Game 45 AfterThoughts: Indefensible and Undefendable

It's not every day you give up four power play goals

SotG

You don’t have to like all of the penalty calls in this game, but you’d be foolish to blame the calls themselves for what transpired in a uniquely embarrassing 5-4 overtime loss in San Jose.

“We didn’t skate enough against a skating team,” is how Gulutzan described things. And while the days of bag skates are pretty much gone, you have to think that’s a pretty clear message (which he has doubtless already delivered to the team itself).

Day games are always a bit kooky, and this one was no exception. The only thing is, it was kooky in a way that Dallas has largely avoided this season. The penalty kill got torched for four goals, and Dallas blew two separate two-goal leads en route to a loss that really shouldn’t have transpired. The word “unacceptable” can be misused a lot, but no coach in the world is going to accept when the players did (and didn’t do) in a game like this one.

Surely Glen Gulutzan wanted to ride the wave from the Washington performance as long as the team possibly could. He stuck with the same goalie and mostly the same lineup, and initially, the team rewarded him, jumping out to a 2-0 lead. But the whole thing about today was that the Stars punished San Jose’s bottom-six forwards and bottom defense pairings while loading up the top-six forwards on the power play, where even a shaky young Sharks team was more than happy to capitalize on so many kicks at the can.

I’m writing this during a family trip, so video is a bit scarce today. You don’t need it or want it, though. This game could’ve ended in a million different ways, but as happened a bit too often before the victory in Washington, the Stars pulled the slot machine lever and watched three straight pictures of someone stepping on a rake click into place. That isn’t a winning formula in a casino or a hockey game, it turns out.

On the one hand, the message is easy: don’t take eleventy-billion penalties. On the other hand, the message is tricky: a fair few of the calls were made because Dallas was making either desperation plays or reaching fouls, which you only do when you 1) Don’t have the puck to begin with, or 2) Lost the puck and are trying to get it right back.

Mikko Rantanen brought a concentrated dose of the Good and the Bad in this one, so it’s silly to fixate on him just because he took the final penalty. What you really can’t have is the volume, but nevertheless, Rantanen’s foul was a result of trying to take a shortcut to victory, rather than running down a player with effort. Coaches tend to prefer effort, I have found.

Gulutzan indeed pointed out that some of the penalties were from players not moving their legs, and he’s right. But he also pointed out that they couldn’t get a kill. Lack of discipline when the cleanup crew calls in absent is a pretty rough combination. Unfortunately, nobody could pick up every one of the many balls the Stars dropped today.

The penalty kill has some homework now, just as the power play did earlier. The good news is that both units are starting from a very good place, so they can treat this mostly as a lesson, not a latent flaw that can be exploited by any given opponent. Today was a goofy result from a nonsense game, and you have to show you can move past it by doing better in the next game.

That is, quite literally, all you can do to prove that you’re as good as the Stars keep insisting that they are. It would be nice to feel like they (and we) could take that for granted more often, though.

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As has been the case for most of this year, the Hintz line was the dangerous one early for Dallas, testing Nedeljkovic a couple of times, though not with a truly top-tier chance. Sometimes you don’t have to generate those chances, however, because the other team just gives them to you. That’s what Vincent Iorio did for Justin Hryckowian, losing the handle on a puck at the blue line, allowing Hryckowian to pick it up and go on a 100-foot breakaway that he punctuated with a high-glove goal that Nedeljkovic looked pretty helpless on.

Colin Blackwell took an interference penalty right after that, but the Stars continued to look like the better team, and it was killed off with some decent shorthanded looks, as well as some more loose puck play from San Jose.

Blackwell nearly struck back for a second goal after getting sent in alone by Duchene (off a nice transition play from Kyle Capobianco), but Blackwell at full speed couldn’t quite tuck it around Nedelkovic’s pad.

That save was more than equaled by DeSmith, who pulled off a jaw-dropping bit of heroism on igor Chernyshov after a missed D-to-D pass between Lyubushkin and Harley. Celebrini made a perfect pass, but DeSmith somehow got over to keep the puck out on what looked like a sure-fire goal.

