Postgame Beats: Two Losses in One Game

Looming is bad

Before Game 2, Dallas could have won a championship by doing nothing more than winning seven games on home ice.

After Game 2, Dallas will need to steal a road game, and possibly more. And they might have to do it without their top center, as Roope Hintz left the game in the third period and did not return. Some reporters mentioned that they saw Hintz in a walking boot after the game, as well.

Pete DeBoer was asked after the game what he thought about the Roope Hintz injury, after Hintz slashed in the foot by Darnell Nurse, leaving the game.

“I’ll answer your question with a question,” said DeBoer. “Does anyone in this room think if Connor McDavid gets carried off the ice like that, it’s not a five-minute major? That’s my answer your to question.”

DeBoer said he did not have an update on Hintz’s status after the game.

DeBoer’s point is valid, and it’s one that NHL coaches tend to use a lot in these situations, when they lose a player to injury and don’t see the punishment as sufficient. I don’t expect it will change much about this situation, but the Stars might be hoping it will at least plant a seed in the officials’ minds for future games in the series.

For now, the Stars have to face the reality that they played a pretty good game for long stretches, only to never manage to do the most important part of playing hockey: scoring a goal.

The Stars probably deserved a closer game than they got, but that’s been the way of things this postseason: when they lose, they lose.

Okay, back to the biggest concern: Roope Hintz.

Here are some facts:

• Hintz had cross-checked Nurse a few seconds before the slash, so he probably knew something was coming back in retaliation.

• A whack to the legs is pretty common in these sorts of net-front battles and NHL scuffles. The top of the foot is very close to the legs.

• The NHL tends to allow a bit of “back and forth” in these situations. The phrase “in the moment” is trotted out a lot when momentary retaliation goes bad.

• Section 61.3 of the NHL rulebook states that when an injury occurs as a result of a slashing penalty, a major penalty “must be assessed” under this rule.

• It is difficult for referees to judge injury vs. “he got a stinger and will return later in the game.” If Hintz had been bleeding or something that can be categorically called “injury” by a non-doctor, then I suspect the major is an easier call. But players often leave for a few minutes only to come back, like after blocking a hard shot off the foot.

• If the officials had called a major, and Hintz had walked right back up the tunnel a minute later, they would have felt tricked into the major.

• Nurse didn’t chase Hintz down or wind up for a two-handed slash.

• Some people think it could be merely a contusion, not a fracture.

• It really, really, really stinks for Hintz, and Dallas.

• When a player intentionally hits another player with their stick and causes a significant injury, the rule book is pretty clearly set up to punish them severely. To that point, if Hintz isn’t able to play in Game 3, the NHL might well decide to give Nurse a one-game suspension.

  

Lines

The Stars began the game with this lineup:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Ceci
Bichsel-Petrovic

Oettinger

While Oskar Bäck coming out for Colin Blackwell is something we’ve seen before in the postseason, the Petrovic-for-Lyubushkin change was quite unexpected.

Some of thinking might have been to get Bichsel back with a partner he was more comfortable with, as he hadn’t played much with Lyubushkin during the regular season. Either way, Lyubushkin endured his first healthy scratch as a Dallas Star in Game 2 of the Western Conference Final.

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Edmonton rolled out the same lineup as Game 1, as expected:

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

Kulak - Bouchard
Nurse - Stecher
Walman - Klingberg

Skinner

First Period

In what I can only assume was a magnanimous birthday gift to Esa Lindell, Pete DeBoer started an all-Finnish lineup in Game 2. They promptly iced the puck twice, but no damage was done, and the NHL-first was duly accomplished.

When Dallas got an offensive-zone face-off, Thomas Harley remained on the ice as Miro Heiskanen came on. So the situational deployment of that pairing still looks to be in effect, even if Lindell-Heiskanen was going to be the default setting.

But after some good back-and-forth play, Edmonton got a pretty questionable penalty call when Troy Stecher saw Granlund coming for a hit, and turned at the last second. Granlund ended up hitting his numbers, but as you can see, he didn’t really have time to change his hit here.

Was it actually boarding? Well, we could go down the rabbit hole of examining the rule and all that, but here’s the deal: Garrett Rank saw the whole thing from five feet away, and he called it boarding, so it was boarding.

The Oilers would not take long to score on the resulting power play. A Bouchard point shot rattled off a couple of things on its way in, but the puck was shot hard enough to keep going, where it found Nugent-Hopkins on the back door to tap it in.

1-0 Edmonton.

