Game 4 WCQF AfterThoughts: Best of Three

And now, I hardly even think about you anymore

And when I do, well, I still can’t believe

That you came back home

Expecting that I wasn’t over it

It felt good, I’ll admit

***

After watching Vegas coil around Dallas’s supposed depth for two games (and nearly a third), the Stars have suddenly made this a first-to-two series.

It’s a good reminder of what it takes to go on a long playoff run. Don’t get too high, don’t get too low. Keep your hand steady on the plow, and only make changes when you’ve got good reasons to do so. And Dallas made them in this one. If they were a farmer, they could look over their shoulder and see crooked rows, some a bit fallow, but well-plowed ones, nonetheless. I have chosen this analogy.

For all of Dallas’s vaunted depth, they spent the first two games of this series not really having four dangerous lines, and not even playing six defensemen. Evgenii Dadonov looked lost on a line with Sam Steel and Radek Faksa, and Ty Dellandrea and Craig Smith watched from the press box.

In Game 1, the Stars gave up an unfortunate penalty with the fourth line on the ice just over a minute into the game. Vegas immediately scored on the power play, and Dallas never got back to level.

In Game 2, Dallas struggled to get going for long stretches, with a Jason Robertson power play goal their only bit of offense as the fourth line didn’t even play ten minutes.

But after Faksa and Mason Marchment couldn’t go for Game 3, the Stars built a new fourth line with Dellandrea, Smith, and Steel, and they’ve been a huge asset for Dallas as the series has evened up, playing significant minutes in both games. And for much of Game 4, they were Dallas’s most effective line, constantly finding ways to get the puck into the Vegas zone and generate shots and chances.

Of course, the player who never should have been on that line was the one to open the scoring, as Dadonov (starting with Pavelski and Seguin) may have saved the Stars’ season with an optimistic shot from along the red line that conked Logan Thompson, following a similar trajectory of Wyatt Johnston’s overtime winner in Game 3. The Stars were clearly shooting high and often on Thompson, and he vindicated that approach even further with Wyatt Johnston’s goal, getting a little too fancy with the windmill glove, only to see the puck get scooped back off his pads by Matt Duchene, then falling to Johnston, who potted it.

It was a nice little bit of work by Duchene, who curved his stick just a bit extra in order to ensure the puck wouldn’t die in Thompson’s pads, and instead continue on to Johnston. Intentional or not, it was crucial.

Duchene had a great game after starting out rough. He wasn’t the only one to start out rough, with the Stars incredibly fortunate not to be down 3-0 after the first. The different with Duchene and Pavelski and others, however, is that they continued to get shifts, unlike Nils Lundkvist, who only got one shift after a disastrous turn that saw him lose a race to a puck in his zone despite a huge head start. I don’t know why you don’t just start Derrick Pouliot at this point, if only to spare Lundkvist the embarrassment of sitting through 40 minutes of intense, playoff hockey without ever hearing his name called. Try to imagine what that’s like for a hockey player, to see defense pairings being madly managed and remixed in order to cover for the fact that they don’t have three pairings they can consistently roll, by choice. You have to feel for the player, but I’m starting to get more annoyed that they haven’t attempted to find Joel Hanley 2.0 yet. This benefits no one.

***

The thing about hockey is, the team with the better goalie tends to win. And Jake Oettinger is just a better goalie than Logan Thompson, as you saw tonight, and for most of this series. When the Stars aren’t able to break through Vegas enough to score, or when Thompson goes on a heater like he did in Game 3, the temptation is often to blame your own team’s goalie for not canceling out those problems with otherworldly play. But goalies can’t think that way, because it would crush them. Overtry is toxic to good goaltending (think a young Mike Smith in Tampa), so goalies have to stay composed, confident, and indifferent. Oettinger spent most of Game 4 looking downright dismissive, and that’s when you know your team can do things.

Thompson, meanwhile, is reminding Vegas that the stinker he allowed to Marchment back in Dallas wasn’t some weird sort of alternate reality. He’s still an NHL goalie capable of stealing games (or keeping you in one, at least), but Oettinger is of another caliber. If the other players can do their thing, then Oettinger looks prepared to do his. You might save yourself some heartache by not railing at him every time a team manages to capitalize on an odd-man rush. The ~Golden~ Knights’ second goal felt like one of a dozen 3-on-2s Dallas surrendered in the first half of the game, and even then, it took a friendly bounce off the post and a perfect rebound play to score. Trying to find a way to blame Oettinger for not being in two places at once is just lazy criticism, not real insight.

Likewise, the first Vegas goal was a result of Lindell not quite locking up his man in favor of protecting against a backdoor pass. It was a hectic play with no time for a shoulder check, but Lindell would’ve been better off taking his man rather than trying to play the pass. But that’s easy to say from up here, being able to see everything, rather than busting back up the ice and trying to keep track of where the puck, the goal, your teammate, and the guy you’re defending all are. Hockey seems difficult, actually.

The Stars’ fourth line was outstanding, relative to expectations, and that was especially crucial because of the lines that didn’t look good. Wyatt Johnston couldn’t get much going with Robertson and Hintz, so DeBoer starting loading previous save states before the third, putting the old 21-24-16 line back up top, with Stankoven and Johnston playing with Benn. Credit to DeBoer for making the changes when he needed to, both before the game and within it. Coaching seems easy to me, so long as you get the benefit of hindsight and don’t have to face criticism, like I do.

