give-and-give-and-go exchange from high to low. It was one of those shots where you’d love to see Lundkvist hang onto the puck just a tick longer, but it feels like he has that Julius Honka Timer ingrained at this point, and he unloaded the puck pretty quickly, and into Fox.

The other great chance came from Jason Robertson, who got stopped by Jonathan Quick on this chance, which tells you all you need to know:

You know, it wouldn’t be a proper Stars game this year if the opposing goalie didn’t have a world-class save in the first five minutes. Tradition can be a comforting thing, I suppose.

And of course, the Rangers scored the first goal on their first real chance, when Alexis Lafrenière took a drop pass from Artemi Panarin and whistled it past Jake Oettinger high, short side:

It’s possible the goal might have hit Lundkvist’s sick on the ice and changed direction, but if so, it was tough to pick up on the broadcast. In any case, it was a bit of a gut punch for the Stars to give up that goal after all of the great chances they’d generated to that point. Thankfully, Stars fans’ collective guts have been punched often enough through the first half of the season to where you could barely even feel this one. The human body, it’s a wonderful thing.

Speaking of which, the Stars double down on the “almost at one end, get decked at the other” when a Jason Robertson backhand off a 2-on-1 chance trickled through Quick, but with insufficient juice to get home before it was cleared by Mika Zibanejad:

Anyway, then Jake Oettinger made a couple of great saves on a scramble in tight, only for Will Borgen to fire a shot from distance that hit Vincent Trocheck. Oettinger got a glove on it, but not enough of one, as the puck just did get through him and into the net before Lundkvist attempted his own Zibanejadian dive. It was a very stupid goal after a crazy sequence with some nice positioning by Oettinger, but the puck bounced back to the point, and Borgen fired it on net, and I think Oettinger never had a prayer of seeing it, given the insanity of the sequence. It’s a miracle he got a piece of it to begin with, really.

And then, hoo boy, the stunned Stars got caught completely napping when Brendan Smith joined the attack and fed a puck in front, only for the team to fail to pick up his man before he got back. That’s Smith at the top of your screen below who just fired the puck on net, and you will then see a second screenshot where Artemi Panarin collects the puck on the far wall, and sees Lafrenière busting up the ice without a second man back to cover him:

Ilya Lyubushkin is on the wall at the blue line, and you can see Smith skating back up high. But you can also see Logan Stankoven attacking the wall, as he has not quite registered the danger, perhaps assuming Smith was already going to get back in time. He does not get back in time.

Lafrenière then went down and undressed Oettinger before sliding it five-hole like First Overall Picks are wont to do, and it felt like everything was coming apart.

That was the point at which Jamie Benn and Matt Duchene then decided that this was all very, very stupid, and they took matters into their own hands:

Duchene was credited with the goal that Urho Vaakanainen put into his own net, but Benn’s disruption was clearly instrumental in the goal, and that unlocked things a bit for the Stars.

The next moment came after Logan Stankoven took a high hit that was called holding from Braden Schneider, and that led to the real substance of things hoped for on the Stars bench. Which is to say, an Evgenii Dadonov power play goal after a smart Mavrik Bourque pass along the ice:

Dadonov would find the rebound and lean back, then stuff the puck through the opening to turn this debacle back into a hockey game again. It was a nice bit of simple hockey from Bourque and Dadonov, proving that the power play really doesn’t always need to get the best looks. Good looks can do the trick, sometimes!

From there, things only got crazier, though with no further goals. The Rangers were allowing chances, and the Stars were more than happy to open things up, with Thomas Harley in particular looking dangerous. Colin Blackwell got a shot-pass of his own that nearly tied things in the final few seconds of the period, but even without that conversion, the 3-2 scoreline felt a lot better than things had just a few minutes prior. The Stars had managed to turn a calamity back into a road game after 20 minutes, despite the Rangers’ top line absolutely dominating them in the first period, as the numbers can tell you here:

The second period started just a whisker away from perfection, as Jason Robertson shot a puck squarely off the post

That, of course, had to result in something bad at the other end, per the rules of this game that we were all discovering together, like a terrible adventure. This time, it meant a penalty on Lundkvist to put the Stars on the kill, but Dallas took care of business without too much fuss.

Ilya Lyubushkin took a big hit from Sam Carrick in the corner after fanning on a pass, and Lyubushkin looked to be in some distress. Oettinger gloved a puck down to allow Lyubushkin to get back to the bench, but the broadcast showed a shot of the big Stars defenseman with his head down on the bench that didn’t look encouraging, and Esa Lindell took the next shift next to Brendan Smith, where Lyubushkin had previously been playing. Later on, we found out that Lyubushkin had gone back “to the room.”

