Game 71 AfterThoughts: Breakaways (and Breakdowns) for Everyone

Fun hockey isn't always good hockey

Song of the Game

I got no room in my head
To know what I have found
No room on my hands
To carry it around
Got no room in my dread
To take a moment and recount
On how to have a good day

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Tonight, I’m going to let the Dallas Stars do the talking. Most of it, at least.

“I think a lot of times when the goalie gets pulled, it’s on the team. And that was the case tonight,” Thomas Harley said. “We gave up breakaway after breakaway. It was bad. So, I think he’d [Oettinger] like to bail us out on a couple of those, but that’s how it goes sometimes. But I think it is more on us than him.”

That’s a pretty good summary, I think. Yes, Jake Oettinger could have made more than four saves of the eight shots he faced. Giving up two goals on his first two shots faced was rough. But also, the chances Dallas was giving up were of the premium variety.

“Definitely not good enough in the first,” Stars forward Wyatt Johnston said. “Gave up way too much. Especially just a lot of Grade-As, breakaways, stuff like that. Obviously want to tighten that up.”

Going down 4-1 in the first period is not a death sentence in today’s NHL, and the Stars proved as much with their comeback efforts. But the most disappointing thing about this game was probably just how much self-sabotaging Dallas has been doing lately, both in this game and in prior ones.

“We self-inflicted ourselves the last few games,” Gulutzan said. “We’ve got to work our way out of the little dip here, for sure. Two or three months ago, we were talking the same ebbs and flows and dips in the season that we’re talking about now. As I come in here, you guys were asking me before if we peaked too early. I was never worried that we were going to sustain that kind of pace, but now we got another little adverse condition we need to work our way out of, so it might have come at the right time.”

Gulutzan talked after the early January struggles about how that adversity might have been a good thing in the long run, as it got the Stars to a place where they were playing harder, showing the effort that you need to show in order to be a great team. Time will tell if the current skid can do the same thing, but certainly, that’s what the coach will hope for.

As for this game, if you listen to how Gulutzan describes that first period, and you get a real sense of where the problems were.

“I thought in the first five minutes we were ready to go out of the gates,” Gulutzan said. “But we made too many mistakes as a D corps, and there were lots of guys in behind us. We knew going into tonight’s game, and it’s one of the things we talked about this morning, just how they can get behind you and use their speed wide. You can see on the first few goals there were guys in behind our D. We weren’t good back there, all six guys. We made too many mistakes and gave too many easy goals for them that they didn’t have to grind and work for. They got some easy offense, and you dig yourself a 4-1 hole and it’s hard to come back. You push a bit and get it back to 4-3.”

It’s easy to point to the third defense pairing, which Gulutzan also switched up going into the second period. Tyler Myers and Lian Bichsel both had moments they’d rather forget tonight, with the veteran having a particularly rough one. But Gulutzan was quick to say, when asked about those two tonight, that it was, indeed, all six blueliners that he saw some problems with tonight.

“It wasn’t just them either,” Gulutzan said of Bichsel and Myers. “Just some awareness, then getting up on the play a little too quick. When you start forcing, and then something gets turned over, you’re in a bad spot. You know, we turned one over at the blue for the first one. Another breakaway, we lost our footing as a D, I think it was Nils [Lundkvist]. The goalie got four or five breakaways to start the game. That’s a tough way to start. A lot of self-inflicted stuff here. No excuses. We gotta find a way to get ourselves back playing our best.”

As for the goaltending—because I know some of you will want to talk about the goaltending—Gulutzan said that pulling Oettinger was, unsurprisingly, more about the 18 skaters than the man in net.

“What pulling the goalie does,” Gulutzan said, “It gives me leverage on the other guys. We weren’t ready to play-”—here Gulutzan corrected himself—“I shouldn’t say we weren’t ready to play, but mentally, we were making mistakes. And it’s different if they’re forcing the issue, coming out flying and peppering, shots just going in. But breakaways? That’s a tough one. So it gives you leverage as a coach, going in there in the second period, and put some onus on our guys to be better.”

Look, this one stunk, and perhaps even more so because of the tantalizing prospect of a comeback. Casey DeSmith came in and was outstanding, but he would have had to be perfect in what was still a very imperfect game, and even some outstanding saves couldn’t add up to 100% in relief.

The Stars look tired, and the mental mistakes are painful, given how well they'd been playing until the last week or so. Then again, maybe this is exactly the point in a season when you would expect a team to show fatigue, even if it’s more mental than physical. Maybe this is all part of an 82-game season with injuries, fatigue, and a veteran team that’s already clinched a playoff berth.

The Stars may have a postseason ticket punched, but the PTSD from last year’s final seven games of the regular season will have most fans gulping en masse if this recent play doesn’t get curbed. That doesn’t mean it’s the most rational reaction, but it’s certainly understandable. The last two games, the Stars haven’t played well enough to win. Coming within one goal of getting points is cold comfort, even if it might speak to some sort of latent strength.

How much you trust this team after what they did two months ago is really what it all comes down to. The good news and the bad news, however, might be the same thing: They’ve been here before.

Highlights and the Lowdown

Dallas started out well, racking up the first four shots on goal.

And then, oof. The Stars had multiple failed zone exits in pretty needless fashion, and Jack Hughes then got a pass down low that he was able to take across the crease and chip over a prone Jake Oettinger to open the scoring.

