Postgame Beats: Efficient Causes

That was tough

When Roope Hintz left warmups before taking line rushes today, you knew it wasn’t good. It appeared that the most likely outcome after Hintz left Game 2 and didn’t return had occurred: Darnell Nurse’s slash had cause some kind of lasting injury to Hintz’s foot, and he wasn’t able to go in a critical Game 3 (but they are all critical this time of year).

It was a bitter pill for Dallas, given that the officials had downgraded the penalty to a minor, and that the Department of Player Safety viewed the play as a “typical” sort of slash that they apparently want to keep in the game, given their inaction.

Recall that Nurse was staring right at Hintz, who was standing still, when Nurse chopped him exactly where he was looking: the top of the foot, where only some fabric and tightly-tied laces protect skin and bone from fiberglass being wielded by a professional athlete. Nurse has been suspended four times in his NHL career, including a month ago when he cross-checked a player’s head an inch above the ice.

It boggles the mind that such a play by a repeat offender is seen as fitly punished with a lesser penalty than the league gives to an inadvertent stick to the lips that draws a speck of blood. Or at least it should boggle it. But if you’re familiar with this league by now, however, your mind was probably quite un-boggled. It’s always the same thing.

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The only preface I have for this game (I’ll write more tonight) is that Dallas did enough to win, but also enough to lose. They allowed far too many breakaways and odd-man rushes, and that’s part of Edmonton’s game plan. Like in the Winnipeg series, giving up the first goal changes so much about the game, and when the Stars had to start pressing to cut the deficit, it played right into Edmonton’s hands.

Thomas Harley won’t be thrilled with a couple of the video replays of Oilers’ goals, particularly with his pinch to give up the 3-on-1 rush to make it 2-0 early. And the Stars also won’t be thrilled with the way this game was (or wasn’t) officiated. Those are legitimate things to point to, after this game.

But the bottom line is that this series so far has the distinct feel of one where Dallas hasn’t been able to overcome a bad bounce, bad break, or a bad call. And championship teams need to be able to push back when they’re rolling to overcome such things. In other words, Dallas simply has to get more from that second period of dominance than one goal off a long wrister from a third-pairing defenseman.

Stuart Skinner was good, but count up how many odd-man rushes or breakaways he had to face, and you’ll start to realize that comparing the goaltenders in this game is a pretty unfair exercise. Oettinger was asked to stop two of the best scorers in recent NHL history on Grade-AAA chances, whereas Skinner was asked to sit in the crease while Dallas fed pucks in and failed to get rebounds or clean passes across.

His stops on Duchene and Blackwell were very good ones, undoubtedly. But Oettinger had a couple such saves of his own. It was in the crease where Dallas lost this game, as they simply couldn’t finish their chances despite getting to the prime scoring areas.

Maybe this will motivate Dallas, showing that Edmonton’s defense is fully capable of being gotten to when Dallas makes time and space for themselves. Or maybe it will be discouraging, as the Stars reckon with the reality that their best period of the playoffs, perhaps, was all for naught.

Roope Hintz would’ve been a nice player to have in this game.

Lineups

Without Roope Hintz able to play, the Stars began with this lineup:

Robertson-Granlund-Rantanen
Marchment-Duchene-Seguin
Benn-Johnston-Dadonov
Bäck-Steel-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Ceci
Bichsel-Petrovic

Oettinger in goal

Mikael Granlund hasn’t played center much since being acquired from San Jose, but he was asked to do do in between a superstar winger and an ailing one. Would this be the game Robertson finally got going in the playoffs?

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Edmonton kept the same lineup as they used in Games 1 & 2:

Nugent-Hopkins - McDavid - Hyman
Podkolzin - Draisaitl - Kapanen
Kane - Henrique - Brown
Frederic - Janmark - Perry

Kulak - Bouchard
Nurse - Stecher
Walman - Klingberg

Skinner

First Period

Oettinger didn’t have an easy first period, which wasn’t a surprise, given the Stars’ having to play without their top center. Oettinger made a great pad stop on Evander Kane about five minutes in, with the Stars’ getting hemmed in their zone for a minute or so before a deft clear by Robertson that came just short of icing.

Dallas had a golden chance to get the lead when Miro Heiskanen sent a pass across that ticked off the skate of Sam Steel before it made it across to Colin Blackwell, who then had to adjust the puck.

That little doink off Steel’s skate gave Skinner time to get across with the blocker, and the game remained 0-0.

The Oilers got a lucky break when the officials all conferred after a puck was sent out of the Oilers’ zone by Brett Kulak and right into the netting, but none of them saw the puck get clearly flipped out of play, apparently, and the Oilers once again benefited from official leniency and/or ignorance.

