Game 6 WCQF AfterThoughts: When the Impossible Meets the Unimaginable

Wow (the bad kind of wow)

Lian Bichsel is fine, according to Pete DeBoer. That is, by far, the most important takeaway from this game.

I choose to start with comfort, because I think we all need it right now. Go eat some ice cream and go to bed, or watch an episode of your favorite show if you can’t sleep. Do something kind for yourself after the excruciating experience your psyche just endured.

When the Stars’ rookie went down with what looked like a horrible injury in the second period, I immediately skipped forward to what the Stars’ defense would or could look like in his absence. But before I’d even dared to think of what a third defense pairing would have to look like if Miro Heiskanen couldn’t come back soon, the Stars’ rookie somehow pull himself off the mat. And he returned to the title fight just in time to witness a cruel prank from some twisted hockey version of a deity straight out of the imagination of Calvin & Hobbes.

Bill Watterson, man. Just the best.

It’s pure agony to lose a game like this, where you have an all-timer of a second period, only to have what looks like a classic game end in shambles after the dumbest of bounces. And it’s even more torturous because it bookended the double-deflection goal that opened the scoring for Colorado.

Some of you will have broken something in your powerless anger, you inability to influence the disastrous events taking place on your screen. I hope you haven’t broken anything irreplaceable, but everyone can sympathize with the rage that comes from helplessness when someone you care about is suffering.

Pete DeBoer didn’t mince words after the game, either. He was clearly disgusted by the couple of bits of bad luck for Dallas on the first, second, and fifth goals. He was also disgusted by a couple of refereeing decisions he chose not to name after the game, for obvious reasons.

Because it doesn’t benefit DeBoer to point out that Harley was called for high-sticking when a player got hit in the face with a puck, not his stick. And it definitely doesn’t benefit DeBoer to point out that Cale Makar drew the interference call Thomas Harley didn’t earlier in the series because Makar, ah, made the most of the contact with Granlund while prison rules were being employed for most of the game outside of those calls, without any power plays.

It doesn’t really benefit anyone to dwell on those calls, and at least you can say they didn’t turn the game outright, thanks to Dallas’s penalty kill. But it sure stinks to have four minutes of the final 21 turned into a shooting gallery for the other team because of mistakes by the officials.

Then again, given how bad Colorado’s power play has looked for a lot of this series, I’m not sure that forcing them onto it isn’t a great defensive strategy. This is next-level thinking, folks.

But the bounces, oh the bounces. We’re always told those even out, and maybe they do; the Lehkonen kick was possibly equaled by the Harley parabola in Game 5, after all.

If the bounces are actually going to even out in this series after what happened Thursday, then I look forward to witnessing the game-winning goal on Satudray scored by…Jake Oettinger.

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Let’s be clear here: the Stars got some of their own bounces, too, with a couple of posts that seemed to be cheering on Jake Oettinger’s titanic performance in net. But there’s also no question that the Avalanche got far more of those bounces, in this one.

There was a clear path to victory in this game, with the Stars getting Bichsel back in time to finally lock down the game after pulling a smash-and-grab job for the lead, only to discover that the whole thing about an Avalanche is that even if you have to rely on bounces, they all tend to make things go downhill.

Still, this Stars team has always had composure, even in times where you kind of wanted to see desperation.. If there’s one good thing about the way they ended the regular season, it’s that they got a lot of practice (a lot of practice) shaking off losses. And in this series so far, they’ve shown they can do that.

But man, it’s hard to feel remotely positive about a Game 7. In a weird way, this game feels worse than Game 4 did, when the Stars clearly just had one of those games where nobody shows up, and they ended up giving up after 40 minutes.

This was a game where Dallas absolutely refused to give up despite monumental adversity, and they nearly pulled it out. When Roope Hintz got a poke at a puck on the doorstep and it came oh-so-close to threading its way through Blackwood’s pads, you could see the tide about to turn.

But the Stars didn’t get that bounce, in the end. You can pout about it if you want to or need to, and that’s a fan’s prerogative. Things didn’t break fairly in this one, but then again, Colorado also outplayed Dallas for large stretches of this one, and I’m sure every chart or deserve-to-win-ometer would say as much.

