Game 50 AfterThoughts: Getting Healthy While Unhealthy

The Stars dominated and won, which are two very good things

SotG

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Glen Gulutzan said the Stars got rid of the “micro” view going into this game and zoomed out to the macro perspective instead.

“We talked about doing everything your dad told you to do when you were growing up,” Gulutzan said. “Let’s work hard, let’s get pucks to the net, let’s win our battles. And there was one other, too: It was, let’s have some fun doing it.”

If outshooting your opponent 37-18 counts as “fun,” then the Stars checked every box. They had a 2-0 lead after the first period, and a 4-0 lead after two. Jason Robertson added another pair of goals in the final frame, and only a couple of garbage-time goals clouded an otherwise clear sky for one night in Dallas.

For the second time this season, the Stars played a game without Mikko Rantanen. And for the second time, the Stars sailed to a resounding win on the back of a cohesive group effort.

Last time Rantanen missed a game, it was an 8-3 Stars win in Edmonton, following Rantanen’s automatic suspension from his match penalty against Calgary. Justin Hryckowian scored in that game, just like he did tonight against Boston when the Stars won 6-2.

That’s not to say that the recipe for unlocking the Stars offense flows anywhere else than through Rantanen, of course. The NHL’s sixth-highest scoring player is every bit the superstar Dallas thought they were getting when they traded for him last March. But sometimes, you just need the team to remember what it takes to win a hockey game, and dimming the brightest lights a bit can do that, on occasion.

“We didn’t know he wasn’t gonna play until right before the game,” Gulutzan said of Rantanen. “We changed the lines around from what we had this morning, and good for our guys. They picked it up, for sure.”

But for all the talk about a group effort and getting back to basics, Gulutzan also said the Stars clearly had a philosophical shift in their approach tonight.

“For 15 games here, we weren’t shooting the puck,” Gulutzan said. “We had every fancy play kind of mapped out, but you just gotta get pucks to the net off draws, create chances there, and create some road hockey. So we did a good job.”

Still, Gulutzan knows as well as anyone that this is far from Mission: Accomplished.

“We’ve had a few of these during this stretch,” Gulutzan said. “But we haven’t got any traction. So now we stack some good plays here in this game. But now we’ve got to stack games upon each other. But It’s a start. It’s a little bit of a reprieve, but we’ve had these before in L.A. and Washington. Now we’ve got to keep it going.”

That will be the key, too. Dallas probably isn’t going to suddenly outshoot opponents two-to-one in every game going forward, and they probably also aren’t going to score two power play goals in every game from here on out.

But halting the current skid was job number one, and they did that authoritatively. Sometimes just washing away the bad memories is all you need to get going again, and the Stars will have to do so on Thursday in Columbus against a team coached, fittingly, by their old bench boss Rick Bowness.

There are no easy points in the NHL, but you can make things easier if you do what Dallas did tonight: Defend zone entries with savage efficiency, create rush chances with stifling neutral zone play, and chain good shifts together from the first line to the fourth.

Lots of players deserved plaudits in this one, and it’s a little bit of a shame that Jake Oettinger’s shutout got spoiled in the third period. But the good so far outweighed the “not great” in this one that you can’t help but start to remember just how high this team’s floor was for the first half of the season.

Whenever you go through a dozen games like the Stars just have, you can expect to see belief start to ebb in parts of the fanbase. But tonight was a great picture of how you can regain that trust with one incisive effort. If you can start to put such efforts together consecutively, well, that’s how you win a playoff series. It never hurts to put in some early practice for the important things.

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The game started off with a bit of the jitters, but Dallas got a couple of good looks early, including one from distance with Benn in front and a Jason Robertson shot that whistled just high from the slot.

But Dallas got the rarest of all chances lately just three minutes in, when Matt Duchene drew a tripping call on David Pastrňák off a faceoff play. But once again, the Stars’ deadly special teams proved relatively tame, as the second power play unit ended up creating more chances than the first one (which featured Duchene filling in for Rantanen), with Benn tipping a good chance right on goal that Swayman stopped.

Jason Robertson then got dinged for high-sticking, putting Dallas on the kill themselves. But Oettinger and his skaters held the fort, including a one-timer in tight from Fraser Minten, and things remained 0-0.