Speaking of sure-fire goals, that’s pretty much what you call the puck on Jason Robertson’s stick after a defenseman gets tangled up with his goaltender, as happened on a delayed penalty. I think Robertson’s eyes probably bulged like a cartoon wolf when he saw the puck in this moment:

The Hintz line (with Rantanen taking Bourque’s spot on a late-period shift) drew a delayed hooking call after some puck protection from Robertson, and after Rantanen nearly finished a back-post chance that Nedeljkovic stopped, Robertson picked up the loose puck and capitalized on a sharp angle to fill a gaping net with a minute to go.

The period ended with the Stars up 2-0, and it was a lead fully deserved.

After Rantanen drew a high-sticking penalty early in the second period, the Stars got their first power play with which to work. The top unit got a couple of good looks, but Hintz couldn’t quite finish a nice one-timer setup on the best chance, and the rest of the two minutes fizzled out.

San Jose drew their own power play with their own superstar, as Macklin Celebrini got a tripping call out of a missed Esa Lindell stick check, putting the Dallas PK to work without its most important skater. And Alexander Wennberg would take advantage of that fact, as Celebrini saucered a pass from the backhand after the Stars couldn’t quite get the puck cleared out, and Wennberg one-timed it past DeSmith’s far side to draw the Sharks within one.

The Stars didn’t make their life any easier off the ensuing faceoff, as Adam Erne and presumed yacht aficionado Barclay Goodrow got into a spat that finished with Erne getting a very visible piece of him to draw the only discipline. The Stars got through the penalty this time, however, though a shaky DeSmith rebound right at the end of it gave Dallas a scare.

Justin Hryckowian was put up with Johnston and Rantanen for a couple of shifts in the second period. It appeared to be temporary, as Sam Steel had just killed a penalty, but Hryckowian didn’t look out of place. Gulutzan could have gone with Duchene in that spot as he’s done in the past, but I wonder if that wasn’t a soft trial of Hryckowian playing up the lineup. Certainly today you would say he earned such a look.

Colin Blackwell then took his second penalty of the day on a play where he held the puck too long, lost it, and desperately dove to reclaim it, only to bring his man down, putting San Jose on its fourth power play of the day, barely halfway into the contest.

It wasn’t exactly the discipline Gulutzan has been preaching as of late, and they would suffer for the lack of it. After killing 1:56 of the chance, Dallas saw Chernyshov bull his way down the wing and feed Jeff Skinner (whom a tired Lyubushkin wasn’t able to tie up) resulting in a slam-dunk goal to tie the game at 2-2.

You can see Harley’s step-up early to try to hold the blue line, but without help underneath from Steel, that play just ended up creating a hole in the slot, and that’s what the Sharks were able to exploit.

It was a downer of a way to handle a 2-0 lead, but the Stars got a big play late to paper over some of the issues. Mavrik Bourque got a puck out of the zone after some heavy San Jose pressure late, and that puck found Kyle Capobianco, who grabbed it and rushed out on a 2-on-1 with Roope Hintz.

I mean, look at this player:

Any defenseman in the world would probably expect the depth defenseman to pass to Hintz there, and Capobianco recognized that reality, shooting the puck with a good bit of space and beating Nedeljkovic far side to restore the Stars’ lead with a palate-cleansing rush goal.

It wasn’t a bar-down shot, but it was sneaky and sharp enough to befuddle the blocker of the goalie, and that’s all you have to do. Really cool moment for Capobianco.

After a flurry around DeSmith right after that nearly tied things back up, Sam Steel got a puck turned over at the other end of the ice, and Timothy Liljegren took a tripped penalty as the horn sounded, meaning Dallas would start the third period with a chance to restore their original two-goal lead on fresh ice.

After two full minutes of possession by the top unit, Dallas had nothing but a shorter third period to show for their efforts. It’s fascinating to see the power play right now adjusting to the different PK tactics of other teams. Scoring on a delayed call is some consolation in this game, but you’d like to see the man-advantage demonstrate itself fully capable of dealing with opposing plans by the time the playoffs roll around. Anyway, it’s January.

DeSmith got just enough of a dangerous shot to deflect it just wide shortly after that, and the third period rounded into form as a tense affair.

But Mikko Rantanen was made for tense times, and he was a big factor in this game, with a couple of stick plays that could have been called penalties in another time and place. (Which, unfortunately, would end up being “in overtime, in the same place.”)