When you get amazing performances the likes of which Dallas did from Oettiner and the top line, though, you kind of feel like the team has earned the right to toss such charts in the garbage. Rantanen and Hintz were men on a mission in this one, and they both outplayed Nathan MacKinnon. That alone should be enough to win you any game against Colorado, let alone one in which you also win the special teams battle.

But sometimes the bounces fall volumetrically, and that’s how it went tonight. The Stars’ fourth line accidentally opened a book of old curses in the forbidden section of the school library, and the puck donking off Blackwell and back into the net felt like fate intervening to say that the hockey gods are gods, and the mortals had best remember their place.

It just feels so tragic to have the hockey gods put the Stars in their place after they got such a Herculean effort from their goaltender and top line. But on Thursday night in Colorado, Prometheus tripped on a rock halfway down the mountain, and he threw the fire of the gods into his own net. And there ain’t nothing you can do about it but jump over that rock on Saturday.

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It was clear after the second period that whoever lost this game was going to need some therapy on Friday, which is to say one of the memory-eraser pens from Men in Black. This game was a roller coaster of emotions for both sides that featured:

• Colorado pushing hard on home ice to save their season, jumping out to a 2-0 lead on home ice

• Dallas rallying after seeing Lian Bichsel get helped off the ice, opening up the game in the second period with a 20-minute track meet they won 4-1.

• Colorado getting huge goals from frustrated players in Nichushkin and Nečas, the latter of whom finally showed up with his best game of the series, while the former got one miraculous double-deflection and another single-deflection right to him for the game-tying goal.

• Cale Makar is probably atop the list of Colorado players who they needed to come up big in this one, and he did, playing over 28 minutes and tallying 3 points, with an empty-net goal to boot.

• Dallas coming up with a huge penalty kill after Granlund was called for interference on a pick play on Cale Makar where the Avalanche defender known for being one of the best skaters in the world suddenly forgot how to stay on his skates after gliding into another player.

• A late-game push from Dallas with multiple offensive-zone faceoffs, only to fail to force whatever goaltending excellence Blackwood has left to give.

• Nathan MacKinnon scored three points in this game: he got credited for Dallas’s own goal, and he got two assists on the two empty-net goals. I believe he’s now leading the series in point, but like half of them are from empty-net goals or own goals by Dallas. Make no mistake: Mikko Rantanen feels like the more dangerous player of the two right now. But with MacKinnon, that can always change in an instant.

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You knew the Avalanche would come out with a big push in this game with their season on the line, and they did. Again, they were by far the better team in the first period, and Dallas deserved to be behind, regardless of the unfortunate circumstances in which those goals happened.

But after Dallas grabbed the lead late in the second period, a power play for Colorado on a blown call quelled the Dallas dynamite. It was high-sticking on Thomas Harley when the puck hit Nelson’s face, which has clearly drawn its own curse in this series, and while Dallas made it through that penalty, they would end up sheltering in place for too much of the third period, while the penalty drawn by Makar cut another crucial two minutes out of their late comeback attempt.

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I have no idea who’s going to be 100% in Game 7, but I know some guys definitely are playing hurt at this point.

Goodness knows what they did to get Lian Bichsel back out for the third period, but they got him put back together again, and he seemed fairly comfortable in the final period for six shifts. But the morning after is when those things can really flare up.

Mason Marchment’s wrist got cut at some point in the first period, but thankfully it wasn’t a severe injury, as he would remain in the game. still, those type of things can have weird little effects, and it’s something to watch.

Marchment was pretty good in this one, though. His line was all around it, but they just couldn’t quite land the killing blow off their low cycle play, whereas the top line’s rush game was more than enough to do so. We’ll see if that changes in Game 7.

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Game 7 will be on Saturday at 7:00pm in Dallas.

I don’t know if Miro Heiskanen will play, but I do know that we will get to find out whether the estimate of “sometime in the first round” was truly a projection or more of a far-fetched hope espoused by the Stars because that’s what you do in the playoffs.

Game 5 saw Dallas tip the scales their way early, and they managed to shut down Colorado’s fierce push and counterattack before the Avalanche could really threaten.