Nathan Bastian and the fourth line put an exclamation mark on the end of a decent shift up the ice when Bastian dropped the gloves with Jonathan Aspirot after getting into it along the boards. I’d imagine Bastian is happy to create positive momentum in any way he can.

Sam Steel nearly momentum for the opposite side, though not intentionally, as he scrambled to clear a puck from the Stars’ crease after a wraparound put the puck in front. Steel’s stick actually bumped the puck into Oettinger’s pad, but with his goaltender thoroughly prepared for the chance, and things calmed down.

Duchene nearly capitalized on playing with Wyatt Johnston in the first period when he grabbed an overskated puck in the defensive zone and rushed up the ice on a 2-on-1 with Johnston. Duchene had the room to shoot with Johnston being covered, but he fired it right into the chest of Swayman, and that was that.

Dallas got their second power play when Elias Lindholm took down Esa Lindell at the far blue line in an attempt to get separation, and this time, the top power play unit got the job done, with some nice puck retrieval by Robertson and Duchene behind the net, followed by Heiskanen setting up Hintz for a fake-shot that he slap-passed over to Johnston, who had a wide-open net to shoot at with Swayman having committed completed to Hintz. 1-0.

Dallas almost immediately got another power play when Nikita Zadorov sent Radek Faksa into the boards with a cross check, and the man-advantage continued to cook. This time, the second unit got on the board when Thomas Harley made a no-look pass from what everyone thought was a shooting position to set up Mavrik Bourque down low at the post.

Bourque actually fans on the initial shot instead of elevating it, and Swayman was able to make a diving stick save on the puck as a result. But this year isn’t like last year for Bourque, so he was able to grab the rebound and stuff a second effort into the net in the final minute of the period to give Dallas a much-needed two-goal lead heading into the first intermission.

Mavrik Bourque continued his strong game with a 2-on-1 rush with Hintz in the second, but this time, the pass didn’t quite connect, and it dribbled wide.

Jake Oettinger had more work to do in the middle frame as well, with Boston trying to muster a push and getting a couple of pucks on net with chaos happening. But overall, the Stars were keeping their sticks in proper lanes and preventing clean zone entries, reducing the amount of defensive-zone time.

Offensive-zone time is much more advantageous, generally speaking, and Esa Lindell demonstrated exactly why by shooting a puck from the blue line that sailed through bodies (and past Jamie Benn’s stick) to make it 3-0 halfway through the game.

The Stars’ momentum only built from there, and the Hintz line created more good looks right after that, with Robertson and company firing a couple of dangerous shots that didn’t get through Swayman. It was an encouraging sign from a team bereft of such things for the last few weeks.

The engine driving that momentum was a group effort, but the Robertson-Hintz-Bourque line frequently found itself at the center of the good things. Hintz, in fact, put a puck off the post after deftly kicking a rebound to his skate blade as he skated by Swayman later in the second period, and Hintz and Robertson probably could have had two goals apiece in the first 40 minutes of the game. But hey, momentum is momentum.

Speaking of momentum, there’s also the bad kind, and Boston was finding plenty of it. For the second time in as many periods, they surrendered a goal in the final minute, and this one was a doozy, as a Thomas Harley shot was kicked out by Swayman and kicked back by Hryckowian, only for Mark Kastelic to confound his own goaltender:

Hryckowian knew he had scored immediately, and he skated away in celebration despite the referees withholding any goal signal. An official review would eventually commence to confirm the goal, but Hryckowian didn’t even wait for that, going to the bench for a tepid fist-bump line while most of the other players were staring at the video board to see a replay of the puck going in the net.

It was a moment of levity for a team that had experienced far too few of them lately, and it was a delightful way for Dallas to enter the second intermission.

The third period continued the delightful parade for Dallas, as Jason Robertson capped his night with two goals that had been coming all game long.

The first one came after Colin Blackwell alertly changed during an offensive zone possession, and Robertson immediately hopped on the ice, lost his man with a subtle fake in the corner, and finished a wraparound chance far side like it was preprogrammed.