Edmonton then scored two quick goals, making the bitter pill of Hintz’s absence taste downright acrid. The Stars lost the offensive-zone draw up the ice (after the non-call), and they lost the coverage race back up the ice.

Evan Bouchard then immediately ripped a one-timer through a bunch of traffic right inside the post that Oettinger never saw.

Less than a minute later, a poorly-timed Thomas Harley pinch left Cody Ceci defending Connor McDavid on a 3-on-1 that McDavid put away with little trouble after a couple of passes.

The Harley pinch was especially brutal with all three Dallas forwards caught far too high up ice, after Robertson’s stick got stuck in an Oiler defenseman’s skates.

Rantanen is slowly recovering from the far left corner, while Robertson is battling to get back his stick. Granlund is outnumbered along the boards, and Harley tries to close on Nugent-Hopkins at the absolute wrong time. With an Oiler lingering out wide already, the puck squirts loose just in time to allow Nugent-Hopkins to bank it past Harley, with McDavid busting down the ice to get the puck for the 3-on-1.

And yeah. This chance is always getting buried.

Still, Dallas pushed hard to cut the lead before the end of the first. Jason Robertson had a good shot in tight late in the period that found Skinner more than he found it, and then Dallas got a lucky break of their own when Mikko Rantanen’s stick was lifted into his face by Kasperi Kapanen, only for the officials to penalize Kapanen for high-sticking at 19:58 of the opening period.

Overall, the 2-0 score was probably worse than Dallas deserved. But their coverage mistakes on both goals were something you can’t blame on officiating or dirty play, and the Oilers punished them summarily. Dallas had 40 minute to avoid a repeat of Game 2.

Second Period

Rantanen hit a post with a one-timer just 20 seconds into the opening power play, and a minute later, Skinner’s glove would stop another Rantanen shot in tight. Nothing came of the rest of the power play.

Esa Lindell and John Klingberg got into a fun little stick battle in the Edmonton zone about three minutes in, but Lindell’s strength eventually won out, and the Stars were able to get a puck to the netfront with Steel on the doorstep, where he whacked a puck off Skinner’s pads with no real angle.

The Oilers would get their first shot attempt since McDavid’s goal in the first period when Bichsel shot a puck into McDavid, then got his stick broken and/or ripped out of his hands by I think Zach Hyman, leaving Bichsel helpless alongside Petrovic defending McDavid and two other forwards. But the puck was shot wide by Nugent-Hopkins, and Bichsel buried Nugent-Hopkins into the boards for his troubles. Connor McDavid pleaded for a penalty call after the play, but to no avail.

Cody Ceci also made a great defensive play, diving to poke a puck away with a breakaway developing, and hey, we always have time to give Ceci credit for a great defensive play.

Dallas had hit four posts through 28 minutes of play, and while the game was fairly wide-open with chances being traded, it felt like the game was bound to be 2-1 or 3-0 before too much more time went by.

Edmonton got another break eight minutes in when Skinner got a quick whistle with Benn on the doorstep after Wyatt Johnston put a shot of him off the rush. But the whistle was blown just as Benn kicked the puck to his stick, and the play was dead before the puck was put into the net.

Esa Lindell got another great chance after some Dallas pressure, but he nailed his own player at the net front (I thought—the NHL recorded it as a shot on Skinner) and a Cody Ceci pinch shortly after led to a 2-on-1 for McDavid that Dallas escaped without

Dallas wouldn’t get let off the hook when Lian Bichsel’s stick got in between Corey Perry’s skates, bringing down the veteran winger to give Edmonton some relief from the Dallas onslaught of chances.

Dallas even got the better of the chances on the Bichsel penalty, with a Colin Blackwell rush up the ice as Skinner stared at a loose puck, and Blackwell swatted it into him after turning on the afterburners to win the race up the ice.

Unfortunately, Sam Steel got a little overzealous with 18 seconds left to kill, getting his own stick into Draisaitl’s skates at the blue line, giving Edmonton a brief look at 5-on-3. But Colin Blackwell once again got the puck up the ice, and Edmonton iced it right after that, allowed Bichsel to exit the box without any real 5-on-3 time developing in earnest.

Dallas would kill the rest of the Steel minor with efficiency, and the Stars would pick up where they left off, pouring it on. And despite everying from shots on goal to high-danger chances to offensive-zone time being tilted massively in Dallas’s favor, the score was 2-0.

Then, it was 2-1.

Rantanen found Bichsel with a great low-to-high pass, and Bichsel ripped a wrister through Skinner’s five-hole from the high slot. (The goal would later be given to Robertson.)

