Game 4 WCSF AfterThoughts: Getting Back, Online
Dallas is getting stronger. As if they needed to.
We talked at the end of the season about how good it was to see Tyler Seguin back on the ice, back around the team, and just back, no longer having to work out alone, hoping he could get back in time to go on another of his too-few playoff runs in Dallas.
The Stars lost the first two games after Seguin returned. We are not blaming him for those, to be clear, but after dropping their final contest of the season in Nashville and then losing a home game against Colorado to kick off the playoffs, it was a bummer of way to welcome him back. But two games later, there Seguin was, flying up the ice to score the game-winning goal in overtime.
Miro Heiskanen’s return was a similarly long road to Seguin’s, even if he didn’t miss quite as much time. But Seguin’s injury was treating a problem the player and team were aware of, whereas Heiskanen got his knee ripped apart by Mark Stone in a traumatic injury that Heiskanen described last night in his typically understated way: “It wasn’t fun. That hurt.” Yeah, I would think so.
Thankfully, the Stars didn’t take their time welcoming Heiskanen back, as the Finnish teammate that Pete DeBoer called the “elder statesman” of the group was clearly on a mission to make number four actutely aware that the team was glad to see him. Mikael Granlund had tons of jump early on, looking like the most dangerous member of a forward line with two other pretty dangerous players in Roope Hintz and (checks notes) some guy named “Mikko Rantanen.” When you’re standing out on a line with those two, you are most certainly feelin’ it.
If you were in the building Tuesday night, you were also feeling it, the antecedent of which is “the sheer delight in seeing Heiskanen back in a game.” The crowd went as nuts as you’d expect during his introduction during warm-ups (DeBoer said he got goosebumps), and his first touch of the puck during play got a rousing cheer, as did a couple of subsequent defensive plays.
I tell you what, nothing beats seeing a crowd recognize the context of a situation in order to cheer a great stick-check in the defensive zone. Playoff hockey, whether in Toronto or Texas, is as narratively rich as anything in sports. Everything is so imbued with meaning and fraught with danger, without time to breathe before the puck is heading back the other way, that the experience will either take years off your life or end with you feeling practically immortal.
Heiskanen looked strikingly mortal, which I suppose shouldn’t have been a surprise, but always is for a player that has conditioned us for over half a decade to expect the supernatural from him. As DeBoer said after the game, Heiskanen’s inability to run down Kyle Connor (who is extremely fast) on that shorthanded breakaway might have been a first in his career. He has returned from knee surgery though. I suppose some allowances must be made.
Heiskanen didn’t exactly tilt the ice, but he looked consistently responsible while cleaning up messes in his own end (usually not created by him), and for a first game back from surgery, that’s perfectly fine. He took 15 minutes that other defensemen didn’t have to take, and you’ll always trust Heiskanen to prevent the worst from happening when he’s out there.
Speaking of making allowances, Sean Shapiro had been wondering about whether DeBoer would go 11/7 for Heiskanen’s return for a while. I don’t need to tell any of you to read Sean’s work, I’m sure, but he deserves credit for being way ahead of the curve on this one.
A digression: Sean and I had a chance to do a podcast last month you might have listened to. In it, we talked about how to deal with reporting situations like last night, where everyone was waiting with bated breath to see if the Stars would indeed go with 11 forwards and 7 defensemen in warmups.
So, I would like approximately two ounces (2oz.) of credit for not jumping the gun during warmups, when it initially looked like the Stars were going with a more standard 12 forwards/6 defensemen lineup. Colin Blackwell skated on a “fourth” line with Johnston and Robertson, while Ilya Lyubushkin didn’t join the three pairings in line rushes. But something about it just didn’t “feel right” (much like morning skate in Seattle, when the team also went 11/7), so I held off tweeting the lines out until we were certain of the starting lineup. And sure enough, the Stars ended up going with 11 forwards after all, despite Colin Blackwell’s joining line rushes.
I’m a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to “being the first to Tweet things,” which I loathe. Sometimes I take an inordinate amount of satisfaction in not rushing to be the first one on things, even though it’s tempting to get that “engagement,” which is a term social media managers use to make it sound like they actually created something (I kid, mostly). There’s a very real allure, I’ve found, to making sure people know that you know things, even if twelve other people are all tweeting the exact same thing you are. A whole lot of reporters stopping participating in DeBoer’s press conference during morning skate yesterday in order to tweet the news after he announced that he was anticipating Heiskanen’s return, for example.
I’ve tried to figure out this balance a lot this year, because there are also times where people might, for whatever reason, not see something another reporter tweets or shares, and it’s my responsibility to inform them. I want to keep y’all informed without repeating things you’ve heard from a million other people. It’s a tough thing to juggle, but in situations like last night, I felt good about not rushing to Tweet the initial lines Dallas ran, and it turned out to be the right call.
Besides, let’s be honest: scratching Ilya Lyubushkin would have been nuts. Pete DeBoer has established some patterns in his decision-making, and scratching Lyubushkin over Petrovic would have been bizarre for him. But in the moment, that desire to be the first to get all the retweets can be tough to resist, and I’m not any more immune to it than anyone else. But hopefully I’m learning a little bit each day. That’s the goal, anyway.
