Game 5 AfterThoughts: Jake Oettinger for Much Longer, Power Play Patience Growing Much Shorter
With 4:05 to go in Washington, The Stars trailed by a goal. Miro Heiskanen attempted to move the puck out of his own zone when Connor McMichael’s stick brought him to the ice. The referee’s hand hesitated then begrudgingly went up, sending Dallas to what could have been a game-saving power play. They were able to get set up, and they sent multiple pucks to the net. But their best chance in the game’s dying moments came not during the man-advantage, but after the end of the power play, when Roope Hintz found himself in the slot with time to rip a puck at the net. It rang solidly off the post, and the Stars wouldn’t come that close again.
The Dallas Stars have officially lost a game this year. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.
There are a few things to talk about, including the reality that the Capitals were the better team on Thursday. But from a Stars perspective, you might find yourself reflecting that, despite earning another four power plays on Thursday, the Stars’ best chance at special teams came shorthanded, from Colin Blackwell, as you can see here:
To Blackwell’s great credit, he absolutely deconstructed Charlie Lindgren after some hard work by Oskar Bäck sent him in on a shorthanded breakaway, and the first goal of the game came from one of the best aspects of this Dallas team so far: its penalty kill.
In fact, let’s talk about the penalty kill for a moment, because a 4-1-0 start still deserve some proper appreciation, even if the loss lives freshest in your memory. The Stars are now 18-for-19 on the kill, and that is fantastic! They’re allowing the third-fewest high-danger chances per game on the kill, and they’re getting the second-best save percentage when shorthanded. Casey DeSmith was good tonight, once again, and you can’t help but feel that, despite the Stars’ starting the year a bit slowly against Nashville and New York, a merely functional power play could really be combining with the PK to get them a sizable lead.
Because yes, there is a whole other department dedicated to scoring goals on specials teams, and that’s the one some folks are annoyed at right now. And perhaps it will fix itself before long. Remember, the Stars began last year 4-for-37 on the job before rounding into form and finishing top-ten in the NHL, so it’s not as though they haven’t dealt with a slow start before.
But when so many other parts of the team appear to be champing at the bit to pace the Central Division, it’s tough when you have a critical moment in the game like a late power play, only to see your best offensive players come up empty for the fourth straight game. As you can see from above, the Stars weren’t generating enough chances, so it’s not as though Lindgren robbed them multiple times. Mackenzie Blackwood was very good on Tuesday, but Lindgren didn’t quite need to be excellent. He was merely good enough, and the Stars never forced his hand. All in all, a team a good as Dallas probably needs to find a way to grab at least a point out of a game like this one, but perhaps the absence of Tyler Seguin is starting to wear on their collective psyches.
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On the other side of things, two screened shots from the point equaled two goals for Washington. Dallas tried much the same thing at times, but they didn’t get the puck luck (if you want to call it that) the Capitals did. They also didn’t generate nearly as many chances as the Capitals to begin with, so maybe it’s not a case of being unlucky so much as failing to make their own. The top line actually looked pretty good in this one, and you would’ve loved to see Hintz complement Robertson’s rebound goal with a game-saver of his own when he rang the pipe late in the third period. Horseshoes and hand grenades, though.
But then, even Pete DeBoer said after the San Jose game that the team obviously wasn’t going to go 82-0, so maybe this is just a case of taking their medicine on the road. Sometimes these weird, one-off road games can mess with you. No sense getting too worked up over one single loss in five games, right? Well, maybe.
Thomas Harley didn’t have his best game, though he wasn’t alone in that category. The key turnover to get Washington back into the game after Blackwell’s tally came after a D-to-D pass from Miro Heiskanen skipped on Thomas Harley, giving the Caps a chance to capitalize with two quick passes, and they sure did. It wasn’t all Harley’s fault, but given that he was on the ice for all three Caps goals, you would imagine he doesn’t feel any better about his game Thursday than you do.
Brendan Smith had a rough time of it in this one, but give him credit for somehow finding his way back onto the ice after suffering a nasty fall in the first period. The way he went off the ice had some folks thinking he would be missing some time, and perhaps he still will. But the Stars would much prefer not to lose another veteran defenseman right now, so they (and we) will be hoping for the best.
Roope Hintz also suffered from a puck sent by Miro Heiskanen, but it was short-term pain for some serious gain, as the rebound turned into an assist to Jason Robertson, who put it back in the net. Kudos to Robertson for being in the right spot at the right time. He’s pretty good at that, I have noticed.
But like with Harley, Robertson’s game had its downsides in this one, too. Right before the Washington game-winner, one would hope that Jason Robertson could have cleared this puck, but alas, it was not to be:
Robertson was just a tick slow to flip the puck out, and it got turned over and sent back towards DeSmith, threading the needle through tons of traffic on its way into the net. What are you gonna do, eh?
Overall, the Capitals deserved this win, but one-goal games on the road always feel like missed opportunities to at least grab a point. The best teams bank points in a myriad of ways, and a late power play goal would’ve fit that bill. But despite the Stars’ success on the defensive side of special teams, they have yet to really get up and running when up a man, and that will need to change if the team wants to hear less consternation and more celebration after their power play pump-up music.
