Game 6 WCQF AfterThoughts: Ghosts of Playoffs Past and Present

I count one, two, three, four, five times, that you need a second chance

You wanna laugh? (Ah, ah)

And make amends? (Ah, ah)

I did one, two, three, four, five times, but I won’t let you back in

***

In yesterday’s review of a few different Game 6’s, there was one I didn’t mention, you may have noticed. That was also a Game 6 that Jim Montgomery failed to close out, which has become something of a trademark for him, lately, it seems.

Yeah, that one. With the dumb David Perron goal, and the dumber Jaden Schwartz goal with Ben Bishop writhing in pain on the ice. It’s this play that sticks out from the game, and it’s also why we all know exactly when an official is and is not advised to stop play. I’ve come around to the fact that Bishop probably oversold that one a little bit, extremely painful though the shot may have been. But it’s probably more noteworthy for how it framed Game 7, which was the heartbreak we all remember. Dallas failed to generate much of anything for large stretches, and the Blues steadily wore them down. So after Dallas missed a chance to close out a 3-2 lead on home ice, the Blues would win the series on a Pat Maroon tap-in in double overtime, while the Stars struggled to generate much of anything in way of dangerous chances.

That wasn’t the problem against Vegas on Friday, though. While that Blues debacle was a reminder of just how little is guaranteed in the playoffs, teams still need to find that extra pass, that beautiful deke that only certain players can pull off on a breakaway–which the Stars had approximately 57 of (my estimate) in this game. Unfortunately all of them were awarded to Evgenii Dadonov, who can’t make up his mind about whether to get revenge on his old team or to give them a belated parting gift off the high glass behind the net. Perhaps he’s just shocked when he finds himself with an open chance, as he’s more accustomed to scoring from ridiculous angles, near or far. A breakaway is just plebian stuff to this superstar, so you can understand the disgust he must feel upon being gifted a plain ol’ breakaway. Mix it up a little, folks!

In reality though, Dadonov wasn’t any more to blame for the Stars’ lack of goals as anyone else, including Johnston, Stankoven, Heiskanen, or Seguin. As much as Adin Hill will get credit for shutting out Dallas on Friday night, it seemed pretty obvious that Hill wasn’t pulling off a Logan Thompson effort in Game 3. To wit: in this graph, the grey shots are ones that Dallas missed the net completely on.

By my rough estimate, 8 of Dallas’s 12 best chances didn’t even require Hill to make a save in the first place, because they missed the target. That includes the Heiskanen breakaway out of the box and the Dadonov breakaway, just to name a couple. The Stars didn’t beat Vegas, and I’m not even convinced they beat themselves. The problem is, they didn’t even challenge Adin Hill consistently, becuase they couldn’t control the neutral zone for most of the game. It’s been a series of adjustments, as all the good ones are, and you wonder what DeBoer might have planned for that matchup on Sunday. Goodness knows the Stars will need to do something different, because even though scoring chances were basically even, the Stars couldn’t get going in the third period, when goals are the different between living and dying (hopefully metaphorically). Whatever Dallas tweaks to get ready for the ultimate showdown, we’ll find out soon enough. Hockey doesn’t hide very well when you’re looking for it, so maybe Hockey was hiding in the Vegas net in this one, given how much trouble the Stars had finding it.

Hey, this is the life of a fan during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. When your team wins a couple games, you feel unbeatable. When your team loses a game, there’s a gnawing at the pit of your stomach that says, “They’ve discovered all your secrets and nothing is ever going to work again.” There’s no way to avoid the tough times when you agree to put in the time. Yes, the Stars could have made this much easier on all of us. No, it’s not fair (whatever that means) that the Western Conference Final is taking place. This series was always going to end either in heartbreak or relief, but the former comes in waves, while the latter can’t really be relished until its arrival.

