Game 81 AfterThoughts: Three Hundred and Ninety-Nine Time and Time Again

One of these days, Jamie Benn will get the goal he's earned. Perhaps it will be when the Stars win again.

The Dallas Stars lost again. You know that, probably. It was the first time in Pete DeBoer’s Stars history that his team lost three consecutive games in regulation.

At least, this was sort of Pete DeBoer’s Stars team. Part of one, at least.

One of the shows I watched a lot of in high school was Whose Line Is It Anyway? And at the beginning of the show, there was a catch phrase: The show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.

That’s not quite what this game was, of course. The points scored were real, and some of the counting stats actually mattered a great deal for a couple of players in particular. But for a game the result of which didn’t really matter, this one was packed full of meaning, at least for a couple of players.

Jamie Benn’s milestone points and goals are a special sort of confusing, aren’t they? Remember his 300th goal, which nobody is really sure that he actually touched, including Benn himself? Maybe this milestone tradition of uncertainty is a lesson to us all in these Tumultuous Times. (Also, does anyone say “tumultuous” to describe anything other than time? I would love to have a tumultuous hamburger sometime, but nobody markets them.)

My current theory is that Benn made a deal with the hockey gods to win his Art Ross Trophy in 2015 when he put up four points to dramatically snatch the award at the last moment. And my other theory is that, perhaps, Pete DeBoer put Mikko Rantanen with Wyatt Johnston and Benn both to see how Johnston and Rantanen play together, and to maybe, perhaps, give Benn an excellent assist machine to get him to 400 goals.

It nearly worked out that way in the first period, too. But after a lengthy review, it was determined (how about that passive voice, eh?) that Benn’s goal had been gotten to by Lian Bichsel on the goal line at the very last moment.

Sure, you might say it’s wild that a behemoth rookie defenseman was on the goal line to poach that goal in the first place, but when you take a moment to consider history, it was only fitting that Benn’s 400th would come under sufficient scrutiny to be revoked in tantalizing fashion, given what he had to do to in order to win that award ten years ago. The fates, they are not known for being kind.

Oh, there was one other familiar face on the other side of the ice who hit a round number sort of milestone, too.

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Patrick Kane played in his 1,300th NHL game tonight, which is hard to believe, given how recent his tormenting of the Stars feels. As Detroit Head Coach Todd McClellan put it this way when asked about Kane before the game: What hasn’t he done?

And he’s not wrong, either. Kane is likely going to surpass Mike Modano’s record as the all-time American-born scorer as he trails Modano by just 33 32 points and 69 goals in his career.

Kane is going to be 37 in November. The question will be whether he can stay healthy enough and productive enough for a team to keep letting him do his thing while they get defense from another part of his line.

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Casey DeSmith has been excellent for Dallas for much of the season, giving them some wins they probably didn’t deserve. And when it comes to the cruelty of fate, perhaps Saturday night’s game against Utah, with Esa Lindell and Thomas Harley out of the lineup, was a great example of how tough fortune can be.

DeSmith surrendered four power play goals to Utah, as the Stars lost 5-3. In talking with Lyubushkin this morning, he was pretty adamant that the Stars’ penalty kill cannot let that happen, no matter who is in or out of the lineup. The Dallas PK has been excellent all year, flirting with the top spot in the NHL. They’re currently in third, and with shorthanded goals in successive games without Esa Lindell as their anchor, to boot.

DeSmith was honest this morning when talking about how these final games can sometimes be tough ones for goalies, when the lineups change and the stakes kind of disappear. Oettinger had to deal with some of the same such things tonight, too, as it was clear the Stars’ defensive structure just isn’t what it has been for much of the season. But when you’re a goalie, you can only stop the shots you face—even if they’re coming from places they ought not be coming from.

After a strong second period by Dallas defensively, they started reverting to their old (more recently) ways in the third, with Detroit pouring on the pressure early and Dallas, sans its top three defensemen, starting to bend to a breaking point.

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And really, when you have two right-shot defenseman as your top pairing (which one reader pointed out could be one of the first times such a thing happened in an NHL game for Dallas since Matt Niskanen and Sergei Zubov were paired up in Niskanen’s rookie year), you have to take what you can get. Going from Esa Lindell with Chris Tanev on the second pairing in last year’s defense to Brendan Smith and Cody Ceci in this year’s 81st game is a pretty big difference, and your expectations should be adjusted accordingly.

Look at it this way: the Stars got a shorthanded goal and a goal from Lian Bichsel. If you didn’t know the details about recent penalty kill attempts or who shot the puck that Bichsel ended up scoring, you would absolutely take that.

But the devil is in the details, as ever.

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Pete DeBoer said much the same thing before this game as he did after last one: “The number one thing I liked is we didn’t get anyone injured. Let’s be honest, that’s the main goal here. We want to get through these games.”

The lineup is a pretty good testament to “getting through games,” I think. To wit:

Lineup

The Stars began the game with this lineup:

Robertson-Hintz-Dadonov
Granlund-Duchene-Bourque
Benn-Johnston-Rantanen
Bäck-Steel-Blackwell

Lyubushkin-Dumba
Smith-Ceci
Bichsel-Petrovic

Oettinger in goal.

Thomas Harley and Esa Lindell were once again scratched for maintenance, along with Mason Marchment, who is dealing with illness.

Cam Talbot started in goal for Detroit. Here is my obligatory “remember when the Stars declined to trade Julius Honka to New York in like 2014 for Cam Talbot” statement. Here endeth the statement.

Game Beats

Kane got a great scoring chance right off the hop, but he deferred, and the play fizzled. Mavrik Bourque followed suit shortly thereafter, trying to turn a 3-on-2 pass from Duchene into a beautiful dunk by sending it back across, only for no shot to get made.

So, if you were wondering whether the defensive structure had solidified in those no-man’s land between playoff seeding and Game 1 of the playoffs, you had your answer: not so much.

Albert Johansson got the Wings on the board after the gian green light masquerading as a neutral zone resulted in Dadonov defending Johnasson one-on-one. Johansson ripped a shot through Dadonov and over Oettinger’s glove hand to make it 1-0.

Lian Bichsel then joined a rush that resulted in a Dallas goal, and it was nearly the very worst thing he could have done, in the grand scheme of things.

Rantanen fed Jamie Benn at the far blue line, and Benn went in on Talbot all alone, faking a shot to freeze him, then skating around and tucking it in behind Talbot, where it crept across the line for his, at last, 400th career goal.

But just as the puck was about to cross the line, in rushed Lian Bichsel, tied up with Justin Holl. And immediately, there were questions about whether Bichsel had touched the puck before it crossed the line.

But after a moment or two, the goal was announced as Jamie Benn’s…though the official scorers took their time in saying so, and you can see what gave them pause, can’t you?

But as the scoring allocation debate raged on, play did the same.

Roope Hintz took a holding the stick minor while fending off Marco Kasper at the netfront on a play that feels like it’s either called hooking or holding the stick depending on what part of the ice the players are standing in. Also, Hintz was holding the stick. But the Stars killed it with a minimum of fuss.

Alex DeBrincat scored his 37th goal of the season right after that on a cross from Patrick Kane, giving Kane 850 assists for his career in what was surely a bit of friendly competition between the longtime rivals in Kane and Benn, hitting milestones on the same night.

Scoring chances were not hard to come by for either team as the period wound down, and shots on goal ended up 16-7 for, and I am not making this up, the opponent of the Dallas Stars. Though as so often happens, many of the shots for Detroit came from low-percentage areas.

Also, this game did not matter terribly much.

Second Period

At the start of the period, the scorers in Little Caesar’s Arena announced that the Stars’ goal had indeed been credited to Lian Bichsel, who swatted the puck over the line at the last possible second in order to negate Benn’s 400th goal for yet another time.

The Wings took a couple of penalties early in the second, or to be more specific, Simon Edvinsson did. Edvinsson first took a hooking minor that Detroit killed off (with Dumba having to make a crucial block on a shorthanded rush), and he then took a delay of game penalty a few minutes later, during which Detroit also got a couple of shorthanded looks against Dallas’s top unit with five forwards.

DeBoer said before the game that he would only ever go with a five-forward look on the top unit, given the risks of having five forwards on the ice when the incarcerated skater gets out at the end of the power play. But in this one, the top unit looked every bit like a group without a defenseman on the ice. A couple of pucks slid through dangerous areas, but Dallas couldn’t put any of them on net.

But just as Detroit did in the first, Dallas waited for their power play to end before scoring. Roope Hintz flung a puck toward the net, and Dadonov reached out with the backhand of his blade to execute a marvelous deflection up and into the goal over Talbot’s shoulder for his 20th of the season.

Jamie Benn would put the Stars on the penalty kill when he flung a puck just over the boards that conveniently flew into the scorer’s booth between the penalty boxes. I am not saying that Benn was trying to send a message to anyone who would continue to take goals away from him. Just to be clear, I am not saying that.

However, Sam Steel and Colin Blackwell capitalized on a misplay behind the net by Talbot, as Blackwell raced to the net while Steel won the race to the puck in the corner and fed Blackwell immediately, with Moritz Seider leaving the netfront to attempt to shut down the pass.

It did not work well for Seider.

Blackwell buried the perfect feed, and the Stars were up 3-2 after scoring shorthanded goals in back-to-back games.

Dallas generated some more good looks later in the second, with Bourque bulling his way to the net to get a couple of whacks at Tablot inside the crease. But 3-2 was the score, and 3-2 would remain the score after a largely improved period from Dallas, as you can see from the second period shot locations (at least, in part):

Third Period

Roope Hintz started off the third by sweeping a puck out of the crease after it bounced off Oettinger and over his shoulder, with Brendan Smith furiously boxing out his man on the post. It was a great play by Hintz to save a goal, but unfortunately for Dallas, it wouldn’t matter.

Another royal road pass, another goal for Detroit, as Jonatan Berggren buried the tying goal with a nice one-timer off a pass from Lucas Raymond that beat Oettinger’s glove. It was not exactly how one locks down a lead in the third period, but then the Stars’ recent few weeks of play have not been how a 50-win team locks down a season, either.

By the way, Todd McClellan talked before the game about how Berggren started the season strong, but has lately fallen into the gray area of players. Perhaps Berggren—playing on the Wings’ top line in this game—had a bit of extra motivation as well.

Dadonov gave Oettinger more work to do when he took a tripping minor out of desperation in the Stars’ defensive zone, and Moritz Seider didn’t waste any time converting the power play, with a wicked wrister past a screen from the high slot to make it 4-3 Detroit right off the face-off.

It was the sort of goal DeSmith saw (or didn’t see) too much of on Saturday behind the Stars’ kill. If nothing else, it was a testament to the importance of Esa Lindell. There is always the importance of Esa Lindell.

Lucas Raymond made it 5-3 with ten minutes to go when he burned down the right wing and fired a shot over Oettinger’s glove hand from a spot where you probably would like to see a goalie make a nice save. But with the play tilting heavily in the wrong direction for Dallas, Raymond’s goal felt almost inevitable once he began to shoot.

Jamie Benn’s 400th goal, on the other hand, continued to feel entirely evitable. Johnston set him up for a pristine little one-timer with seven minutes to go, and Benn fired it into Talbot. But Johnston was rewarded for his generosity, as the rebound came to him, and he put it back to cut the lead to 5-4.

Jason Robertson then decided to take things into his own hands in the offensive zone, drawing a penalty after some persistent puck protection. And Dallas got a chance early when Dylan Larkin wound up stickless, but nothing ever came of it except another shorthanded rush by Detroit at the end of the penalty, when Michael Rasmussen went in on a 2-on-0 with Jeff Petry as he exited the penalty box. Rasmussen understandably kept it and took a backhand himself, but he put it over the net in almost laughable fashion.

Detroit finally salted away the game with an empty-netter by Vladimir Tarasenko with 1:56 remaining.

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Dallas has one game left to break their losing streak before the playoffs. They also have one game left to get Jamie Benn his 400th goal this year.