Game 42 AfterThoughts: A Comeback and a Step Back

It's about the little things

Song of the Game

If Wyatt Johnston scores on his breakaway in overtime, everything feels completely different.

And in this game, Johnston was exactly who you’d want to be getting that chance, too. Johnston scored two goals today, and he’d also gone 5/6 on the faceoff dot before losing a mortal battle of a final faceoff in overtime. Again, he’s exactly who you’d want to have in that spot, at that time.

But sometimes, it just doesn’t work out the way you hope it will. Sometimes, Johnston loses just his second faceoff of the game, and it happens in a fashion that causes Duchene to lose track of his man, and that’s the ballgame. Sometimes, one mistake gets punished, and another one doesn’t. Anyone who has kids has seen this lesson play out any number of times.

That’s not to say the wounds today weren’t a bit self-inflicted, for the Stars. While I’m sure some of you will have Opinions about the officiating, there’s no denying that the Stars didn’t have to take all the penalties they took. It was clear even early on that the Canadiens’ power play had some plans against the usually stout Stars PK, and they wore them down over the course of the game before scoring on what was effectively their fourth power play of the second period.

Sam Steel committed the foul that Montreal scored on, but Esa Lindell had a slash of his own that no one forced him to commit just prior, and Wyatt Johnston’s hooking penalty to end the Stars’ final power play was similarly unforced, as were Benn and Lyubushkin’s penalties.

Any one of these is something you can live with over 60 minutes. That’s hockey. Teams are going to make mistakes, and both sides most certainly did that today. Despite the fact that this was the Stars’ fifth consecutive non-win, it’s also worth noting that the point they earned put them back in second in the NHL, with a game in hand on Minnesota. It’s way too early to be watching the standings that closely anyway, given the massive cushion Dallas has. Colorado really has wrecked the grade curve this season.

As Gulutzan has been saying (and said again today), he’s less focused on results right now than about how the Stars are playing. And tonight, there was a big problem that had a cascading effect: Taking too many penalties.

“Probably the biggest thing is that second period,” Gulutzan said afterwards. “You take four penalties, right? So first of all, you lose a lot of guys momentum-wise when you take four. You give them an opportunity, they go up 3-2, and it’s a battle back in the third. We do have to clean up that, and we addressed it yesterday a little bit, and I think we’re gonna have to address it more.”

The Stars took five penalties and drew three in this one, which doesn’t help a trend that Gulutzan has been noticing a lot lately.

”I think in the last 12 games, not including this game, it’s 47 to 35 penalties, for and againt,” Gulutzan said. “We’re minus-12 there, and you gotta clean that up, especially when your specialty teams are experiencing a little bit of a lull, you gotta make sure you’re not taking five a night, like we did tonight.”

The other side of that coin is how the Stars’ power play has had to work a lot harder in recent games than they did when they were rolling over opposing PK’s earlier in the season. Montreal continued a recent trend of opposing teams overloading the strong side in the zone as well as attacking the Stars’ entries more aggressively, and it sapped a lot of energy from what has largely been a big weapon for Dallas—though Wyatt Johnston’s first goal did come just a second or two after a power play expired, so for all intents and purposes, that was one you can ascribe to the man-advantage.

Still, Gulutzan says they’re not settling for going 1-for-3, if you’re willing to count that goal.

“Entries [were] difficult for us tonight,” Gulutzan said. “Certainly entries is something that we’re gonna look at over the next day or two here, and then probably a little bit of specialty teams tomorrow.”

That practice will come before the Stars set out on their longest remaining road trip of the season, when they face two teams in the East before coming back to California for three, and finally wrap up against Utah.

They won’t play again in Dallas until January 18th, but Gulutzan isn’t too worried about that—if anything, he’s looking forward to it.

“It might be good for us to go on the road,” Gulutzan said. “We seem to thrive there a little bit. But you know, the league doesn’t get any easier. You go into Carolina and Washington, so it’ll be good for us. We do have to find our game, though. Five-on-five, our game is rounding a little bit offensively, but special teams, we gotta ramp up a little bit in discipline.”