Dallas got a power play shortly afterward, but they took themselves off it immediately after a Robertson shot nailed Jamie Benn in front and got taken back up the ice on a counterattack that forced Heiskanen to track back, and his stick got a little too handsy, putting things at 4-on-4.

That’s where things got weird.

First, Wyatt Johnston tied things up, beating Jake Allen after making a nice move into the slot.

Then, Jesper Bratt made a nicer move, carving around three Stars players including Esa Lindell(!) on his way to the front of the net, where he was able to tuck it around a suddenly lonely Jake Oettinger.

And getting back to 5-on-5 wouldn’t calm things down for Dallas, as Connor Brown scored the 3-1 goal off a 2-on-1 rush that Justin Hryckowian started with a turnover in the offensive zone and couldn’t clean up in neutral. Brown finished the rush with a wicked post-and-in shot short side that Oettinger would probably say he needs to stop, but didn’t.

Jack Hughes would score another pretty goal—yeah, we’re still in the first period—off a Jordie-to-Jamie Luke-to-Jack breakaway pass that deserves another look:

That made Tyler Myers a -3 for the period, which is probably not the way he was hoping to come back into the lineup. To start the second period, Gulutzan moved Myers up with Harley and Lundkvist next to Bichsel in order to shake things up on the blue line.

Casey DeSmith led the Stars onto the ice to start the second period, which may have been a decision made out of mercy as much as anything else.

Speaking of mercy, Wyatt Johnston showed none on the power play early in the second period, getting his 40th goal of the season on a bit of a broken play to give Dallas some life.

Dallas got another power play minutes later when Michael Bunting was cross-checked by Brenden Dillon, but this one was not converted.

After a critical penalty kill with Heiskanen in the box, Dallas drew within 4-3 on a goal by Jason Robertson after Nils Lundkvist found him on the back door, and suddenly, the game was back on.

Bourque got a chance to tie the game right after that after Dallas came in with numbers, but he put a sharp-angle shot off the side of the net. In retrospect, that might have been The Moment Dallas was looking for.

Robertson took a slashing penalty seconds later to halt Dallas’s momentum. But once again, the penalty kill and DeSmith came up huge, and Dallas would get to the second intermission with a 4-3 deficit well within reach.

Dallas piled on shots early in the third, but nothing went in. That extended to both sides, as Jesper Bratt and Colin Blackwell traded breakaways four minutes in, but both DeSmith and Jake Allen came up aces to keep it 4-3.

DeSmith made yet another big stop after another Tyler Myers mistake in the neutral zone, but Dallas would concede another goal in the wild follow-up, as Timo Meier would end the sequence by whipping a puck over DeSmith from distance to pour water on the comeback efforts.

Still, Dallas refused to go away completely. Mavrik Bourque was able to cut the score back to 5-4 after Justin Hryckowian found him with a saucer pass in front that Bourque put away.

But this Bourque goal came a bit too late than his earlier chance would have been, and the fifth goal for New Jersey proved to be the game-winner, and Dougie Hamilton would salt things away with an empty-netter with a minute to go to kill what ultimately turned out to be a false-hope rally.

Lineups

Dallas began with this group:

Robertson-Johnston-Bourque
Bunting-Duchene-Benn
Steel-Hryckowian-Blackwell
Bäck-Hyry-Erne

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger in goal

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New Jersey tried this out:

Meier-Hischier-Mercer
Bratt-Hughes-Brown
Gritsyuk-Glass-Hämeenaho
Cotter-Bjugstad-Tsyplakov

Siegenthaler-Hamilton
Hughes-Kovacevic
Dillon-Nemec

Allen

After-AfterThoughts

• Dallas signed Aram Minnetian to a three-year ELC today. The 21-year-old right-shot defenseman is a fourth-round draft pick from 2023 who just finished his junior year at Boston College. He’ll report to the Texas Stars on an ATO for the rest of the year.

  • The 2023 draft is turning into an interesting one for Dallas, three years out. While they ended up releasing Brad Gardiner and traded their first-rounder for Nils Lundkvist, they’ve still gotten a couple of other solid AHL pieces with more potential upside from that year in Arno Tiefensee and Tristan Bertucci.

• Lian Bichsel got time with both Miro Heiskanen and Nils Lundkvist in the second period, and seeing him with Heiskanen was certainly a tantalizing sight for what could happen down the road.

• Wyatt Johnston, man. He was great in this game, as he so often has been. But the Stars needed some help tonight. Johnston, Robertson, and Bourque scored all four goals, while the other nine forwards couldn’t find the net. They’ll need to find depth scoring again to work their way out of holes like this in the future.

• What do you do if you’re Gulutzan, right now? Myers had a poor night and was a dismal -4, and suddenly the middle-six group isn’t clicking. You’d think Dallas would want to bank a few more wins before they start resting guys for the playoffs, but it wouldn’t shock me if the road trip brings some different looks than we’ve seen in recent days.

• Mavrik Bourque continues to take big strides, and he had a lot of good push late in this one, even if his goal came a wee bit too late.

  • This isn’t meant to directly compare the players, given the very different situations and all, but how about this: Logan Stankoven has 14 goals and 19 assists. Mavrik Bourque has 14 goals and 18 assists. Who finishes the year ahead of the other?