The goal was huge. It was also pretty cathartic, given that Petrovic’s stick had been slashed to bits attempting to keep a puck in the zone earlier in the shift, but no call was made. Petrovic would get a huge hit on Connor Brown (that knocked him out of the game) after he got a new stick, and Bichsel would make the most of the sequence with the goal.

Duchene nearly tied it on a great individual effort a couple of minutes later, but Skinner gloved it down. And then Edmonton got a couple of perfect bounces off the glass that led to two scoring chances.

Nugent-Hopkins got the first one after a chip-out died off the near boards in between Dallas’s defense and forwards, allowing McDavid to rush up the ice. Oettinger then got in no-man’s land trying to play the puck, having to leave it in the no-no area outside the trapezoid below the goal line.

The puck would get fed back up for RNH, but Oettinger’s blocker flashed out to make the save, and Dallas moved along.

Then the dagger came, after Ceci prevented a great McDavid look on the near side, the puck rolled around the far point, where Bouchard just chipped it back down into the Stars’ zone. Or at least, he tries to.

Instead, it hits at least one Stars player and gets knocked back down, dying perfectly for McDavid to take just as he prepares to go for a change.

McDavid said “thank you very much,” and turned and took the gift and ripped it through Lindell’s block and over Oettinger’s shoulder for an absolute heartbreaker of a goal to make it 3-1 with only seconds remaining in the middle period.

All told, it was a dominant period for Dallas in every way except the scoreboard. And it turns out, that’s the one that matters. Connor McDavid will make you pay for mistakes, and he did so twice more than Dallas’s team had done themselves through 40 minutes.

Third Period

Corey Perry nearly caught Oettinger napping with a quick wrap-around 30 seconds in, but the puck slid right to the goalie rather than past him, giving Dallas a rare bit of good fortune in Game 3.

Dallas prepared for an all-out attack in the third, and Harley and Heiskanen began to spend a lot more time together. Johnston also moved up to play with Rantanen and Granlund a fair bit.

And again, the Stars came impossibly close to scoring, only for the hockey gods to turn a blind eye to their plea. Tyler Seguin ripped a shot off Skinner and into the crease, where Duchene immediately got mobbed as he tried to knock it over the line. But somehow, the puck stayed out.

ESPN never showed a replay of that sequence, but the puck sat there for a couple of seconds with everyone battling for it, somehow getting put wide.

And shortly after that, the Stars’ defense got caught with Hyman up the ice, as a long pass got by Petrovic and found Hyman alone at the blue line, where he reminded everyone that he recently scored 50 goals in a season by going top-shelf on Oettinger.

It was a calamity of a familiar sort in this series, where Edmonton has been finishing their high-grade chances at a far higher rate than Dallas. In this game, any bad break for Dallas seemed to be immediately followed up by a capitalized chance from Edmonton.

Then, another bit of bad luck for Dallas came when Benn was high-sticked by Trent Frederic, drawing blood. But once again, nothing was called.

One couldn’t help but remember the Nathan MacKinnon double-minor in Game 1 of the playoffs, when he successfully pleaded with the officials to call a double minor to review the play, even though no official raised their arm for a penalty at the time.

Benn, instead, just went to the bench, staring straight ahead, as Dave Zeis began to patch up the Stars captain.

Dallas finally gave up the ghost when heavy Dallas pinching gave Edmonton another odd-man rush, and Evander Kane perfectly sauced a puck past Heiskanen and a diving Lindell for Hyman. And even with the puck bouncing off the ice, would you believe the bounce worked out for Edmonton? In this game, you would.

Hyman swiped at the bouncing puck, and it deflected perfectly over Oettinger’s glove to douse any remaining flicker of hope for Dallas.

Harley would earn a power play when Podkolzin laid a heavy slash on Harley’s laces as the defenseman made a move at the Edmonton blue line, bringing him down. But it was garbage time with a four-goal deficit and five minutes to go, so all it really did was even up the power plays awarded to the two teams.

That wouldn’t even last, as Harley was given a penalty for giving Hyman bump after the whistle so benign that Ray Ferraro compared it to something that would happen at the supermarket. But with tempers flaring for Dallas, it was apparently an effort to calm things down. That’s my guess, at least. And in this game, you’ll have to do a lot of guessing to understand the calls that were and were not made. But a 6-1 loss isn’t one you can ever pin on the officiating, and Dallas knows that.

Anyway, yeah, they lost 6-1 because, on the ensuing power play, John Klingberg would make a trademark shuffle move at the point, then fire a shot just over Oettinger’s glove and in for a goal that I don’t really begrudge him, if I’m honest.

Nonsense happened in the final minutes, but no big revenge on Hintz’s behalf was exacted, and Dallas faces the closet thing to a must-win game on Tuesday that there is, in the playoffs, other than an actual must-win game.

We’ll see what happens.