Game 44 AfterThoughts: Defense and Discipline

Pretty much just what the hockey doctor ordered

SotG

After the Stars’ loss in Carolina last night, Glen Gulutzan specifically mentioned how concerning the team’s play was, given how much they had talked beforehand about the importance of tightening up certain aspects of their game—with defensive play and penalty discipline as two big priorities.

Dallas may not have followed through on their words last night, but Wednesday was everything a coach (and fan) could have asked for, as the Stars made Washington look largely feckless and entirely harmless, right up until an Alex Ovechkin garbage time goal that felt hard for anyone but Casey DeSmith to begrudge the greatest goal-scorer in league history.

Expected goals, shots, or scoring chances: Take your pick, and Dallas owned it, with the second period being one of the loudest and best defensive statements Dallas has made all season. If you’re a hockey coach, this game is your template and proof of concept, the gold standard for what this team can do when it keeps its priorities in line.

“We got back to our identity here a little bit,” Gulutzan said after the game. “It’s taken us a while, since after Christmas, to find our footing and who we are.”

How fitting, then, that in a game where Dallas was trying to remember their identity, Radek Faksa and Sam Steel were the players who staked the Stars to a 2-0 lead that ended up being all they would need.

Steel has gotten flak from fans at times this year for playing in the top six and not quite finishing at a top-six rate. But in this one, he tallied a goal and a primary assist on that same top line, and I have to imagine that felt good for a player who has worn the “first-round draft pick” label like an albatross around the neck at times, despite being an eminently valuable NHL player. Someone had to score for Dallas’s defensive effort to feel as satisfying as this one did, and Steel was as good a candidate as anyone to have his number called, finishing a great Thomas Harley setup at a crucial point in the game.

Radek Faksa, well, you know what it means to see him chip in on offense. His goal was less about finishing a great chance, and much more about doing the right thing every time, and being ready for the 1% of the time that a goaltender lays an egg. Faksa doesn’t score that goal if he’s not committed to every part of that play on the PK, and that goal was an especially deflating one for Washington, who otherwise looked like a team ready to grab the lead off the first power play of the game. Whoopsadoodle.

Wyatt Johnston and Roope Hintz tallied insurance goals, and they deserved them entirely. But they will both score plenty more goals this year, and these won’t be the ones you think of after the season is all wrapped up. It’s a luxury to have players like this, where they have enough goals for even relatively important ones to blend into the background.

Another facet of the Stars’ defensive work in this game wasn’t just their puck possession, but their defense against opposing passes. Washington didn’t get away with hardly any Clever Dan puck movement, and Dallas may have been getting in the Caps’ heads as the game went on. That only happens when you’re where you’re supposed to be, anticipating the most dangerous plays and snuffing them out.

The discipline piece was also crucial, as Dallas only committed two minor penalties while drawing two themselves. (And you could make an argument that Dallas deserved another call or two.) Some of that is a chicken-or-the-egg thing, as having more puck possession engenders less reaching, and consequently, fewer penalties. All up, you have to think the Stars will feel good about how they limited the Capitals’ chances in all situations, as well as limiting the frequency of power play situations with which to allow chances to begin with.

Other players showed out in this one, too. Thomas Harley made a big play to open the scoring, and Roope Hintz put twelve pucks on goal. Jason Robertson hammered a slapshot off the post, and Mikko Rantanen probably could have had another three assists, if not for Logan Thompson. Esa Lindell was back to his solid defensive self all over the place, too.

Miro Heiskanen, by the way, played 28 minutes in this one. That’s not an ideal way to go about a regulation contest in January, but hey, the Stars have two days off now. If snapping this skid means asking Heiskanen (and Lindell) to play every other shift in the third period, then who can blame a coach for doing that? And that is exactly what Heiskanen did, playing 10:05 of the third period, as you can see in this shift chart:

HockeyViz - Third period shift chart for Dallas defensemen.

If you want a game to build on, this game felt like that, but the Stars aren’t in a greedy mood at the moment. This game was far more about proving that their first-half record wasn’t an aberration, but their standard. And if you’ve been worried about the process even behind a lot of their wins this season, this game also showed that the Stars are perfectly capable of being a dominant, puck possession team, too.

Now they just have to do it again, and again, and then a few more times after that. California is a nice place to do that sort of thing, I hear.

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After an early penalty to Ilya Lyubushkin, you could have been forgiven for wondering if Dallas was entering “here we go again” territory.

