Game 6 AfterThoughts: "Not Good Enough" as Stars Lose Third Straight

Dallas has excuses, but they'd prefer not to need to use them

With five minutes or so to go, Roope Hintz took a puck to the face, sending him down the tunnel for repairs.

It was an apt summary of how this game went for Dallas, and perhaps how their season has gone so far. Injuries of both common and freak varieties have hit them, and they played this game with the bare minium of healthy bodies.

Nevertheless, after an offseason of change and promises, the team has begun to look a bit more similar to the one that lost to Edmonton than the one that knocked out Colorado and Winnipeg. And they know that even valid excuses don’t help right now.

Yes, it’s not fair to be without Jamie Benn, Matt Duchene, Oskar Bäck, and Nils Lundkvist already, but that’s where Dallas is. Points still need to be gotten, and mistakes need to be ironed out. But they’ve been trending the wrong direction since they managed to win three straight, losing three games in a row just six games into Glen Gulutzan’s second tenure—nearly three full seasons earlier than the Stars did under Pete DeBoer. (You have to think one or two friends of DeBoer sent him a wry text tonight about this fact, right?)

After the game, multiple players brought up how the team is getting out of their zone as something they need to improve. And if you watched this one, it’s hard to argue with them.

“I think we’re just not breaking out really well right now,” Colin Blackwell said. “I think that’s kind of the key to playing fast, and we’re a little bit off. But I think it’s 100% fixable, we just gotta execute.”

And indeed, they do. Dallas was turning pucks over needlessly in their zone and elsewhere, and the frustration from subverted rushes up the ice led to other players forcing them. That’s a great way to start the wrong sort of spiral.

“Yeah, it was a tough period,” Gulutzan said of the opening 20 minutes. “Too many turnovers, too many line rushes against. Some of the simple stuff didn’t get done. Then you’re chasing the game, you get scored on [during] specialty teams. We lose the speciality teams game tonight, two-nothing. It’s hard to win in the league if you’re gonna lose [special teams] on a two-nothing score.”

From there, Gulutzan pointed to how the Stars put themselves in a 2-0 hole on home ice, which is the last way you want to go about drawing energy from the home crowd. Because as the Stars know all too well from their most recent playoff series, chasing from behind is the least-fun way to play hockey, wherever you are. And their coach wasn’t mincing words after the game.

“I’m not gonna sit here and say that’s good enough,” Gulutzan said. “It’s not. It’s not the way we wanna play.”

The first period featured a lack of capitalizing on chances, and getting burned by coverage mistakes. That’s a bad combo, and it led to a pretty deserved 2-0 deficit that the Stars had to sit on for the entire first intermission.

Tyler Seguin said the Stars know what the issues are, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy fix.

“You’d like to say it’s an easy fix,” Seguin said. “I think we’re in the middle of figuring out what’s playing simple, what’s playing with swagger, what’s playing with new systems. We’re just kinda caught in it all right now.”

Gulutzan also acknowledged that it’s frustrating right now, when the Stars aren’t doing the simple things he’s been preaching, and it’s burning them.

“It is [frustrating],” Gulutzan said. “I think the growth curve is coming, but certainly we need to get there. And we’re going through a little adversity to figure it out.”

---

Still, the Stars had some life for a bit when they drew a power play early in the second period. But the top unit would spend two full minutes on the ice without converting against the league’s worst penalty kill.

Gulutzan said he left the unit out for the whole set partly because they hadn’t had to go up and down the ice, and partly because they were missing Duchene from the makeshift second unit, which had only practiced together once. But either way, it didn’t result in a goal. And a few minutes later, Zach Werenski put a shot off the crossbar, and the vibes were right back to where they had been after 20 minutes. Something had to change.

So Glen Gulutzan went to the line blender, putting Sam Steel back with Hintz and Rantanen (who hadn’t generated much in the first half of the game), and moving Tyler Seguin down to center a line with Colin Blackwell and Adam Erne.

It worked almost impossibly well. On their second shift, Seguin and Blackwell got a 2-on-1, forcing Merzlikins to make a great stop on Blackwell. But the line kept after it, refusing to cede possession with the Jackets suddenly under fire, and it would all culminate in Blackwell’s returning the favor, feeding Seguin at the back post to get the Stars on the board.

Here’s the entire shift, just for posterity. It was a remarkable one, with Seguin starting the whole breakout with a nice bit of elite puck-gathering skill in his own zone, and ending it with a nice play at the back of the crease.

“There was some positive stuff in that second period, certainly,” Gulutzan said. “But again, you’re in a hole. And at home, two-nothing, it’s not a recipe to win. It’s not. Playing catch-up is not a recipe to win in this league.”

Not by a long shot. Gulutzan pointed out that the Stars are near the bottom of the league in odd-man rushes against, and that’s something they have to get cleaned up.