I said a few days ago that it wasn’t really time to worry until the Stars went five games without scoring another power play goal. DeBoer said after Tuesday’s game that he wouldn’t really be worried until the Stars were ten games into the season. So let’s split the difference and just do a brief check-in, eh?
The Stars are 19th in the NHL in Expected Goals For on the power play, but 29th in the league in Actual Goals For on the power play. They are 24th in high-danger shots-for, and they are 20% below the league average in expected goals generated on the power play per Micah McCurdy’s model, as you can see here:
You can see the glaring issue: the Stars are firing too many of their shots from the point, and not getting to any rebounds at the net. Jason Robertson mentioned in another press conclave the other day that he’s aware that the team’s shot retrievals, shot attempts, and a host of other categories have all dipped this season, and if Robertson is aware of it, then you can bet the coaches are, too.
For comparison, here is last year’s power play chart depicting a group’s performance by largely the same coaches and players:
It’s a pretty stark difference through five games. Last year, the Stars were able to fire pucks from the middle of the ice, including near the net down low, many of which were rebound chances. This year, the Stars have not been getting to those rebounds, leading to the dark purple morass right around the crease you saw up in the previous graph.
Over time, I really do think things will regress in a positive direction. But as we talked about with Jake Oettinger’s great start, you need your team to give you time to fix things that aren’t going well, whether that’s injuries that need healing, or facets of the team that need to sharpen their execution. Right now, the Stars’ power play needs to win them a game, if only to get the confidence flowing freely again. The penalty kill (and the goaltending) has done yeoman’s work to keep the team from suffering too much as a result, but that won’t be the case for much longer if the drought keeps up.
And would you look at that? Edmonton is coming to town on Saturday afternoon. What better team could you ask for against which to exorcise the demons of power play past and present than the one who stifled the Stars’ 5-on-4 program entirely last spring? Opportunity knocks, folks. Now we just have to see whether the players can find the doorknob. Historys says the smart bet is on the best players to find a way or make a way, but they play the games for a reason, I am told. Should be a fun one, or at least a chance to enjoy the Point of Sports:
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One other quick note about Jake Oettinger, who signed a contract extension mirroring Jeremy Swayman’s deal in Boston. Actually, two quick notes. First, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that Oettinger has shown he can up his game in the playoffs, which is not nothing for goaltenders:
And second, let’s also acknowledge that the Stars didn’t really have any choice but to extend Oettinger. They don’t really have any premiere goaltending prospects right now, so it’s not as though they can try to go to arbitration next summer and just take it one more year and hope to get him on the cheap. He’s rebounded from his 2023 ankle surgery with aplomb so far, and the Swayman extension (and Ullmark, though the different ages make the comparison less apt in that case) meant that the Stars could either try to take their medicine now, or risk having Oettinger outperform Swayman this year while Igor Shesterkin reset the entire goalie market with his forthcoming deal.
Oettinger was always the only real option for Dallas in net, long-term. And if you want to say otherwise, I’d just remind you that the Stars paid $10.4 million—over a million more than the $9.25 million they’ll be paying for DeSmith and Oettinger for the next two seasons after this one—to bring in Antti Niemi alongside Kari Lehtonen ten years ago in 2015. Yes, you can try to solve goaltending in the open market, but you tend to overpay even more than you do when signing your goalie to a long-term extension. The only goalies available in the market are usually there for a reason or two, so most GMs are always going to take the internal option if it’s available to them. I can’t really blame them.
Besides, Oettinger has genuinely been very good to great for most of his Stars career, other than two periods of time: the 2023 playoffs (after which he realized he needed ankle surgery), and the 2024 regular season (which came hot on the heels of said surgery). Outside of that, he’s been as good as you could ask of any young, franchise goalie. Sure, it’s a gamble, but goaltending is always a gamble, because who can understand those guys who want to strap on the tools of ignorance and get hit with pucks at 100mph? Goalie contracts are just like a giant gumball machine you feed quarters into. Sometimes you can see a good one waiting near the bottom, but you never really know what’s gonna come out until the handle gets turned. The Stars will have eight more turns of the yandle in the coming decade, and I don’t think they had any better candidate to use them on than the young American that has led them to three straight playoff appearances. And apparently, neither did they.
Those cheaper contracts for the younger players enabled the Stars to do a long of neat things in the past couple of years. The landscape is changing now that those neat things have turned into negotiating tools, but if Mark Janko knows what he’s talking about, the Stars will still be able to keep their most important pieces for the next couple of years, at least. And possibly, for even longer. The Stars will quietly continue to look for contingency plans, I am sure—watch what goalie(s) they do or don’t draft next summer—but the point of having a solid Plan A is to not have to spend lots of resources (like, said, $10.4 million) on alternatives. You don’t have to love the decision, but I have a hard time quibbling with the logic, as far as it goes. And the Stars will be hoping it goes quite far, indeed.