Robertson added his second of the night shortly after that on a short-side goal that chased Swayman from the game, as well it should. It was a nice shot that maybe oughtn’t go in, But then again, Robertson has a way of doing that to goalies.

And when you look at this reverse angle, it only looks prettier.

Oettinger stopped Casey Mittlestadt on a 2-on-1 with Arvidsson just to confirm that he was still awake, but the Bruins would finally get on the board on what felt like a bit of a consolation power play, with Esa Lindell being sent to the box. Morgan Geekie continued his goal compilation with a deflection in front to make it 6-1 in garbage time.

Fraser Minten would add a second goal in the remaining refuse, but as time ticked away, the final 6-2 scoreline felt every bit as dominant as 6-0 had, if a bit less aesthetically pleasing.

Lineups

Dallas started with this:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Lyubushkin-Petrovic

Oettinger

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Boston brought this:

Khusnutdinov-Lindholm-Pastrnak
Mittlestadt-Zacha-Arvidsson
Steeves-Minten-Geekie
Jeannot-Kuraly-Kastelic

Aspirot-McAvoy
Zadorov-Lindholm
Peeke-Lohrei

Swayman

After-AfterThoughts

• Mikko Rantanen was, it turns out, one of the players Gulutzan said was dealing with illness. Tim Cowlishaw of the Morning News reported that Rantanen would miss the game with the flu about 15 minutes before the team officially released the news, and sure enough, Rantanen was not out for warmups. The Stars will have to hope that Rantanen (and whoever else is sick) will be back to full health before they fly to Columbus tomorrow.

• In January 2023, Roope Hintz missed some time with an injury, and Tyler Seguin had to move up and center the top line with Robertson and Pavelski for a few games. It was a great performance by Seguin, and I’d imagine the Stars were hoping for something similar from Duchene on the top line, even if it’s just for one game without Rantanen. Sometimes a player just needs to know he can still be The Guy for a night.

• Gulutzan said after the game that he wanted to get Duchene back to center, but that he also wanted to put Hryckowian in the middle of a checking line with Jamie Benn and Oskar Bäck. That checking line ended up being outright dominant, with Hryckowian and Benn being on the ice for 11 Dallas shots on goal at 5v5, and just 1 shot on goal by Boston. That’s pretty darn good checking.

• Moving Wyatt Johnston to wing for a night doesn’t seem like the worst thing, either. He spent a lot of his first couple years in Dallas moving between centering his own line or playing up on the top line with Hintz and Robertson, and every time he played on the wing, he looked dangerous. Obviously you have to find a center you can play with Rantanen every night, but for at least one night without Rantanen, I thought the experiment of Duchene with Johnston on his wing looked like a good one.

• This note from Josh Clark at the second intermission was worth sharing, I thought:

  

  Not bad.

• Faceoffs were also dominated by Dallas in this one. Hintz went 10-for-15, Hryckowian 10-for-13, and Blackwell, Johnston, and Bourque all won 80% or better of their own draws. These things help.

• The Stars have 65 points through 50 games of the season. This is the exact same total they had after their first 50 games last season, too. What does it mean? I have no idea/it’s a secret.

• Hryckowian smiled when asked about his goal celebration, saying none of his teammates really believed that the puck had gone in. But hey, goal-scorers usually know when they’ve scored, and Hryckowian’s abbreviated fist-bump line was well-earned.

• Corey Seager and a few other Texas Rangers were at the game tonight, and they came into the dressing room to take the customary Cowboys Hat Picture with Jason Robertson after the game:

  

  If you’re not sure which Rangers are which, go check out Jamey Newberg’s excellent Substack, The Newberg Report. He just ranked the top 40 athletes in DFW in an extensively researched piece this week that is well-worth your time. He’s one of the good ones.

  The top 40 players in town: 2026.

• Thomas Harley and the second power play unit got some extended work in with Neil Graham on Monday toward the end of practice. At the time, I was curious what the aim was in doing so, given that the first unit has tended to play nearly 90 seconds of most power plays this year. You’d think that would be the unit they’d want to work on in order to sharpen a slumping power play, right?

  • But tonight, the second unit was great on two different sets, finally getting Bourque his goal after a no-look pass from Thomas Harley. Neil Graham might be pretty good at this coaching thing, folks.