Somehow, I doubt Game 7 will see the Stars draw such luck nine seconds (or even nine minutes) into it. But then again, who knows? This game was outside the boundaries of even the wildest expectations, so maybe Game 7 looks more like 2020’s version than last year’s Game 7 against Vegas.

The important thing here: both teams are 2-1 on home ice so far. Dallas earned the right to host this rubber match in their own arena, where they also get last change.

That’s pretty key considering that Colorado just had a game where they got to have the top line avoiding Lindell and Ceci half the time. And because of bad bounces or otherwise, Harley and Lyubushkin and the Johnston line ended up getting tagged with minuses aplenty as a result.

Meanwhile, Cody Ceci was a +2 on the night—the Star’s only positive player on a night they surrendered seven goals. Life is funny sometimes, though you’ll forgive almost anyone for not laughing right now.

Lineup

The Stars began the game looking like this:

Granlund-Hintz-Rantanen
Marchment-Duchene-Seguin
Benn-Johnston-Dadonov
Bäck-Steel-Blackwell

Lindell-Ceci
Harley-Lyubushkin
Bichsel-Petrovic

Oettinger in goal

Mackenzie Blackwood started in goal for Colorado after being pulled in the third period of Game 5.

Game Beats

The game started with something like six stoppages in the first minute of action, but when things finally got going, Jared Bednar got the MacKinnon line out against the Duchene line and the Stars’ third defense pairing, only for Alex Petrovic to make a crucial play to subvert a dangerous bit of pressure.

Mikael Granlund had a great chance with some traffic in front, but Blackwood was able to collect his shot without too much trouble. Martin Nečas then put a puck on net from further out that Jake Oettinger didn’t handle so cleanly, and you began to wonder if perhaps Game 6 was going to be more like Game 4 than Game 5.

Thomas Harley had a nervous moment five minutes in when he fanned on an attempted pass up the middle from below the goal line, only to turn it over for a scramble that thankfully never got put on net with too much force.

Val Nichushkin then took a shot that likewise didn’t come with much force, but it turned out that was just fine for Colorado, as it deflected off Esa Lindell’s stick and the skate of Ilya Lyubushkin for a perfect pinball goal that you couldn’t plan in a thousand years.

And yes, I am actutely aware of the irony of Val Nichushkin’s getting a lucky goal against Dallas after he spent his entire final season in Dallas as the most cursed forward in the entire league.

In past games, lucky bounces like these had been harbingers of doom for the unlucky side. Would this be the game where Dallas could contravene the laws of this series? (Edit: You can really tell that I write this part real-time, can’t you? Because if this was an unlucky bounce, I don’t even know what you’d call the fifth goal.)

Alex Petrovic then got a gift of a chance off a horrible pizza from Charlie Coyle, but he tried to make a move and go five-hole (I think), and Blackwood was able to keep up with him.

After that chance, Colorado built some momentum, and the Stars began to spend more time in their zone. The next goal felt absolutely critical, but then Cody Ceci made a rough decision to nearly give it to Colorado.

Ceci gloved a puck down and took it to the wall here:

But his attempt to backhand it to his defense partner or Johnston or someone turned into a gift for Jonathan Drouin that Oettinger had to come up huge on.

The gifts were fairly mutual, however, as Seguin got a really plump rebound from an innocuous shot from distance, but Seguin couldn’t find a hole in Blackwood.

The Avalanche really started rolling in the final five minutes of the first, and Jake Oettinger had to be huge just to keep the score at 1-0, it seemed.

But just before the final minute of the period began, with a chance for the Stars to take a breath and reset, the Avalanche got another huge break (that was not completely undeserved, in fairness) when Cale Makar fanned on a one-timer. The reason that was a break is because Oettinger had to come up to challenge the shot, and that left space behind him when the clunked puck slide perfectly to Artturi Lehkonen, who easily tapped it past a helpless Oettinger.

It was a crushing blow for Dallas, who ended the period having been outshot 19-10 by Colorado, with many of those shots of the dangerous variety.

Second Period

Dallas began the second period with two big breaks. First, Cale Makar couldn’t beat Jake Oettinger on a wide-open chance after the Hintz line got caught up ice.