Seguin punched the air in a gesture of communal catharsis, though it proved to be a fleeting one. That could have been a rallying point, and indeed, his line would have more great shifts as the night wore on. But Dallas couldn’t get anything else past Elvis Merzlikins, and the Stars dropped their third straight game to fall to .500 on the season.

---

But yeah, back to the start: this game did not start ideally for Dallas.

First, this shot probably shouldn’t go in, and I’m pretty confident Jake Oettinger would tell you the same thing. But we’ll talk about another issue with it further below.

Next, after a too-risky Thomas Harley stickhandle in the offensive zone went awry, Adam Erne hopped over the boards and found himself defending a 3-on-1—as if odd-man rushes weren’t bad enough when you have a defenseman there to take care of it.

Thomas Harley really did have himself a voodoo-doll sort of game tonight, but to Erne’s great credit, he wound up blocking the eventual shot dead in the slot, presumably earning himself a free breakfast burrito from Harley tomorrow morning.

Oettinger then saved his own bacon in the first after he sent a blocker save right back into the slot, where it was quickly fed over to Yegor Chinakhov for a one-timer that Oettinger got two pieces of:

Through 13 minutes, shots on goal were 8-2 for Columbus. And the ninth Blue Jackets shot was another big one, as Chinakhov got in behind Lindell and Bichsel (and 1-0 is also an odd-man rush), forcing Oettinger to make a stop all by himself. But Oettinger sealed his five-hole, keeping Dallas within one.

Momentum then appeared to be turning when the Stars got a power play. The first unit looked incredibly dangerous, with Rantanen and Johnston getting looks in good spots, only for the rebounds to bounce just over a Stars stick at the moment of truth.

That momentum looked to have been built to last, with the Stars continuing to press in the offensive zone even after the penalty to Cole Sillinger expired. But the moment Columbus did finally get the puck going north, Mavrik Bourque took an interference penalty on the backcheck, and Boone Jenner scored to make it 2-0 with just over a minute to go. It was that kind of opening 20 minutes for Dallas, which is to say the bad kind, where you give up two goals, score zero, and ask your goalie to stop 14 shots on goal.

---

Probably, the Stars should have scored before the Jackets got the chance that became their third goal. But that’s where Dallas is right now, combining missed opportunities with bad mistakes on defense. And despite Oettinger’s work to keep it as close as he could through half the game, the mistakes eventually became too numerous, with Harley’s missed catch late in the second period setting up an ugly chance out of what should have been a nothing play.

“You look at some other teams around the league that are at the top of the league, and they’ve got that tidied up,” Gulutzan said of turnovers and odd-man rushes. “Those things will never change, those metrics.”

Tyler Seguin cited the same thing afterward.

“We have seven or whatever in the first period, our odd-man rushes, for sure, that’s what we’re trying to get out of our game this year,” Seguin said. “And that’s what we gave ‘em, and that was kind of the hockey game tonight.”

Puck security is about a lot of things, just not “don’t give the puck to the other guys,” of course. But in the last few games (and even before that, when the Stars were winning), the Stars’ bad habits are negating their good instincts, and it’s leading to either tentative play or overly risky play. It’s a vicious cycle.

“Turnovers will never change,” Gulutzan said. “You can say what D system you’re gonna play, but the reality is, how hard you work, winning battles, and turning over pucks, and having good players to score goals—which we do have—is still the recipe to win.”

The good news for Dallas is that the ingredients for that recipe are all there. They have a veteran team with lots of skill, even with the players that are injured right now. And they have a coaching staff who knows what bad habits look like, and what needs to be taken care of. They’re 3-3-0, not at the bottom of the league. But they know as well as you do that right now is not a good time to be rationalizing. Points need to be banked, however it’s done.

Seguin added that everyone needs to step up, not just waiting for players like Rantanen or Johnston to do the heavy lifting every night. And against Columbus, after centering perhaps the Stars most impactful line after a surprising switch, Seguin was leading by words as well as example.

“We all gotta dig our heels in here,” Seguin said.

Esoteric Soundtrack of the Game (ESotG)

Lineups

The Stars began with this lineup:

Seguin-Hintz-Rantanen
Robertson-Johnston-Bourque
Hryckowian-Steel-Blackwell
Erne-Faksa-Bastian

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lyubushkin
Bichsel-Petrovic

Oettinger in goal

---

The Blue Jackets went with this assortment of players:

Voronkov - Monahan - Marchenko
Jenner - Fantilli - Johnson
Sillinger - Coyle - Olivier
Aston-Reese - Lundeström - Chinakhov

Werenski-Mateychuk
Provorov-Severson
Christiansen-Fabbro

Merzlikins in goal

AfterThoughts

• One thing about Glen Gulutzan that has been very apparent thus far is his willingness to mix and match, even early in games. In this one, for instance, Heiskanen and Harley were paired for an offensive-zone faceoff just nine minutes into the first period. If my memory is accurate, DeBoer typically waited later into games before he started doing this, or at least until the end of the period. Gulutzan appears to have no such hangups. That’s probably a good thing in the long run, but it doesn’t bear much fruit when those players aren’t finishing enough of the looks they’re getting.

