Monday Rundown: Overtime Overview, Jamie Benn's Stitches, and the Numbers Behind the Winless Streak

Practice makes better

To allay any serious concerns right off the bat: Jamie Benn was not at practice today in Frisco, but Glen Gulutzan said

“He’s still being evaluated today,” Gulutzan said. “I don’t think he’ll be on the first leg of the trip with us today because he’s getting evaluated, but hopefully he can get in on the West Coast portion.”

Gulutzan was asked if Benn is in concussion protocol.

“I don’t know yet,” Gulutzan said. “I haven’t talked to Zeis [the Stars’ head athletic trainer Dave Zeis] after practice. I know he was being looked at yesterday, just with his face, and stitches in his nose a little bit. So I haven’t heard today exactly. I know he’s not in the building, so he’s gonna get looked at, for sure.”

My sense today is that while Benn did hit his face on the ice in yesterday’s game (hence the stitches in his nose), there aren’t currently any worries in the organization that this will be a long-term injury. But of course, we’ll know more after the Stars finish the first leg of their long road trip with games in Carolina and Washington this week.

As has been pointed out, Benn’s injury may have been a bit more painful because he doesn’t wear a protective visor. Benn is one of just four NHL players still playing without a visor, along with Ryan O’Reilly, Ryan Reaves, and Zach Bogosian.

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To give the Stars another body for now, Nathan Bastian was recalled after playing four games in a conditioning stint with the AHL’s Texas Stars. Bastian was a strong, top-line player for Texas, tallying two goals (one in overtime) and an assist in four games, as well as adding a shootout goal. Texas went 3-1-0 during Bastian’s time there.

As Stephen Meserve and the good folks at 100 Degree Hockey reported, Bastian looked every bit like an NHL player matching up against AHL players during his stint, so you can imagine that will be good for his confidence. Bastian said as much the other night, in an interview well worth your time.

As for the lines today in practice, the Stars made a couple of changes to their recent lineup: Adam Erne took Jamie Benn’s spot on the right side of Justin Hryckowian and Sam Steel, while Colin Blackwell was back on the fourth line after sitting out for Sunday’s matchup. Bastian skated as the 13th forward.

On defense, one other switch was noticeable: Alex Petrovic was moved up with Thomas Harley, with Nils Lundkvist being moved down, playing on the right side of a pairing with Ilya Lyubushkin, who continues to play on his off-hand side.

After practice, Gulutzan said a couple things went into that decision. He made clear that finding defensive pairings on the bottom-four is still a work in progress, but he cited the strong underlying metrics of the Harley-Petrovic pairing as one reason for giving them another try right now.

“Analytically, they’ve been very good,” Gulutzan said. “You never know where chemistry comes from. Sometimes you gotta fire things around to see what happens. We like both pairs, too. It’s just that we don’t want anything to get stale here. When you’ve lost four in a row or five in a row, you wanna change things up a little bit and see where you can create a spark.”

Gulutzan said that change could come among the forwards lines as well—one example is how Adam Erne looks like he’ll play at least a game or two up in Benn’s spot on the third line—but the most important thing is to avoid anyone getting into a rut.

Gulutzan said the Stars have dealt with injuries and lineup changes before, and it’s often resulted in player stepping up, like Justin Hryckowian, Oskar Bäck, Sam Steel, or Colin Blackwell.

“We want to have stability here,” Gulutzan said, “But we also don’t want to get stale.”

Working Overtime

The Stars were practicing 3-on-3 play today in Frisco after losing another overtime game against Montreal on Sunday. Dallas has gone just 1-5 in overtime this year, though they’ve broken even after getting to the shootout, where they’ve won three and lost three.

While Gulutzan said postgame on Sunday that the loss to the Canadiens last night was the result of a mistake off a faceoff, he elaborated on Monday about one thing the Stars were looking to improve upon during practice today.

“The focus was, through the neutral zone, you’re not man-on-man,” Gulutzan said. “In a 3-on-3, you actually just stay in a wedge, and then pick up your man in the D-zone. Not that that’s cost us any goals, but just reviewing what we should look like when we’re playing.”

Gulutzan added that the Stars are also working on some offensive and puck-management tactics as well, along with better overtime line changes. But with how many games are going to overtime this year—over 25% of them, according to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski—the Stars want to make sure they’re “putting energy there” when it comes to shoring up their 3-on-3 play.

One old sports cliche that has stuck with me is that refusing to make any changes just because you’re winning is tantamount to not knowing why you’re winning. The principle is that you shouldn’t wait for bad results to come before you look to improve your processes, so to that end, it’s encouraging to hear an NHL coach talking about fixing a part of their overtime play, even if it hasn’t been something that’s actually burned them for a goal yet.