Before that, however, what Josh Bogorad called a “Moose Rush” took place eight minutes into the third, when Rantanen started an offensive-zone shift with a pretty decent cross check on Zack Ostapchuk, and finished it with a mid-air whack of a rebound to send the puck off Nedeljkovic and into the net to make it 4-2.

A good antagonist has to provoke the opposition every now and then, and that’s what Rantanen does, when he’s at his best.

As for San Jose, the only goals they’d scored to that point had come on the power play, and that remained true even after a pretty questionable hooking call on Lyubushkin to give them their fifth chance of the game. And once again, the Sharks would make Dallas pay, as Tyler Toffoli pulled off a move he has done on a few different teams over the years, catching a puck with time and space on the doorstep before pulling a backhand up and over DeSmith’s outstretched pads to make it 4-3 with time left.

This is who the Sharks are, these days. They’ll give up plenty, but they can keep things nervy even when you think you’ve pulled away. This was exemplified when the Sharks got their first even-strength goal of the game after Adam Gaudette lost his coverage at the net and easily tipped in a nice pass from Sam Dickinson at the back door.

Losing a pair of two-goal leads is no coach’s dream, and losing the second in a five-minute span of the final period especially so. After the defensive clinic Dallas displayed against Washington, there was every reason for them to step up in this one.

Instead, we got a bonkers third period that got even more banana sandwich in the final minute, when one-on-one chances at both ends of the ice looked for all the world like game-winners, only for DeSmith to make one save and for Johnston to backhand his chance over the crossbar. Overtime could only hope to match the level of drama regulation brought in its final moments.

Instead, overtime brought the sixth Dallas penalty when Rantanen was called for using both his stick hand and free hand to wrench a puck free in the neutral zone, and the fact that the play created an immediate 2-on-1 for Dallas made a penalty call inevitable.

After a couple of outstanding saves and blocks on the kill, Tyler Toffoli finally ended it with a one-timer from in close that you knew was going in before he fired it. Sometimes, you can feel a game slipping away before it actually does, and that was this game tonight.

The Sharks ended with four power play goals and five in total. Dallas got a point, but what they didn’t get out of this game made it sting a whole bunch.

Lineups

Dallas started thus:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lyubushkin
Capobianco-Lundkvist

DeSmith

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San Jose rolled this:

Eklund-Celebrini-Chernyshov
Regenda-Wennberg-Toffoli
Skinner-Gaudette-Graf
Goodrow-Ostapchuk-Reaves

Orlov-Liljegren
Ferraro-Iorio
Dickinson-Leddy

Nedeljkovic in goal

After-AfterThoughts

• The big story was starting Casey DeSmith, although I’m sure part of the rationale was that DeSmith played very well in his prior game, all but earning a shutout in a skid-snapping victory in Washington. Still, any time Oettinger doesn’t start for multiple games in a row, it’s a story. Glen Gulutzan clearly decided that this was the way to go, regardless of what storylines it might create. As always, coaches live and die by bold decisions.

  • Of course, there could be other things we don’t know. Pure speculation here, but if there is some soreness or something like that for Oettinger, then it makes complete sense to rest him again before playing in the back-to-back in Southern California. It’s a long season, so there’s no reason to get locked into an ego-based mindset in a packed January schedule.

• Alex Petrovic sitting two games in a row is also noteworthy, given how much he’s been relied on this year. On the one hand, you could say Gulutzan is simply rolling the same lineup after a win, but bringing out Nathan Bastian for Adam Erne kind of contradicts that. I really do think they might be simply searching for better answers in terms of blueline chemistry right now.

  • To that end, Kyle Capobianco’s goal (and his play in general today) was a strong argument not to make any major changes to the blue line right now. But of course, the back to back next week may necessitate them.

• The Victory+ broadcast mentioned that Dallas has gone 43-10-8 against the Pacific Division in recent years. That is preposterous. They have now gone 43-10-9.

• I hadn’t heard this until Josh mentioned it on the broadcast, but apparently Justin Hryckowian suffered a couple of cracked teeth and needed stitches after getting hit with the follow-through on Ovechkin's shot the other night. Ouch.

• Macklin Celebrini is a delight to watch. Ilya Lyubushkin burying him at the net front was equally enjoyable. There is a bit of a “Early McDavid Days in Edmonton” feel to this Sharks team right now.

• I believe the Stars are now 1-6 in games that end in overtime this season. Not ideal, and also quite surprising, given the skill on their roster.