Jack Eichel was less terrifying than usual in this game, even though he scored a goal. Perhaps it was the fact that he very clearly began to look pass-first, and the Stars very clearly have prepared for it. He’s good enough to know that, of course, but I still think Oettinger is just as much in Vegas’s heads as Thompson is (was?) in the Stars’. Oettinger is getting stronger as the series goes on, mirroring his season progression as well. You can’t throw a parade just because you climbed back from losing two games on home ice to kick off your playoff run, but he’s one of the biggest reasons Dallas has to feel confident about the remainder of this series. Even the good Vegas players (both of them) seem stymied. That’s why the fourth-liners have been scoring, I guess. Michael Amadio? That’s some real Joel Kiviranta energy, right there.

Chris Tanev has been a lifesaver. Even when he was getting himself into trouble by trying a bit too hard to break out cleanly from behind the net, Tanev was making up for it by closing gaps, stepping up, and shutting down the cycle along the boards. He and Esa Lindell, in fact, were the only defense pairing to allow fewer shots than they generated, as the Stars’ top pairing of Harley and Heiskanen spent a good chunk of the night in their own zone. The numbers don’t really tell the full story, however, because so much changed from period to period.

In the First, Dallas was incredibly lucky to escape with a tied game, much like Vegas in Game 2. Dallas started off all right, but Vegas got an early power play, and while Dallas escaped, the coudln’t find the net before Vegas got rolling. William Karlsson bumped the puck back to make a 2-on-2 rush feel far more dangerous, and Michael Amadio (real person, remember) tipped McNabb’s shot and found the rebound in an instant to beat Oettinger. From there, Dallas had a look or two, but it felt far too much like Game 1 and 2 for comfort, with Vegas just leaning heavily on the Stars without any answers coming back, until Dadonov’s prayer (shot between the defender’s legs, mind you) gave the Stars a fresh start they had hardly earned right before the intermission.

The Second period started out badly, with Eichel scoring off another rush shifted when the Stars got on the power play. But once the Stars got on the power play (thanks to two unnecessary penalties by Pietrangelo and Stephenson), the momentum shifted, and Dallas found themselves back in a hockey game again. Johnston scored to tie things back up at 2, and Dallas built on that effort when Stephenson chose to take a silly cross-checking penalty on Duchene right in the official’s line of sight. Bruce Cassidy then chose to complain about the calls being uneven when Vegas had been possessing the puck more (you know, the thing that automatically means you get power plays, apparently) to Leah Hextall, but kudos to the officials for not forcing a call to even things up. It’s always easy to compliment the referees when things go your way, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

The Third period, however, was a bit of a turtlefest, but Dallas did it masterfully. You never really shake those Rick Bowness/Ken Hitchcock training sessions, I guess. High flips, blocked shots, extended periods of panicked defensive-zone coverage—this period had it all. It was a nice little bit of nostalgia, if that’s the right word for something you really don’t care to remember at all, useful though it may have turned out to be.

Dallas won two of three periods, and they drew the first at ones, if undeservedly. That’ll win you a lot of playoff hockey games, it turns out.

***

This was a night of redemption for a few folks. Not Oettinger, who’s been good all series, though imperfect (as so many human beings are). But Ty Dellandrea made up for a bad penalty early in the game by being at the front of the net at the right time in order for the puck to bounce in off of him. Evgenii Dadonov’s shot reminded us why he was such a revelation on that Benn-Johnston line down the stretch last year, and even Matt Duchene and Joe Pavelski had a couple of hardworking and crucial shifts in the third period, when the Stars went into full hatch-battening mode.

But Roope Hintz is a player I want to call out here, because man, that’s a shift you can feel good about when you’re going to sleep, you know? Presuming Hintz can sleep after blocking a shot with his hand, at least. But if he can score a goal with that bruise, I’m sure sleep is a distant second on the list. That level of sacrifice, right or wrong, means something to your teammates, and Hintz basically got instant karma for his block, getting the puck with an empty net at the other end and icing the game one-handed from his end of the ice. Dallas had been trapped in their own zone a couple of times down the stretch (after playing a hardworking checking game that didn’t involve as much terror for the first half of the final frame), so Hintz’s goal was the release valve they all needed. No, it’s not like scoring top-shelf on a breakaway, but if Hintz is good to go for Wednesday, I think he’ll be able to build off that, using whatever is left of his hands to do so.

The level of commitment by Dallas in this one was noticeable. Jason Robertson won a huge board battle late in the Third to eventually get the puck back out, and Jamie Benn was throwing hits and getting to pucks with all the instinct of a hungry retriever in a Burger King. Wyatt Johnston continues to look like the Stars’ best forward, and Thomas Harley began to look shockingly comfortable playing a simple checking game.

But Tanev and Lindell, man. That pairing is what the coaching staff always wished Lindell-Hakanpää could have been last year. But Tanev is indestructible, a sort of hockey rock ’em, sock ’em robot who also has great speed and intelligence with the puck in pressure situations. Vegas continued to give the Stars some bonus chances that they didn’t usually capitalize on, but the Stars were more responsible for most of this game.

Taking care of details will out. And from Oettinger to DeBoer, the Stars both held steady and adapted when needed, and Vegas didn’t have the answers for it. Dallas won’t get crazy goals almost from below the red line every game, but they will get good chances if they work for them. Maybe the truest representation of Dallas’s depth isn’t that all the lines are always clicking at once, but that there is always a night where at least one of them is a real force for good, and they tend to drag others into the fight. This series is probably going to continue to be tight and tense, but the Stars have managed to undo every bad bounce, every rough break so far. Now, the questions is whether they can maintain their focus and effort level on home ice again, or whether they’ll find themselves getting stymied by the ~Golden~ Knights’ simple-but-effect game plan for more than just one period, next time.