“Yesterday, we were locking onto guys that were swinging, and then it was just two D with a big gap between the rest of the guys,” Gulutzan said.

“Really, we want that triangle so we can deflect things to the outside a little bit so guys aren’t walking down main street and being able to wire one…then in-zone, making sure we’re getting into man-on-man, once it’s sorted out. We were just allowing them to come in, and we were three-flat almost, at times.”

Now, if your eyes glazed over and you started thinking about what you had for lunch while reading that, I understand. But let’s look at one quick clip from overtime to see if we can see what Gulutzan is referring to.

In the above clip, you can see the “three flat” thing Gulutzan mentions right here, with all three Dallas players more or less all at the blue line, as opposed to the 1-2 “wedge” triangle Gulutzan wants to see:

I think Steel (#18 in black at the top of the above image) would ideally have stayed in the middle to force the puck-carrier wide, rather than swinging wide (to the top of the screen) before the Stars get into their zone.

As a result of the Stars falling back here, Juraj Slafkovský walks in and has room from a good spot to try shooting while using Harley as a screen.

A short but better example of what Gulutzan wants can be found here, I think:

Yes, it’s during a line change by Montreal, but Heiskanen (#4 in black) is at the top of the three-man triangle here, and he’s able to combine with Rantanen to easily push the puck-carrier wide.

With how much overtime the league is playing these days, I have little doubt the Stars will get another chance to practice 3-on-3 in a game situation before too long.

Fun Stats from a Not-Fun Five Games

Over the Stars’ last five games, they have won (check notes) zero of them, though they’ve picked up three points thanks to overtime and shootout losses.

The team leaders in raw counting stats are still Jason Robertson (24 goals) and Mikko Rantanen (57 points, of which 41 are assists). Wyatt Johnston is top-three in all those categories as well.

Rantanen and Robertson are also both top-five in the NHL in their respective categories, still. Production like that is good to have, even if the overall results aren’t quite there yet.

Anyway, let’s move on some stats about the team as a whole over the last five games:

• 51% on faceoffs (Hey, that’s not bad)

• 2-for-15 on the power play (just 13%). And both of those goals came against Detroit, which means Dallas have gone 0-for-10 over the last four games (though Johnston’s first goal on Sunday came just a second or two after the penalty expired).

  • Dallas’s power play is still third in the NHL at 29.1% despite that dry spell, which a huge lead over fourth place Boston (25.8%).

• Just 11-of-16 penalties killed (opposing power plays have gone 31%).

  • Dallas’s penalty kill has dropped back to…7th in the NHL. This is what counts as special teams trouble for this team, I suppose. They have high standards.

• As for team metrics, the Stars are 3rd in the NHL in 5v5 expected goals percentage over their last five games. (That may be a big part of why nobody is close to panicking lately.)

  • They’re also 7th in scoring chance share (SCF%) over that time.

  • And they’re 2nd in the NHL in high-danger shot attempt share (HDCF%) at 5-on-5 over these last five games.

  • They are 29th in PDO (at 5-on-5), with both Save percentage and Shooting percentage bottom-10 in the league. Some regression there was probably inevitable after the Stars were riding high (especially at shooting percentage) all year long.

  • However, that plunge hasn’t hurt their overall rankings this season. The Stars are still 1st in the league in shooting percentage and 4th in save percentage in all situations across their 42 games played.

• Raw plus/minus across the last five losses has the Stars at 20 goals allowed to 13 goals scored. That’s a -7, if you’re keeping score at home.

  • Which makes for 2.6 goals per game, and 4 goals allowed per game. Tough row to hoe.

• After struggling to score an empty-net goal themselves for a long period, the Stars haven’t allowed any empty-net goals during this five-game losing streak. You have to go back 10 games to the 4-0 loss to Florida, when Brad Marchand scored an ENG. (After which Dallas won the next four games in a row.)

• Over the last five games, Oettinger has started three, and DeSmith two. The goalies’ 5-on-5 save percentages are .001 apart, at .878 and .879. I’ll let you guess which is which.

  • In all situations, the save percentages are similarly not-great, at .857 (DeSmith) and .867 (Oettinger).

• As for players on the offense, Mikko Rantanen has eight points across the last five losses to lead the team. It’s not like he hasn’t been doing his part. Superstars are like that.

  • Wyatt Johnston has 7 points, Jason Robertson 5, and Duchene 4.

  • Mavrik Bourque has two goals (as does Rantanen). Johnston has three, to lead the team.

• And finally: Adam Erne leads the team in expected goals percentage over the last five games.