And second, Brock Nelson tried to reach through Mikael Granlund’s legs behind the Stars’ net, and he inevitably brought him down to put Dallas on the job.

First, Blackwood made an incredible stop on Mikko Rantanen after a ridiculous set of dekes from Wyatt Johnston let to a gorgeous Rantanen cross to the back post. But the Stars were feeling it, and they got a bounce of their own right after that, when Rantanen made a sweet, incredible, no-look backhand feed to Hintz all alone for a sure goal.

Except Blackwood somehow got that one, too.

Aha! Except that Charlie Coyle slid in and ended up knocking the rebound back through Blackwood, and he knew it. A bounce for Dallas? There you have it.

From there, however, things got really dour really fast, when Lian Bichsel got injured along the boards under some pressure from Jack Drury.

You can see the free hand that ends up bringing down Bichsel after destabilizing his right him, and that’s obviously holding. But when it’s the inside free hand rather than the outside one, it tends to be called less-often. Not that a call either way would have made any different to Bichsel, who lost an edge as a result.

Bichsel would slide into the boards with Drury’s stick in front of him, and he was clearly in pain afterward, as you can imagine.

You could see Bichsel cradling his left arm after help came out onto the ice for him, and man, this was a heartbreaking thing to see for a rookie defenseman who had already suffered a concussion this season. Bichsel has been having a fantastic series, and for it all to go awry in this sort of a game was just crushing. Or at least, things all seemed to have gone awry.

Okay, we’re going without screenshots for now, because the game went bonkers after this, and I’m not spending an extra hour digging through ad breaks to paste in screenshots from the next four minutes, because you remember how preposterous they were.

Mikael Granlund scored a breakaway goal after a gorgeous sequence of passing from the Finnish line sent him in alone. Granlund made a move before putting it back against the grain, and he beat Blackwood upstairs on the forehand past the goalie’s left shoulder with minimal fuss to tie the game in a huge moment. Someone should’ve seen that coming, really.

The Avalanche then punched back again when they got the Stars stuck in their zone, and after a Lyubushkin block, Makar found another assist with more intent this time, as Martin Nečas had again found the back door uncovered, and he easily put the great pass in to regain the lead.

But just when it seemed the Stars had lost their momentum, another rush goal came from the top line, as Roope Hintz went flying into the zone and ripped a puck top corner on Blackwood to make it 3-3 barely eight minutes into the middle frame to tie things back up.

It was insane, and the teams continued trading chances after that. Sam Steel very nearly put home a tap-in on the doorstep, and Nečas rang the post on a 2-on-1 feed from Jonathan Drouin that looked for all the world like it was another go-ahead goal. This was the point of the game where you probably started regaining feeling in your extremities.

Oettinger had to make three more huge saves after that, two of them on defensemen from the Grade-A front porch area, as the Avs piled up 32 shots on goal with five minutes still to play in the middle frame. It seemed like an impossible pace for Dallas to survive, but they were getting chances of their own this time, unlike Game 4, and it really seemed like anything could happen.

Josh Manson rang a crossbar at the four-minute Mark as Dallas’s defensive structure began to look entirely threadbare, and you began to feel that despite the tie score, Dallas’s game was starting to write checks they wouldn’t be able to cash, as shots mounted to 34-17 with three minutes to go.

Dallas got a great look after trading back-to-back icings with Colorado (by which I mean each time iced it twice in a row), as a Tyler Seguin one-timer from below the circle nearly gave Dallas a late lead in the period. But Colorado survived the pressure, and with players getting into tussles all over the ice, it was becoming clear that power plays were going to be less frequent in this game than usual.

The third member of the top line then got his fourth point of the game, as Mikko Rantanen got a glorious feed from Hintz to send him into a slot recently vacated by Josh Manson, and he snapped it through Blackwood’s five-hole before the Avalanche goaltender could say “not again” to make it 4-3 for Dallas, improbably and impossibly.

Thomas Harley then got tagged with a penalty after the puck kicked up and hit Nelson in the face, and he threw his head back instinctively before returning to action. But with Harley’s stick in the general vicinity, the referee deduced that it must have been Harley’s stick that hit him, and the Avalanche had a power play with a minute to go in the second.