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The game started off with a bang. Roope Hintz had a great setup bounce over his stick on the back door, and then Adam Erne did some hard work to set up Oskar Bäck in front of the net. The Hintz line came back out and kept the pressure on, but a Thomas Harley mishap led to a Thomas Harley heroic backcheck, followed by a Jake Oettinger save on Cole Caufield:

It promised to be a high-event game filled with chances aplenty, and that’s what we got. Duchene and the top line got more good looks at the other end, but once again, the Habs came back with a chance of their own, and this time it resulted in a goal after the puck deflected off three players: Benn, Danault, and finally the shinpad of Gallagher:

It was nearly two a few minutes later, when the Habs got a 3-on-1 after a Thomas Harley pinch to prevent a 3-on-2 resulted in a 3-on-1, but the Stars were let off the hook when Oliver Kapanen fired the shot high and wide.

That would cost the Canadiens, because Mavrik Bourque collected a rim-around that Montembeault probably ought to have gotten a piece of, and Bourque promptly deposited it off the goalie’s skate and into the net off a wraparound that didn’t seem like it should have been as dangerous as it turned out to be. Tie game.

Scoring goals against the Habs has to be a special thing for Bourque, one would imagine.

Justin Hryckowian nearly set up another one, as he fed Sam Steel above the goalmouth, but Steel was on his backhand, so the shot was able to be caught up with by Montembeault to preserve the tie.

Dallas got the first power play of the game with 3:42 left in the first, and you wondered how much pressure the unit was feeling after their recent dry spell, because 70 seconds and three failed entries later, they were still searching for life. Rantanen got one look on a one-timer through the slot, but the shot didn’t get through.

Mavrik Bourque got a great look on the backdoor off a feed from Duchene right after the penalty expired, but Montembeault prevented his fellow Québécois from doubling his goal total on the day with a nice pad stop. With 26 seconds left, Jamie Benn would take a tripping penalty to prevent another odd-man chance, and Montreal took most of their two minutes to the second period with the score tied at one apiece.

Dallas would take care of the rest of the penalty to start the period, but a Lyubushkin hooking call put them right back on the kill. Jake Oettinger would come up big on a couple of one-timers, however, and the Stars made it through the second kill as well.

After a couple of good looks for Mavrik Bourque and company off the rush, the Stars would get back onto the power play after Montreal tried to play an entire shift with six skaters and a goalie, which is still against the rules.

Wyatt Johnston would make them pay just after the penalty expired. Some dogged work by the mixture of PP1/PP2 skaters created the look that they wanted, and it was a familiar one indeed: Rantanen with a touch pass to Johnston, whose elite release finished the job.

The lead wouldn’t last long, as Demidov and Kapanen connected for an admittedly beautiful goal (on a pass that really oughtn’t to get through the lane it got through):

The coverage here was subpar, as Demidov spotted and exploited.

Sammy Blais was part of the Abbotsford Canucks team that eliminated Texas in the Calder Cup Playoffs last spring. In this game, he was part of an entertaining sequence where he got reversed hard by Rantanen early in his shift (see below) before he and Lindell got into a squabble at the end of it, which resulted in a Lindell slashing minor that Blais either sold or got in a very painful spot. But the Stars’ PK sans Esa got through the scare once again.

The Stars wouldn’t get through their third penalty of the period, however. Sam Steel slashed a stick out of the hands of Lane Hutson on a 2-on-2 rush with Rantanen, and that created an opportunity that the officials really had no choice but to call. And after some nice puck movement, the Canadiens set up Slafkovský for a goal right out of Wyatt Johnston’s playbook.

It was a painful reminder that even the Stars’ strong penalty kill could only hold things together for so long against a team with Montreal’s firepower.

Jason Robertson nearly got the goal right back at the buzzer off a Thomas Harley stretch pass with five seconds to go (during which Lane Hutson appeared to pull Robertson to the ice a bit with no call), but the goaltender kept things sealed sufficiently on Robertson’s chance in tight to preserve the Canadiens’ lead as the second period expired.

In the third, you could see Montreal playing a bit more cautiously, but that’s not to say Dallas wasn’t getting looks. Both Heiskanen and Rantanen had chances off cross-slot passes in the first five minutes, but Montembeault got them both to keep the 3-2 lead intact.

Jamie Benn tried to get things going for Dallas with a shoulder-fake in the neutral zone to generate some possession in the zone. For his troubles, he got the end of a stick in the ribs, and then hit his face on the ice, opening it up and drawing a double-minor call for high-sticking. But after review, the penalty was rescinded, as it’s clear that no stick hit Benn’s face.

