Game 82 AfterThoughts: Stars Reach 50 Wins Again (Again)

Dallas finished the regular season 50-20-12

Song of the Game

My fifty-mission cap
I worked it in
I worked it in to look like that
It's my fifty-mission cap

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The Stars hit 50 wins for the third year in a row, which they’ve never done before. But is that just a nice, round number for us to talk about, or did it mean something to the team, too.

“Yeah, we were thinking about it, certainly, in the coaches’ room. It’s hard to get 50 in this league,” Gulutzan said. “Fifty goals, fifty wins. It seems to be a number. Good on our guys. Just the fact that they were thinking about it just shows you a little bit about our group. It’s quite an accomplishment by them.”

Gulutzan praised the team for sticking to the habits they’ll need to exhibit against Minnesota, particularly with how mobile Buffalo’s defense tends to be (even without Dahlin). He said the chatter on the bench was what it’s supposed to be, and that’s all you can really ask when it comes to dialogue at ice level (much of which is surely far too blue to be repeated here).

It’s been a long, packed season. Everyone could have understood if the Stars had dropped a game on the road that meant nothing to their playoff fortunes. Buffalo was playing at home, in front of a raucous home crowd delighted to gear up for their first playoff run in 15 years.

But goals from Esa Lindell, Mavrik Bourque, and Justin Hryckowian got the Stars to overtime, and then their penalty kill got them to the shootout, where they finally got the job done.

“Lots of hockey,” Lindell said to Josh and Razor after the game. “I can tell you that. March felt pretty tough, but now the fun part starts. I’m just excited to play hockey, and finally we get to go to the playoffs.”

Nobody (else) got hurt tonight, which is far and away the most important thing. Buffalo opted to rest a lot of their top dogs while the Stars didn’t, but one suspects the Minnesota series won’t be decided by who’s fresher going into Game 1, but by who’s left standing after it. That series is going to be more vicious than any the Stars have played in a while, I think. If you haven’t experienced playoff hockey before, you had better do your Playoff Hockey Exercises to get in shape before Saturday.

This game was no such exercise, even if it was literal exercise. Sam Steel played just under 16 minutes, and Gulutzan said that’s what he was aiming for in Steel’s first game back, even having to “dial it back” after Steel got a fair chunk of time earlier in the game. It was about rolling lines and trusting the group to get things done, and in a roundabout way, they finally did that.

Nils Lundkvist was also solid in his own return after being with his wife for the birth of their son, even getting some rare work in 3-on-3 overtime. Everyone played between 12 and 22 minutes, which tells you that the preseason feel of things extended to deployment as well.

Esa Lindell’s ping-pong tally gave the Stars 71 power play goals this season, which is their highest total since the 2006-07 season, when power plays were still heavily inflated from the My NHL era of the league and Dallas got 79 tallies (shout out to Junior Lessard and friends). If you remember how that playoff run went, then you know that high power play goal totals are no guarantee of anything, but it is always better to be good at something than bad at it, and the Stars have scored, as of right now, the most power play goals of any team in the league this season.

Every blocked shot in this game made you wince a bit more than usual, as did hits on players like Wyatt Johnston and Radek Faksa. Jake Oettinger’s first pad sad in overtime likewise made you look just a tad bit closer at the screen than you would have preferred, but it appears that all is as well as it was going to be after 82 games, which means the Stars have a gauntlet awaiting them on Saturday (we think).

Mavrik Bourque hit 20 goals right off the bat, and everyone was thrilled for him, as they should be. I don’t know that anyone had him pegged to hit that number this year, except maybe this guy:

Mavrik Bourque started the season slowly after pulling a groin muscle in the preseason, scoring just two goals in 34 games before putting up nine goals in his final 39. He’s also a likely candidate to get some more power play time on the second unit this year without Marchment, Dadonov, and Granlund ahead of him. If you assume he can simply keep up his second-half pace without taking an even bigger jump, that would be about 20 goals over 82 games—adding another nine goals.

(In fairness, that was never a full prediction, because predictions are silly, but more of a “this could be part of how they replace the goals they lost” paragraph, but I digress. Anyway, have a look at that piece in retrospect, because it’s interesting to see what we thought could happen compared to what did, I think.)

From here on out, every game will bring joy or pain, suffering or ecstasy. Other sports have seven-game series, but I don’t know that they feel quite the same way that hockey does in the playoffs. It’s probably the best postseason in sports, which means it’s also the most painful around half the time. Yes, the big games are finally here, but nobody goes 16-0 in the postseason. Gear up for the tension, because it will throttle you if you aren’t ready. Except just kidding, because it’s impossible to be ready for it, because playoff hockey is unbelievable.

