How Every 5-on-5 Goal in the Dallas/Minnesota Series Has Been Scored, and What the Stars Can Do Differently

Including a possible personnel switch

Nobody would have been surprised if you’d told them this series would be tied 2-2 after four games. When you take two of the best teams in the NHL and toss them into a first-round matchup, you can expect to see exactly what we saw in the season series: a lot of close games with a big win mixed in here and there. In the regular season, these two teams also split their four games.

Midway through a series like this, everyone looks to define the processes for each team. “If Team A is going to win, they will have to do X,” and so on. And if you were to have said, going in, that Dallas would need to get big contributions on special teams, that would have been a thoroughly reasonable statement.

I’m not sure anyone expected things to be this drastically laid out, though. Goals are 14-11 in the series for the Wild, but 5-on-5 goals are a shocking 9-3 for the Wild. Marcus Foligno’s words earlier in the series might have been more bluster than anything, but his game-tying goal late in Game 4 certainly backed them up. And now Dallas is in the position of having to prove that Jason Robertson isn’t the only one capable of beating Jesper Wallstedt when both teams have the same number of skaters on the ice.

Glen Gulutzan said today that while a lot of it comes to puck luck that Minnesota has gotten and Dallas hasn’t—which the underlying numbers kind of back up—it’s also up to the Stars to make their own luck, which starts by winning battles in and around the crease. And thus far, both teams have been largely kept out of the blue paint, as you can see here:

HockeyViz.com - Series through four games

That’s why deflection goals like Wyatt Johnston’s winner in Game 3 or Matt Boldy’s in Game 4 are so critical: with both teams doing a good job of locking down the house, you have to perfectly time your arrival with a free stick, and then execute the play. Because nobody has been allowed to linger in the most dangerous part of the ice.

"If you look at the games as a whole, we've got to find a few more tips,” Gulutzan said today. “We've got to get to the net a little bit harder. We got to come up with some loose pucks there around the net, and when we do get a Grade-A chance, we gotta finish."

It is indeed all about finishing, that most lethal and capricious of hockey skills. Here’s an all-up look at how the teams have finished their looks in all situations. Even when you include power plays, you can see that Minnesota has had a Midas touch, while Dallas has had to cut their steak with a butter knife. Take a look at this finishing graph: