Monday Off Day: Odds and Ends and Broken Sticks

Some things that I haven't managed to write up yet

The Stars don’t play or practice today after completing a four-in-six that saw them win both games over a back-to-back weekend.

We don’t have an off-day here at ST, though. So instead, I wanted to relay a few things that have been rolling around in my notebook, but that haven’t made it into a story yet for one reason or another.

Some of this might only be interesting to me, but I suppose that’s the risk you take for happening upon this corner of the internet. As usual: I’m sorry/you’re welcome. Let’s dive in.

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Nate Bastian only played 3:39 in Tuesday’s game against Los Angeles.

Glen Gulutzan mentioned the next day at practice that his low usage was a combination of special teams (of which there were a fair amount earlier in the game) and game situation in general. But he also pointed out that at a certain point, you don’t want to put a player who’s gotten “cold” on the bench into a high-pressure situation midway through the third period (I’m paraphrasing here). Gulutzan added that it was a conversation he would have with Bastian, just to make sure he understood where Gulutzan was coming from.

Sure, players are always going to want more ice time, but also, if a player hasn’t skated in 15 minutes, it’s a lot to ask of a lower-lineup player to ask them to jump right into a tight contest with the team trying to snap a losing streak. So that made sense to me. But I wondered what a player would say.

So I talked to Bastian about that same game later on, and he pretty much echoed Gulutzan’s sentiment. Bastian said that you really do get “cold” when you sit on the bench for a while, and at a certain point, that can cause you to play your next shift a bit more tentatively, like you’re just trying not to make a mistake while you’re getting back into the swing of things. And that’s usually a bad recipe for success in the NHL.