For a blissful 48 hours, however, we have the past 82 games upon which to reflect fondly. We’ll get into the stats more in the coming days, but the Stars have done something very special by regular season standards, and now is a good time for resting, whether in preparation for what’s next, or because 82 games’ worth of laurels are a pretty darn good cushion.

As always, I think Esa Lindell said it succinctly:

“Fifty wins looks pretty nice.”

Highlights and the Lowdown

Mavrik Bourque didn’t need long to hit the 20-goal mark in this one, as Esa Lindell called “bank,” whipping a point shot off the backboard and right to Bourque, who dunked it home before the seats were warm in Buffalo.

Radek Faksa put the Sabres on the game’s first power play (such as it was, given the absent bodies) after Josh Norris’s stick was lifted into his own face, drawing a two-minute minor that looked like it would have been able to be challenged and rescinded, had it been a double-minor.

Regardless, Buffalo had a parade of chances, none of which they could stuff home despite some less-than-assiduous defending from the penalty kill, which featured an appearance from Adam Erne, given the unavailability of Faksa (penalty box), Hyry (scratched) and Blackwell (scratched). Erne hasn’t killed penalties much this year, but it looks like Alain Nasreddine wants him to get some reps.

In the end, Norris would get things done himself, albeit at 5-on-5, as Buffalo made it 8-2 in shots on goal and 1-1 in goals in goal with a wicked shot after a pretty easy zone entry:

You can see Oettinger’s blocker arm flinch first here, so you wonder if he misread the puck off the blade here, or if the puck might have hit Lyubushkin’s stick and changed direction. Either way, it’s a nice shot, and a goal Oettinger won’t love allowing.

It was the sort of thing you’d expect to see from a game with a distinctly preseason feel up to that point. An Ilya Lyubushkin holding penalty on Jack Quinn only reinforced that point, but the Stars would kill this one, even generating a shorthanded rush late in the penalty. That rush would get turned around and put off Oettinger’s mask on a counterattack from the Sabres, Once again, the Dallas PK survived despite earning not too many style points.

The period would end without either side having emptied the tanks, to put it mildly. Shots on goal were 10-5 for Buffalo, but the 1-1 scoreline was all that mattered, to the extent that anything mattered in those 20 minutes, which is debatable, except what doesn’t matter in this world, when it comes to working together? All life has meaning. The first period was over.

After another big Oettinger stop from the front porch, the Stars would get their first power play of the game early in the second period, and that turned out to be great news for Zach Benson, who got two different shorthanded rushes, finishing the second one cleanly:

But if you watched the Stars for most of this year, then you know they have this annoying habit of being able to hang around despite not playing their best game. And Esa Lindell, who gives the exact same full effort every single game, would show why, calling “bank” for the second time tonight to tie things up 2-2 in the dying embers of the power play:

Jason Robertson nearly made it 3-2 soon after that, only for an eager Mavrik Bourque to go for #21, thereby foiling, uh, number 21:

Things got a bit more intense from there, as the Sabres looked like a team thoroughly over the Stars’ halfhearted persistence. Checks were finished, and heads were kept a bit higher up. Radek Faksa drew some guff himself after nearly banging home a loose puck at the post with four or five whacks at the puck, which may or may not have been in Colten Ellis’s glove.

A puck that was certainly not in Jake Oettinger’s glove was this one, batted off the goaltender and into the net by Alex Tuch on a bang-bang play from two Buffalo players beneath the goal line:

Oettinger had been fairly slow from post to post all night, compared to his usual pace, and this time he got burned by a sneaky smart play.

Speaking of sneaky and smart, Justin Hryckowian tied things back up on a rush after Tyson Kozak fell at the point, snapping a puck through Ellis with Jamie Benn on the other side of a 2-on-1 rush:

The Stars once again got a power play with a chance to grab a lead, when Luke Schenn gave Faksa the business in the corner and got two minutes for holding. Once again, the Stars netted out a zero on the power play, though they achieved this one in much less interesting fashion than on their last chance. The second period would end 3-3.

Michael Bunting created a great chance in the third period for Justin Hryckowian, who might have had almost too much time in front of the net after a turnover by Buffalo, stickhandling quickly but not quite effectively enough to beat Ellis:

Dallas kept the pressure on after that, with Johnston and Erne testing Ellis themselves. If the locker room message had been something to the effect of, “Play a period of playoff hockey,” the result would have matched it.

Still, Buffalo hung around, and Oettinger had a couple of stops to make down the stretch. Rantanen, Johnston, and Steel had a cycling shift that also created danger for the Sabres, but Ellis likewise kept them out of the net.

Conor Timmins then gave Dallas yet another opportunity to grab a lead on the power play when he sent a puck out of the defensive zone and into the crowd with 6:51 to go in the final frame. But this just wasn’t the top unit’s night, and Dallas spent two minutes preparing for a chance they never quite got.

Tyler Myers wound up on a slapshot for what would have been a goal from the only Stars skater not to tally a goal this season, but alas, it wasn’t That Kind Of Night, and Ellis swallowed up the clapper.

Michael Bunting nearly caught Ellis napping after collecting a blocked shot off an individual rush and putting the puck right back on net, nearly threading it through Ellis’s arm at the near post.

As regulation wound down, Tanner Pearson nearly capitalized on a bit of apathy in the Stars’ zone, when the puck was fed out to him at the net front off a dump-in the Stars might have thought was icing, ringing the post behind Oettinger and bringing the whole arena to their feet, momentarily:

Instead, regulation elapsed, and we headed to the final 3-on-3 overtime of the Stars’ season.

Jason Robertson nearly put the game to bed before it even brushed its teeth, almost wrapping around a chance Ellis never really got over for, but he couldn’t quite tuck it in.

But things came to head when Mavrik Bourque found himself defending a 2-on-1 that looked very much in danger of being a 2-on-0, so he took a penalty that still required Oettinger to come up with a huge save, after which he got conked in the face:

Buffalo went to the power play, which brought Lyubushkin, Bichsel, and Faksa out for some rare overtime action to kill the 4v3 time.

But kill it they would, and a rotation of Stars’ PKers continued the work with a couple of whistles intermixed, though it surely helped that Buffalo’s power play was nearly all in the press box for this game. In any case, we went to a shootout, because why wouldn’t these two teams play late in Buffalo?

The Stars went down 2-1 in the shootout after Jack Quinn and Alex Tuch beat Oettinger. But his teammates came through in crunch time, as Jason Robertson, Matt Duchene, and finally Wyatt Johnston all scored to give Dallas their 50th win of the season, beating Buffalo 4-3 (SO) in Buffalo.

Robertson’s goal was typically slick.

Duchene’s goal was beautifully patient, as Ellis was tricked into doing all the work with none of the results:

And Wyatt Johnston’s goal was efficient and deadly, much like he’s been his whole career:

This was a lot more fun way to go into the playoffs than losing seven in a row, I’d say.

Lineups

Dallas rolled out this Game 82 lineup:

Steel-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Bunting-Hryckowian-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Erne

Lindell-Lyubushkin
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger

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Buffalo Buffalo’d like so, 11/7 style:

Greenway-Kozak-Tuch
Pearson-Krebs-Quinn
Benson-Norris-Doan
Dunne-Malenstyn

Byram-Timmins
Power-Metsa
Stanley-Kesselring
Schenn

Ellis

After-AfterThoughts

• Sean and I recorded our third episode of Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey today, and it was a blast. It’s been a project I’ve genuinely loved doing, and we had two more outstanding guests today: Former NHLer Dominic Moore (now a broadcast analyst for the Utah Mammoth) and USA Head of Player Development/Goaltending Steve Thompson. You can watch or listen depending on your preference.

• Jamie Benn earned his fourth $500K bonus for playing in this game, as he hit the 60 games played mark. (He hit the prior three at 20, 30, and 50 games). That means Benn will have at least $2 million in performance bonuses that will carry over to next year’s salary cap. Given all that Benn endured this year, it was quite an accomplishment to play 60 games.

• Adam Erne turned a puck over on a shorthanded rush, but his effort to recover on this play was pretty admirable, I thought:

• If you don’t believe that it was a bit of a preseason-y game, take a look at this chance for Buffalo early in the second period, which Oettinger stopped. Lotta straight legs there.

• Colten Ellis accomplished one of my life goals by shouldering an NHL shot into his own glove like he was a hockey magician or something:

• Luke Schenn is not a fan of Radek Faksa, it would seem:

• This graphic from the broadcast is pretty impressive stuff. Who needs home ice when you can do this on the road?

  

  Victory+

• Assistant Coach David Pelletier was brought down to the bench for Game 82 after spending most of the season watching the game and communicating from up high. Little thing, but I’m glad the broadcast pointed it out.

• 

  David Pelletier (L) on the Stars bench with Neil Graham (R) while Matt Duchene demonstrates jazz hands.

• I’d say Glen Gulutzan did a good job this year, personally.

  

• Oettinger’s save off the coconut early on was a good omen, it turned out.

  

• Linesperson Steve Barton got some well-deserved congratulations from both teams after officiating his final game tonight. Great career for Barton.

  

• Finally, if you don’t watch the postgame broadcast on Victory+, you’re missing moments like this one, where Esa Lindell was interrupted during his TV interview by a hand offering him a slice of pizza. Who was it, Josh Bogorad asked?

  

  • “Mikko stopped by,” Lindell said. “But he’s gone now.”