But then they got a gift when Logan Thompson fumbled and lost track of a Radek Faksa shot from distance, and the big center pounced on a loose puck and buried it to give Dallas a shorthanded goal and a 1-0 lead.

Faksa actually fanned a bit on the shot, but he didn’t need to get much on it to begin with. Hey, they all look like line drives in the scorebook, even if the opposing pitcher happens to put one on a tee for you. Faksa still has to stay engaged after shooting this one, and he was able to edge into the front of the net as a result of doing so.

Another gift came before the end of the remaining power play time, when Connor McMichael took an unsportsmanlike penalty for Being A Handful during a faceoff. So technically, Dallas didn’t capitalize on their power play, but if you can come out of the first two penalties of the game on top of the special teams battle, everyone will be okay with that.

That’s not to say the first ten minutes of the game were smooth for Dallas, though. Casey DeSmith had a bit of cleanup duty to do here and there, including almost immediately after an errant pass of his own, but Dallas managed to keep the roof from leaking in the first period, and that counts as a fantastic road period for Dallas right now.

Ilya Lyubushkin got into it with Brandon Duhaime early in the second period, and the pair got matching minors. Lyubushkin’s visor also cut into his nose during the shoving match, sending him down the tunnel for repairs.

The two would drop the gloves ten minutes later in a fight that looked to be driven by a fair amount of personal animus from Lyubushkin, and that would necessitate further repairs to the face for him. This was not a Quiet Lyubushkin Game (QLG).

It also wasn’t a Quiet Thomas Harley game, as he activated during the second 4-on-4 stretch in as many periods and carved down below the circles, feeding Sam Steel on the back door to put Dallas up 2-0.

Steel had to work hard to fight off a stick check, so it was good to see him get rewarded for the hard work to set up at the net front there. The TNT broadcast was castigating Thompson for not cutting off the pass, but I also can’t really blame a goaltender for not giving an open Thomas Harley daylight at the near post, if they can help it.

For once, it was the other team starting to get frustrated for not creating more offensive chances. Dallas really did make good on Gulutzan’s words about improving their defensive work, and the frustration for Washington seemed to mount as the game crept closer to the second intermission. The Hintz line got a breakaway as a result of a bit of that, I think, as Washington got caught after a lost puck in the neutral zone during a change, and Hintz was sent in alone after the puck was turned over. Unfortunately, Hintz’s five-hole attempt was stopped by Thompson’s pad, so the Caps didn’t pay for it.

Mikko Rantanen was nailed for a slashing penalty (whether or not he ought to have been) with four minutes to go in the second period, and it could’ve given the Capitals life out of a game that was largely devoid of it to that point. But Dallas came up with a dominant kill, and they took a 2-0 lead to the second intermission after holding Washington to nothing but the below shot attempts in the middle frame (including the Caps’ power play):

HockeyViz - Second period shots

Lundkvist and Capobianco combined for a really slick give-and-go three minutes into the period, and even though it didn’t end up in the net, that play and the subsequent pressure on the shift made it feel like the Stars were right on the cusp of getting a backbreaking third goal.

That feeling only intensified when Nic Dowd hooked Robertson to put Dallas on their second power play (and first full one) of the night. Wyatt Johnston nearly scored immediately off a great send-along feed from Rantanen to the slot, and then Thompson came up huge not once, but twice on Roope Hintz in the highest of danger areas. If you were to show the average hockey fan Faksa’s goal and then Thompson’s saves on that power play, I imagine the fan would not believe it was the same goaltender in both.

Jason Robertson also rang the post behind Thompson with a thunderous slapshot with nine minutes to go (after a nice bit of work from Hintz to keep the puck in the zone). Thompson was down and out for much of the ensuing scramble, but the Stars couldn’t fill the gaping net.

Wyatt Johnston would finally manage to do so after some great work on the forecheck by Sam Steel (who also capitalized on a pretty rough pass by Anthony Beauvillier).

It looked every bit like the nail in the coffin, as the Stars play finally demonstrated all the principles players and coach had been preaching over the last two weeks, and it led to a result they badly needed.

Washington pulled Thompson for an offensive-zone faceoff with under three minutes to go, and Alex Ovechkin capitalized on a trademark shot and a (until his next one) NHL-record goal to make it 3-1. If you have to lose a shutout in garbage time, I suppose there are worse players to surrender it to. (Technically, I suppose every other goal-scorer in NHL history would count as a worse player.)

The Stars had a 2-on-1 with the empty net in the final minute, but Wyatt Johnston tried to do Justin “Mr. Contract” Hryckowian a solid and fed it over to him—only for Hryckowian to lose the handle. And admit it: Some tiny part of your hockey-traumatized brain felt like that was a horrible omen, some Patrik Štefanesque nonsense.

But no. Roope Hintz nailed the empty net from distance off the next faceoff with his 12th shot on goal—really—and the Stars’ 4-1 victory ended without any further drama. Sometimes, things just wind up going the way they ought to go.

Lineups

Dallas did this in the first period:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lyubushkin
Capobianco-Lundkvist

DeSmith

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Washington did this:

Ovechkin-Strome-Beauvillier
McMichael-Sourdif-Leonard
Duhaime-Dowd-Frank
Milano-Lapierre-Leason

Fehervary-Carlson
Chychrun-Roy
Sandin-McIlrath

Thompson

After-AfterThoughts

• In case you missed it, the Stars signed Justin Hryckowian to a two-year, one-way contract extension earlier today. It comes with a $950K cap hit, and it gives them just that little bit more cost certainty for next year. Good deal for player and team alike.

• The NHL announced today that Utah and Colorado will face off in next year’s Winter Classic. I would imagine that takes Colorado (and Utah) out of the running as a potential opponent for Dallas in the Stadium Series. Minnesota seems like one potentially fun opponent, so long as the Wild don’t beg out of facing Dallas outdoors for a second time.

• Silly suggestion: Was this game just a “turn up the nose” response to K.K.’s plea for more puck possesion by Dallas earlier today? You can’t prove it’s not that. (Other than by asking them, I mean. And who’s gonna do that? Certainly not I.)

• I wonder if the message to Kyle Capobianco coming into the lineup tonight was to lean into his skill, of which he has a fair amount. He tried a couple of skilled plays, and he nearly scored/created a goal in the first period after using a couple of dekes to get into the low slot and test Thompson. It was a good sign from a defenseman who hasn’t been playing as much in recent weeks. He deserves another look, I think, but I’d imagine Gulutzan will be careful about how long Alex Petrovic sits out.

• The TNT broadcast gave Lyubushkin some grief for taking the fight with Duhaime, but I don’t have a problem with it, personally. Having the confidence to drop the gloves to stand up for yourself there (so long as you don’t give up a power play while doing so) is part of how great teams go about their business. Don’t get pushed around.

• As far as D pairings in general, Thomas Harley and Nils Lundkvist did get mixed and matched a little bit, as Gulutzan suggested this morning that some players might. Colin Blackwell was moved up to Benn’s spot on the Duchene/Hryckowian line, while Harley-Lyubushkin was reunited for the majority of the game. I think those changes were positive ones tonight.

• Blackwell also seemed to take to his elevated role with gusto, creating a couple of quality scoring chances in the second period with that sneaky level of speed and skill he has. He reminds me a bit of Antoine Roussel at times, in the way that he can occasionally be far more dangerous in a checking-line role than opposing teams might expect. In many other ways, of course, he is nothing like Antoine Roussel, and that’s probably for the best.

• Ryan Leonard got sneaky with a fake dump-in that was actually a shot on goal midway through the second period. But Casey DeSmith did what he has done so often this year, and dealt with the unexpected chaos without allowing anything.

• Matt Duchene recorded his 900th point on Sam Steel’s goal in the second period. It’s been a wild season for Duchene, but I’m sure the Stars would happily trade a bit less early-season production for more late-season and playoff scoring. Certainly his career would suggest that Duchene is more than capable of doing so.

• Sam Steel’s goal tied him for 5th on the team with Seguin, Benn, Heiskanen, and Mavrik Bourque. This has been A Stat About Hockey.

• Penalties didn’t flow very easily tonight on either side, other than when Lyubushkin and Duhaime were mixing it up. Matt Roy laid a huge hit on Matt Duchene behind the net in the third period that the TNT broadcast called out a pretty blatant interference, and I can’t say I disagreed with their analysis.

• Casey DeSmith deserved a shutout in this one, but I’d imagine that the overall relief in the room of ending the six-game skid completely supersedes any lingering disappointment about the final path to victory in this one. DeSmith looked like a goalie on a mission tonight, but his job might have been as easy as it’s been in any game all year. So often, playing the second half of a back-to-back on the road means hard work for a goaltender, but this felt like a game where the entire lineup was as motivated to clean up the defensive details as we’ve seen them. You can win a lot of games doing this—whether they’re shutouts or not.