The second period hadn’t started quite as up-and-down as the first, but things did eventually regress to the chaotic mean. Aside from Robertson’s first post, his line also had this look, which broke Evgenii Dadonov’s heart after Robertson declined to feed him, instead trying to set up Harley for a chance that didn’t work out

The two were seen laughing together while looking at a tablet later on, so presumably Robertson was just showing him the clip of Mr. Burns taking out Darryl Strawberry in favor of Homer in order to get the correct matchup.

And things got even better for the duo later on, after a sequence that all started with a 2-on-1 rush where Bourque rang the post solidly, and the Stars were able to continue pressuring until the Rangers lost a stick, and the Stars never turned the puck over, with Robertson eventually getting a backhand out in front of the net that he was able to tuck short side on a befuddled Jonathan Quick, who was not occupying nearly enough of the net to serve the purpose a goalie is intended for:

Bourque had another just-about on a wrap around a bit later, which came after then the Stars gave up a breakaway to Mike Zibanejad, who proved he is far better at saving goals than creating them, this season. It was a huge let-off for the Stars, as was the miss by Lafrenière on a chance for his hat trick after he drew the puck between his legs and got off a wicked backhand that went just wide:

Duchene had a wicked shot of his own late in the period that Quick got a tip of the glove on, so the Stars made it to the third period tied at 3, feeling dominant with a 2-to-1 shot advantage, but also precipitously close to the next land mine.

Dallas and New York traded Grade A chances six minutes in, after Panarin once again failed to convert a chance from the doorstep:

Then Robertson weathered a Bash Brothers-type hit in the slot before getting up and being fed for a back-door tap-in that he put just wide on the hot pass from Harley:

And then Vincent Trocheck put his own version of the same play similarly wide, just for fun:

No matter who ended up taking this game, it was clearly that one of the teams would end up feeling like they left points on the table.

The big moment down the stretch came when Harley got nailed for a delay of game penalty on a clearance along the boards that the Rangers successfully lobbied for, though it wasn’t called in the moment. And so the Stars were facing a massive kill with 9:40 remaining, and without either Harley or Ilya Lyubushkin to help.

Heiskanen and Lindell were called upon to kill the entire thing, given the limited options available. And after a tense minute and change spent almost entirely in the Stars’ end, Heiskanen flung a puck off Oskar Bäck that mercifully went out of play to give the Stars a crucial breather. But the ensuing faceoff would bring the heartbreak, as a point shot by Zibanejad was deflected expertly by Trocheck, and the puck deflected off Oettinger’s torso (you can see the puck below just below the arm) and into the net.

It was a cruel, cruel fate from a very simple play. The Rangers had perhaps set up that exact play, as they had called a timeout during the preceding whistle, but the Stars had the final few minutes to muster one more comeback in the most depressing of circumstances.

And they got their chances, with Heiskanen and Bourque both testing Quick on good looks right after. The Rangers rung a post themselves as the game opened its gaping maw back up, and the Rangers had multiple odd-man looks that could have given them some separation. But instead, it was Thomas Harley who would atone for his earlier penalty, getting a beautiful feed from Sam Steel after a hard forecheck, and Harley did not miss. Well, he did miss Quick, which is the idea, but you know what I mean:

It was a testament to DeBoer’s trust in the Bourque-Stankoven-Steel line that they were out there in such a critical moment, given how little Bourque played the other night in a tight game down the stretch. This was one of the forward’s best games all year, and his line earned every bit of the trust DeBoer put in them, helping the Stars get to overtime despite a wild and difficult 60 minutes.

A great bit of skill by Matt Duchene at the start of overtime set up a 2-on-1 down low for Heiskanen and Wyatt Johnston, and that forced Panarin (who has had better nights than this one) to hook Johnston, putting Dallas on the 4-on-3 power play for the first time this year, if memory serves. And it looked like it, as the Stars didn’t test Quick once until 1:51 in, when Jason Robertson continued to terrorize the Rangers by setting the table of Jamie Benn:

That pass was not exactly the easiest one to handle, but Benn found a way to get it on net. And because of how quick the pass was, that’s all that was required. The Stars took two points from a game that started with a thud. That’s a pretty fun way to check the first box on a road trip, I’d say.