Also, Lyubushkin played nearly 12 minutes despite not having a dedicated partner, while Petrovic and Bichsel played under 8 minutes apiece. Whenever the Stars do go back to six defensemen, Petrovic still looks like the most likely player to be scratched for Heiskanen.
Has Jake Oettinger allowed a single long-distance goal this postseason, yet? I can’t recall one in a while. That’s really been key to games like last night, where Winnipeg out-shot Dallas pretty heavily, but with a whole lot of those chances coming from above the face-off dots and/or outside the home plate area in front of the net.
Scott Arniel hammered the point that Winnipeg had “70 shot attempts” last night, and needed to score more than one goal on those attempts. But not all attempts are created equal, even if you’re creating traffic and hunting hard for rebounds, and Oettinger had the last laugh.
Still, some of those shots did come from dangerous areas, and Oettinger was unreal last night on multiple Grade-A chances from Winnipeg. When he’s giving his team that sort of confidence in his stopping ability no matter how good the chance is, I really do think he gets in the other team’s heads, affecting their shot selection just that little extra bit. That’s a good place for a goalie to be.
Gabe Vilardi should’ve kicked off the scoring early, for instance, but Oettinger’s glove shut down the chance, and that save set the tone for the game, the rough goal against notwithstanding. And on the positive side, there were a couple of instances of Oettinger calmly tracking the play and just barely getting a skate back to his post as a result of not getting pulled too far out of his net. That sort of recovery only happens if a goalie is confident enough not to overplay the initial chance, and Oettinger was confident as ever last night.
Goaltending always has some luck involved in it (as does shooting), but I do think there’s something to making your own luck, up to a point. Oettinger’s ability to shake off goals like that one Dallas allowed really did seem to do what Oettinger has talked about a lot, which is giving his team confidence in the calm he projects. And that calm is entirely warranted, this postseason.
Oettinger genuinely looks like the better goalie of the two right now, and given that his stated goal after winning a Stanley Cup is winning the USA starting job in Milan, that calm might prove to be the difference. Oettinger was just outstanding in this one, really.
I can’t remember who, but somebody has been saying for a while now that Mikael Granlund just feels like the sort of player who was going to score a big goal in the playoffs. And despite Granlund taking his time in scoring goals after Dallas gave up a first-round pick for him over a month before the trade deadline, he’s been massive in both contributing to that top line’s success (see: Rantanen) and in being a threatening presence himself, even if he tends to be more of a pass-first sort of player.
Granlund has been a little more on the reserved side in the interviews he’s done with the media, but I did smile a bit during his answer last night when asked if he thought about passing to Roope Hintz on his 2-on-1 goal.
“When you pass all the time, you know, you’re gonna surprise the goalie maybe once in a while to shoot the puck. Their D, he went down there, so I didn't know if I'd have a passing lane, so found a spot at the at the corner there. So yeah, you know it's good to shoot every once in a while.”
-Mikael Granlund, on his second goal of the game 5/13/25
Clearly, Granlund has been setting up Hellebuyck for this exact game since being acquired by Dallas in February. 4D chess, folks.
Man, hat tricks in the playoffs are cool. The building is packed, and the fans on the lower levels are just as revved up as the ones up in the cheap seats. That means hats galore, and I saw cowboy hats, moose antlers, and a variety of other headwear raining down after Granlund’s third tally last night.
It’s crazy that we already have three hat tricks to choose from just 11 games into this playoff run. I’m not sure anything is going to top the celebratory nature of Rantanen’s last-second goal into the empty net for the Game 7 hat trick (which I’ll forever associate with Josh Bogorad’s “Of Course!” call), but Granlund giving the Stars a third-period insurance goal with a top-shelf one-timer over the shoulders of the Vezina Trophy winner is a pretty great way to get one, as hat tricks go.
Genuinely, the Stars just feel charmed right now. Then again, the Duchene OT winner against Colorado last year had a similar feel, only for the magic to run dry in the third round. If the Stars can make it to another round (as they’ll have every chance to do), you’ll hope that the depth exemplified by players like Mikael Granlund can supply the magic from spots in the lineup you wouldn’t otherwise expect.
Also, Granlund deserves a ton of additional credit for also stepping up and being on that PK pairing with Sam Steel, in place of where either Oskar Bäck or Colin Blackwell have been all year. Granlund is such a versatile and reliable player, but it’s good to see those sorts of players have their offensive explosions every now and then. Goodness knows they deserve ‘em.
Oh, back to that 11/7 lineup for a moment: in all honesty, Jamie Benn was moved down to the fourth line last night, even if he, Steel, and Dadonov skated third in line rushes. But because of the structure of the lineup, it wasn’t immediately apparent, and that’s probably a good thing, as it avoided any big storylines to that effect, for the moment.
I thought Benn actually had a good bounce-back game after starting the series slowly, and his diving poke-check to end the second period was a big example of how hard he was working all night. Even his penalty (which the Stars rose up to kill on his behalf) was a pretty understandable one, taken as he was standing up for his teammates. That’s the sort of thing that players smile about after the fact, given how well the game ended up going. It means something, too, to know your captain is willing to risk being the goat in order to keep other players from giving his mates too much guff.
As for the fourth line (so-called), Johnston and Robertson are just an absurd duo to have “floating around” in the lineup, waiting for Rantanen, Hintz, Duchene, or whomever to join them for the odd shift. I am a huge fan of coaches being more creative in how they approach lineup conundrums like the Stars’ depth. It’s the good kind of conundrum, but you cannot put everyone in the top six, and the Stars found a way to get Johnston big minutes even without having a permanent line. That’s a coaching staff unfazed by the unorthodox, and that’s a refreshing quality to see in the NHL.
Because of Benn’s penalty and the pulled goalie, Robertson, Duchene, Seguin, and Marchment didn’t have a shift in the final six minutes or so of the game. Hintz and Granlund played every other shift, and I believe Esa Lindell played about five of the final six minutes.
I am beyond being impressed by Esa Lindell. He is such a unique sort of player in this league, and a unique person in general. Dallas is such a fascinating team with its mixture of players and nationalities and play styles, but it’s immensely satisfying to see a big ol’ defenseman just shut things down for a while the way Lindell can.
There was some talk about the penalties last night, though if you were in Dallas, you probably didn’t hear as much about it. But in Canada and elsewhere, much was made of the non-call on Heiskanen for getting his stick in Connor’s hands on that aforementioned breakaway, and yeah. This absolutely should have been a penalty, for my money.
And when you consider that Heiskanen was also the one who set up Granlund for a power play goal later in the double-minor sequence, I think Winnipeg has a bone to pick here.
(That said, look at Heiskanen just casually beating everyone with his slick pass, here. You can already see how Hellebuyck hasn’t picked up the pass quite soon enough to get over for what will be a dagger of a one-timer for Granlund, for the hat trick.)
But the other penalty that was discussed was the double minor itself on Haydn Fleury, for high-sticking Roope Hintz.
The discussion (on SportsNet as well) revolved around the fact that you can’t get penalized for a high-sticking call if it’s a “follow-through” action, as evidenced in the first round in Ottawa/Toronto.
Murat Ates (whom you should read, always) had a thread last night on Twitter that went through some of the thought process, and I think it’s a helpful illustration of the differences between the two calls. We can’t embed Tweets in Substack for Reasons, so go to the thread if you want to see the pictures move. But here are two screenshots that do the trick for us:
As you can see, Thomas Chabot is trying to clear a puck, and it will end up sliding off his stick as he fires, with his stick hitting Mitch Marner up high after he shoots-empty handed.
I appreciated the reply later in the thread (which the extremely fair Murat also shared) that pointed out how different the two situations really were:
In Chabot’s case, he had the puck, and it slipped off his stick as he began to shoot it away. In Fleury’s case, he never had the puck to begin with. Hintz got his stick to it first, and Fleury’s attempt to whack it just glanced off Hintz’s stick and landed on his mouth.
Besides, the real issue here is pretty clear: Winnipeg’s power play hasn’t cashed in on the chances it’s gotten (even if it missed doing so by like one second last night). The narrative is shaping up to be pretty familiar, if you remember the Dallas/Edmonton series from last year: Winnipeg’s power play and goaltending simply haven’t been better than the other team’s.
Which is also to say, Dallas’s penalty kill has been good. Now, they saw two posts get hit last night, but Oettinger had some decent help while also coming up with at least two massive saves. The PK hasn’t been as stifling as it was against Colorado, but Winnipeg’s power play is looking much weaker through four games than it did after two, and that’s a big success for Alain Nasreddine’s crew.
As for Steve Spott’s crew, the power play is now up 4-1 on Winnipeg in the series. Put another way, Dallas has gone 4-for-11 on the job while Winnipeg is just 1-for-16. Playoff series are won and lost by such margins as these.
Still, a 3-1 series lead is not a series victory. Florida nearly coughed up a 3-0 lead last year in the Final, after all, and Dallas has nearly let a 3-1 lead get dicey more than once.
In fact, did you remember that the Joel Kiviranta Game 7 miracle only happened because Dallas let a 3-1 lead over Colorado get to that dire of a place? And don’t forget how the Cinco de Morrow game was one fewer Marty Turco save away from going to a seventh game back in San Jose after Dallas had gone up 3-1 in the series, either.
Going up 3-1 is huge, but the moment the trailing team wins a game, all the pressure swings back the other way. And given how good Winnipeg is, the very last thing Dallas would want to give them is momentum, which is a sportswritery way of saying “winning is better than losing.” Don’t say I never said anything profound.
Great analysis Robert!! I think not getting behind on the scoreboard to the Jets makes a huge difference as they play differently when ahead. Also, keeping the pressure on Hellebuyck is big as even last night he looks shaky.
It's much more fun to read about our Stars after a win...another great article, let's keep 'em coming!
Way to go Team