• Another such example was early in the second period, when the Stars got a power play, and Gulutzan left the whole top unit out for the entire two minutes, even with a faceoff 90 seconds in. That could have been a message to the top unit (who was facing the worst penalty kill in the league), but Gulutzan said after it wasn’t—he just simply though the top unit wasn’t tired. Unfortunately, the Stars couldn’t beat Merzlikins on the power play, and it cost them. That’s two games in a row where one power play goal in the first 40 minutes could have changed the game for the Stars, but they haven’t found it. The power play is still a force, even without Duchene at the moment; but they’ll need it to win them another game or two before too much longer, or for this team to show they can still win games consistently at even-strength. Thus far, that’s still an open question, and it shouldn’t be.

• Boone Jenner’s power play goal late in the first period was looked at to see if it was kicked in, but after a minute or so, it was ruled as a goal. And personally, I think it was the right call, as his skate doesn’t really move until after the puck has already bounced off it. This seems to fit the “directed in” criteria, as opposed to having “propelled” the puck in with a skate, which isn’t allowed.

• (Also, after the Alex Petrovic goal against Winnipeg in the playoffs that was allowed to stand, the Stars probably have to wait about three years before complaining about a ruling on a kicking motion, I think. Maybe four.)

• Tyler Seguin initially appeared to have kicked in a puck on his goal as well, which would have been poetic. But I think he just deflects this in with his stick, like elite players are capable of doing. And if it did hit his skates, he’s clearly not kicking anything, so forget it.

• Lian Bichsel probably overpursued the puck on the Jackets’ first goal, though I’m open to being contradicted here. My read here is that Bichsel should be a little closer to his net here rather than rushing to close down the puck-carrier with a man down low. If Bichsel lets Hintz attack the puck, that could leave Bichsel freer to then play Jenner down low when he gets the pass in the corner. And if Bichsel is there from the get-go, the pass to Fantilli may never get through. Just my two cents—again, we’re all breaking these things down from the outside, so I welcome any other insight.

• Elvis Merzlikins was great in the third period, stopping a couple of deft deflections from Dallas early on that would have tied the game, and denying Steel at the doorstep with ten minutes to go. For all the talk about Jet Greaves supplanting him, you can see why he’s been there for as long as he has. He made the saves he needed to tonight, and perhaps one or two on top of that.

• Thomas Harley has had a run of bad luck to start the year, even as he’s piled up points. The third Columbus goal was just such an example, where a fairly innocent flip-out goes off his glove, off his knee, and winds up being a dagger of a goal for Columbus when nobody else can stop the sly shot that goes just past Harley’s stick, and just under Oettinger’s glove.

• Harley also put his team in a bad spot late in the third, when he tried to force a breakout up the middle of the ice, only to skate into pressure and wind up forcing Dallas to defend, leading to a Blackwell penalty, and the fourth Columbus goal. This isn’t all on Harley, of course; but his forcing a play here was indicative of too much of his night, where things that were coming easily for him last year just haven’t quite done so. You always bet on players like Harley to sort these things out before long, but it’s tough to watch them fighting it during stretches like these.

• Rantanen laid a couple of big hits midway through the third period, late in a shift where the Stars had pushed hard in the offensive zone. They just couldn’t quite knife-and-fork their way through, and the frustration was palpable. But let nobody say Rantanen was coasting his way through this one—when his frustration shows up, everybody feels it.

• Colin Blackwell had some really honest words after this one. A couple of quotes in particular stood out during postgame interviews, and I’ll put them here for you to chew on as we wrap up.

  • “There’s gotta be some onus on ourselves, individually, to take a look in the mirror, and kinda put it on one another and pull the rope, to make sure we’re doing the right things every day to turn the ship around.”

  • “When guys go down, it’s gotta be that mentality. I heard Tyler [Seguin] talk about the swagger, and I feel like we gotta get that back. But then also, step up. Next-man-up mentality, to fill in for some of the shoes that we’re missing right now. But there’s no excuses. Like I said, look at yourself in the mirror.”

  • Blackwell also praised Adam Erne for “tipping the ice for us” with his forechecking, and you could see the effects of that work on a few shifts for that line with Seguin after the halfway point. Blackwell knows about forechecking well.

  • “Previous years, I think that was me, myself, the identity of forechecking, getting in there, playing hard and creating energy that way. I think for me, that’s what I’m trying to do. That’s the mentality and game plan every single night.”

  • “I think once we get that [identity], it’s coming here quickly. It’s not that we’re running out of time, but we gotta find it, and everybody’s gotta stick to that game plan, know your job going in. Be hard on each other, to be honest with you when you’re not doing that. Make sure everybody’s doing the right things.”