But when you win, it’s exactly the opposite. Being a fan at this time of year is like going through relapse and withdrawal all at once. So much depends on every shift, every puck towards your team’s net. You get irrationally angry at your team for pinching too much or not enough, for blocking a shot and risking deflections or for letting pucks through in the first place. Look at the winning goal, for instance:

This is just a thing of beauty. Noah Hanifin doing it all. #VegasBorn pic.twitter.com/hmGmwpfG0D

— Chris (@CBengelCBS) May 4, 2024

This is a great play by Noah Hanifin from front to back, but it’s also one that required multiple bounces even before the one off Ryan Suter to beat Oettinger. Look at this again. After something like a 3-on-2, Craig Smith gets back on Nic Roy sufficiently to break up the play, but the pass in bounces off a skate into the slot, where Ty Dellandrea is this close to collecting the puck and ending the play before it slides away and Hanifin collects it.

This perhaps will not make you feel better. I realize that. But when you fail to grab the game when it presents itself, you’re going to be left with whatever crumbs happen to fall, and Vegas managed to grab one.

For the record, Vegas also probably deserved this one, whatever that means. They came out strong and generated chances like the Stars did in Game 3, but failed to beat Jake Oettinger time after time. You don’t want to go over every missed net, every blocked shot, but the thing about this game that really stinks, I think, is that the Stars could’ve well gotten a bounce of their own, like they did in Game 5, and pointed to any number of all-out efforts as the reason they advanced in the series. But they didn’t capitalize, not even once, and now they’re facing do-or-die against a team that has all the PTSD on their side.

Game 6 didn’t end well, but it wasn’t necessarily the foreboding precursor that 2019’s Game 6 was against the Blues. It was just one of those things, like getting butter on your sleeve while making toast in the morning. On the one hand, there is always the tiniest chance that I could be electrocuted by my toaster on any given morning, so some butter on my cuff isn’t the worst thing. But on the other hand, I’ve got a butterless cuff that tells me things could have gone just a bit better and made my life that much easier, thank you very much. Why can’t the universe just be on my side and let me eat without ruining my cloths, for once. Maybe I should eat something.

Well, whatever demons await the Stars in Game 7, they’ll either vanquish them or toss ’em onto the pile of morbid thoughts that already pervade Stars fandom. How much worse can another Game 7 really be, if we’re honest? Maybe that’s the real solace to be found here, that a first-round clunker of a series won’t come close to stinging the same way as a lot of other ones have. After all, with a team this good, this deep, and this full of young superstars, it’s not like this is some sort of last dance for the entire roster. Nothing is guaranteed, and climbing the mountain never gets easier, but if disaster strikes, maybe it’ll be like Ty Dellandrea’s stick check on Hanifin up there. We’ll gamely attempt to hope, knowing all the while that Chris Tanev’s former defense partner could be the one to make Chris Tanev’s new friends all sad and stuff. It’s not remotely fair or fun for us, but then again, these guys are all out there because we’re paying them to be, on some economic level. If the outcome were guaranteed to be good, there would be little point watching, and besides, we’ve all been hurt worse before. These dinguses can’t really control whether or not I eat a delicious piece of toast, even if they make it a little less enjoyable in the moment.

Or, you know. They could actually do it. Every single game has been a one-goal contest, and the Stars got stomped much worse than this against Seattle last year, also leading a series 3-2. And the Stars came back from that one to get serious on home ice and move on. If we’re being honest with ourselves, there are just as many reasons for hope as there are for despair, and hope is frankly more fun, if more fleeting. Might as well change my shirt, take those last few bites, and see what happens.

NB: At least we’ve got toast to begin with. Those people over in St. Louis, you know, all they have nowadays is an abomination they like to call pizza. Can you believe these jokers? They went and won a miracle of a Stanley Cup after tanking for half the season, knocked out the Stars like some kind of defensive wunderkind cloned 17 times, and they still have the temerity to brag about a dish that’s essentially what a kindergarten student would make if you confiscated their lunch and left them with a bag of saltines, an EZ Bake oven, and Cheez Wiz. Maybe it’s time to revoke their championship and award it retroactively to John Klingberg and Ben Bishop. All in favor?