But of course, Oettinger held strong, and the Stars escaped to the second intermission with a 4-3 lead and shots at 35-19.

The Avalanche had 20 minutes to save their season. They would be bringing everything they had, with Jake Oettinger already having made a game’s worth of high-grade saves through 40 minutes.

In other words, it was going to be a pretty big final period of the game. And frankly, it had all the feel of a game so completely all-out that it might as well have been a Game 7, given how much it was taking out of everyone on the ice.

Third Period

And then the game delivered another jaw-dropping moment when Lian Bichsel was on the bench to start the third period.

You couldn’t believe it. But then, if you’ve ever met Bichsel or even stood within 50 feet of him, you could probably believe it.

For the final half of the Avs’ power play, Dallas bent without breaking, and Oettinger didn’t have to make any galactic-level stops. Harley even got sent in on a 1-on-1 chance out of the box, but Blackwood’s blocker handled his shot from the circle without too much trouble, and the Stars looked in control of the game for the next few minutes, until the MacKinnon line got another terrifying rush on a turnover that led to Oettinger having appeared to make a stop on MacKinnon on the doorstep, only for the puck to leak out behind him and Lehkonen to whack it just wide of the post.

But another bounce would finally go Colorado’s way, as a rush by the second line saw a shot from Landeskog get saved, but it popped up right into the lap of Nichushkin, who expertly let it fall right down into his path, where he batted it home in one motion to make it 4-4 with 14 minutes to go.

Matt Duchene, of all people, lost a puck in a horrible spot at his own blue line to send Nečas in alongside Esa Lindell to test Oettinger, who got his right toe on the puck, then frantically grabbed it with his open blocker hand just in time.

And then the Colin Blackwell voodoo doll that somebody bought after Game 2 finally came into play, where a desperate Sam Steel clearance out of a fairly controlled netfront bounced cruelly off Blackwell and looped right back into the net past Oettinger’s desperate glove hand, if you can believe it.

It was impossible, or at least it would’ve been in any other game. But nothing could shock you in this all-timer of a contest that was already destined to live in the memory of every fan who saw it, albeit in much different ways, depending on the outcome.

Mikael Granlund then got called for the second Dallas penalty of the game when he pulled up to a stop and collided with Cale Makar in the offensive zone. Makar went down from the solid contact with a lot of gesticulation, and interference was called. And if I need to tell you why that led to Pete DeBoer’s vehement expressions of disagreement, you haven’t been watching this series. But Makar went down, and the officials had to make a decision, which is the whole idea of not pulling up from such contact.

Dallas’s penalty kill continued to be outstanding in this series, however, and they made it through the two minutes once again, setting up a final four minutes with Colorado protecting a lead that felt almost fated.

With under three minutes to go, Oettinger left the net, and Dallas went to work in the offensive zone. Hintz even got a chance for a hat trick after a beautiful cross from Duchene, but the puck just barely failed to get through a not-sealed five-hole, and the Stars had two more minutes to climb back into the game.

Dallas got another couple looks after some quick passing, but Blackwood didn’t get seriously tested for the next 40 seconds, and a Colorado clearance into the bench was ruled to have deflected off Mikael Granlund, leading to a face-off outside the zone.

DeBoer left Oettinger on the bench, and the six Dallas skaters lined up in the neutral zone to win a faceoff that felt as big as any in this series so far. But Colorado won the face-off, and Manson sailed a puck into the middle of the net for the 6-4 dagger.

Dallas gave it another shot after an Avs icing, but Makar nailed the empty net again to put up the final goal of the 7-4 game.

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I’m not sure how you could possibly play another hockey game after this one, but the teams will do so on Saturday back in Dallas. This is the sort of game that leaves you utterly drained just from watching it, let alone from playing in it.

If you want some comfort, there this: We are now exactly where Dallas was in the first round last year against Vegas: after dropping chance to close out the series on the road in Game 6, they will end up using the extra home contest in a Game 7 back in Dallas. We’ll see if history repeats itself one more time.