Benn didn’t return, but the hope was that he was pulled as a precaution more than anything. Radek Faksa said that players on the bench initially didn’t realize how dangerous the play was.

“I thought it was just a high-stick, you know?” Faksa said. “Then I saw it on the replay that he hit his head pretty hard. It’s hard to see when your teammate is down and it doesn’t look good. Hopefully he’ll be back soon, and he will get better.”

As far as an official prognosis, Glen Gulutzan didn’t have an update after the game, only saying that Benn was still being evaluated at the moment, and the team would have an update on Benn’s status at practice the following morning.

As for the game, Hintz got a great look shortly afterward that he fired just over the net, and Montreal would get a 3-on-2 that became a 2-on-1, which didn’t turn into a goal—during which one of the referee’s microphones sounded like it turned on for a half-second, oddly enough. (Day games, I tell you what.)

The Stars’ best shift of the period came at the midway point of the third, when some persistent Mavrik Bourque work kept the puck in despite multiple Montreal clearance attempts, and Rantanen, Robertson, and Steel went to work for a good bit, generating one Grade-A stop on Steel and a couple of just-abouts. Montreal survived the sequence, but they had to ice the puck to do it.

And the Stars finally got the goal they’d been pushing for off the faceoff, when Heiskanen took the puck down low and fed it to the crease. It hit a skate but bounced right to Johnston on the back door, and he did not miss his chance for a second goal on the day, tying things up at 3 goals each.

Dallas seized on the momentum from that goal, and they forced a couple of heroic saves from Montembeault right afterward. Duchene got a backhand chance with traffic from in tight, and Mikko Rantanen turned the corner and went in alone for what the crowd thought was surely the go-ahead goal, only for the puck to sail just wide as Rantanen got hooked, and Dallas had to settle for a power play with 5:11 to go, and all the momentum they could ask for.

Once again, however, the Montreal PK made life tough, tying up the puck along the and the first half of the power play didn’t result in anything of consequence. And then, just as Dallas appeared to be getting interior, a Wyatt Johnston hook that was clear even in a net-front scramble ended the second half of the power play.

Dallas didn’t allow anything on the minute-plus of Montreal’s power play, and Johnston exited the box with the final two minutes of regulation begging for some heroics, but both teams settled for the point and punted to overtime.

Both goalies made a save on a wrister early, but Wyatt Johnston got a breakaway off a Heiskanen send-in that seemed destined to bring the hats sailing onto the ice. But Montembeault spoiled the party, and after Wyatt Johnston lost a faceoff battle, Matt Duchene mixed up his coverage, and Lane Hutson took advantage of the highway and walked downhill before ripping a shot just underneath Oettinger’s glove for the winner.

Gulutzan called it a mistake after the game, and I’m sure Duchene would admit the same. Perhaps he’s expecting Johnston to get around his man (and to be fair, Johnston absorbs a bit of a one-minute interference here), but you simply don’t have enough of a margin for error in overtime to let this happen, and the Stars paid for it. But again, if Johnston scores on his own breakaway just before this, everyone is singing a drastically different tune.

Call it a five-game losing streak, a winless streak, or just a good old-fashioned skid. Any way you slice it, it was a disappointing end to what’s been a bit of an uneven stretch for the second-place team in the National Hockey League. But the good news is, there’s 40 more chances to right the ship before the stakes increase.

Lineups

Dallas lined up like this:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Lyubushkin-Petrovic

Oettinger in goal

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Montréal lined up like that:

Caufield-Suzuki-Texier
Slafkovsky-Kapanen-Demidov
Bolduc-Danault-Gallagher
Blais-Veleno-Beck

Matheson-Dobson
Hutson-Carrier
Struble-Xhekaj

Montembeault

After-AfterThoughts

• If you’ve been following any of the flap about public xG models this year, I think this thread by CJ Turturo is a good summary of what’s going on.

• Gulutzan said this morning that he actually prefers early games like today’s to evening games. This is different from what Jason Robertson said yesterday, when he mentioned that he prefers the full game-day routine at home, but that he likes earlier games on the road. His coach has a different preference, though.

  • “There’s less buildup all day. They just come to the rink and play. I think that’s how they all want to do it,” Gulutzan said. “I think a lot of guys like being able to go for dinner after these games.”

• The Dallas Cowboys played a meaningless and ugly football game today at the end of a very disappointing season. There’s no point decrying how much attention a game like that still soaks up in the Metroplex, but on a day like today, I do wish things were different. The Stars deserve to be the focal point of DFW sports right now, and even though it ended in a loss, that third period was a dynamite sports-ing experience. Alas, we will probably have to wait until the playoffs for this team to draw all the eyeballs they deserve.

• A couple of lineup oddities that jumped out at me today:

  • The Duchene-Johnston-Rantanen trio should work well, on paper. You’ve got obvious chemistry with the Johnston-Rantanen duo, and Duchene is so smart and skilled that you’d expect him to be able to fit in naturally with those two. But going into today’s game, it hasn’t worked out that way.

    • Per Natural Stat Trick, in the 63 minutes at 5v5 those three had played together, their 35% expected goals marker was reflected in their -2 plus/mins. They had also been outchanced 46-26 in NST’s Scoring Chances metric.

    • Not sure if anyone’s reported this yet, but the Stars might need to trade for another top-six winger.

  • Robertson and Hintz, meanwhile, have gotten great results with multiple right-wing partners. That duo excelled with Tyler Seguin, and their underlying numbers have been similarly strong with Bourque (though results haven’t matched it). If the Stars can’t find another left-winger to play with Johnston/Rantanen, I wonder if we could see Robertson moved up there in the playoffs, with Hintz being asked to carry a second line. That’s a ways away, of course.

  • How many NHL teams have three right-shot defensemen and three left-shot defensemen, only to choose to put two of the righties and two of the lefties together on imbalanced pairings? Obviously it makes sense why Dallas is doing so after the outsize focus on balanced pairings last year didn’t bring the hoped results.

• In a vacuum, I would absolutely bring Lane Hutson to the Olympics. He’s just that dynamic, every time he has the puck. (I wrote this before he scored the overtime goal, for the record.)

• Mavrik Bourque was perhaps the Stars’ most noticeable forward, even outside of his early goal. He had “pop,” as Gulutzan likes to say, and the Stars coach elaborated on Bourque’s performance tonight:

  • “I thought he was real good,” Gulutzan said. “I was actually trying to get him out there in 3-on-3 in overtime there. I thought he earned that. I thought he had good jump. He had good jump when he played in Montreal, too, so you know, a special game for him. But I’ve liked his game as of late, and I thought he was effective tonight.”

• Mikko Rantanen is sometimes called “Moose.” There are reasons for this, as Sammy Blais found out:

• At even-strength, the Stars were the better team, after seizing momentum in the third period. All things considered, you’d probably expect them to have gotten more than one goal from the fierce push they mounted over the course of the final period, but scoring even one goal on that version of Sam Montembeault felt like a small victory.

  

• I know that any time an opposing goaltender has a good game, we’re all supposed to immediately point the finger at Oettinger (or DeSmith). But honestly, I have a hard time doing that in this one. The first goal came off a triple deflection, the third came off a power play that finally broke the PK into its disparate elements, and the fourth came off a 1v1 chance against Lane Hutson, who is as dangerous as any defenseman in the NHL this year. Sometimes, great players are going to score goals.

• As for the Stars’ second goal, this pass should never get through this spot, but when the slot is as undefended as it was, that’s a great scoring chance. The long-distance pass became a one-timer that was put perfectly back inside the far post, and all you can really do as Oettinger there is stay big and push across, which he did. There’s a reason this chance is such a high-danger one.

  

  Maybe that makes me a goalie apologist today, but I just think this game was more about what the Stars’ offense didn’t do (and about giving up five power plays) than about what the goaltender did do. I’m open to rebuttals, though. I argue every Saturday at 4:30am, so I’ll see you during office hours.

• Finally, I wanted to shout out Stars Thoughts reader Matt, who made the trek all the way from Switzerland to watch today’s game. Getting to meet any of y’all is always a delight, even if it’s just saying hello for a minute or two during intermission. The way sports can connect us is what makes them worth the time and energy we put into them, no matter who wins or loses. Anyway, all that to say that Matt is now officially on the Stars Thoughts Honor Roll. No pressure on the rest of you (but also, lots of pressure).