Dallas would get a penalty after a great shift from the fourth line, as a Jason Robertson chance in tight was eventually corralled by Skinner, only for Trent Frederic to haul down Colin Blackwell by the collar. But in the hustle and bustle of the playoff season, Corey Perry was penalized, and he would serve a roughing minor to put Dallas on the job.

(In fairness, it’s always a safe bet to penalize Corey Perry in any given situation.)

Dallas generated some good looks on the set, but Matt Duchene missed the net on the best of them. And it would be Edmonton who came closest to scoring, when Connor McDavid (he’s good) intercepted a Seguin pass back to the point, sending him in on a 2-on-1 with Zach Hyman.

Thomas Harley didn’t end up taking either the pass or the shot, and McDavid rang the iron behind Oettinger. But mercifully, the puck bounced the wrong direction afterward.

Jason Robertson got another chance later on that power play from the slot, but Skinner was able to get a piece of the shot, and Dallas couldn’t find the rebound.

It was a fairly wide-open period after that, with both teams looking for chances, and often getting them, only to turn it over high in the other zone and give up a rush right back the other way. Scoring chances mounted for both sides, but the difference remained that Edmonton had cashed in on their power play, while Dallas had not.

Dallas got let of the hook a little bit when a puck squirted through Oettinger low at the near side, but the puck was scooped out of the crease before it got put home. Petrovic would also generated a dangerous shot from distance, but it deflected off either the post of the upper part of Skinner’s goalstick, going wide.

Edmonton probably deserved a power play late in the first after Kapenen appeared to get hooked by Thomas Harley with a loose puck begging to be put home, but no such call was made.

Harley then tried to reach his stick around Leon Draisaitl a few seconds later, and he wouldn’t get away with that one. Holding was called, and it was a power play for Edmonton with half a minute remaining in the period.

Dallas would kill the 30 seconds, but the Oilers would have 90 more of them with an extra skater to start the second period.

At even-strength, things had been pretty even. I am told that special teams are important, however.

5v5 shots

Second Period

Dallas would make it through the penalty kill after a couple of saves from Oettinger, including one where he left his near post a bit too soon, having to lunge back with his blocker hand to stop Draisaitl.

A scary moment came two minutes into the period, when Granlund toe-picked and fell down, with one skate catching Connor Brown up high.

Brown had to go off for repairs, but thankfully it didn’t end up as badly as it could have.

Edmonton had a couple of near-misses after that, with Oettinger managing to avoid putting rebounding pucks into his own net after they went off the end boards and Tyler Seguin on successive close calls.

Oettinger managed to stick the second way away just before Mattias Janmark could get to it, earning some “Otter! Otter!” chants from the crowd, who was looking for something to be happy about.

Dallas nearly gave it to them a couple of times, too. Skinner had multiple turnovers when attempting to play the puck early in this one, and the Oilers’ sloppiness started to turn into good chances for Dallas. But with 9:23 to go, a Marchment tip attempt after some good cycling work by the reunited Duchene line was played with a high stick, and the Stars had to regroup for the second half of the game with the same 1-0 deficit they’d been dealing with during the first half.

The Johnston line then got hemmed in for some good looks, including a cross-crease pass to Draisaitl that looked like a sure goal, only for the puck to explode off his stick, letting Dallas off the hook.

After a near-miss by Roope Hintz after a broken play at one end, Edmonton would finally change the 1-0 scoreline with a fortunate play at the other. Connor McDavid turned and fed Brett Kulak coming down from the point, and Mikko Rantanen ended up executing a nice block on the defenseman’s shot. The puck would bounce right back to Kulak, however, and he wired it past Oettinger, who was frozen from flinching on the initial shot. 2-0, Edmonton.

It continued to be Not Dallas’s Period just over a minute later, when Connor Brown got open on the doorstep to expertly tip a puck down off the ice, bouncing it over Oettinger’s left pad and making it 3-0 in the blink of an eye (depending on your blinking ability, I suppose).

It was a quick-strike play, and the Oilers nearly added to their lead shortly after, as Dallas looked completely stunned in the aftermath, giving up multiple rush chances in the final minutes of the second period, all of which culminated in Jake Oettinger coming out to play a puck ahead of an oncoming Edmonton forecheck and promptly flipping it over the glass for a delay of game penalty with a minute to go in the second period.

It was a sour note to end a sour period, with Dallas having had multiple chances to tie the game up with some Edmonton mistakes in the second, only to find themselves down 3-0 when all was said in done—and with half a penalty to kill to start the third, to boot.

Third Period

Dallas didn’t make it easy on themselves when Colin Blackwell took another penalty just before the initial minor expired, throwing a hit on McDavid a bit too late after McDavid had gotten rid of the puck.

Then again, Blackwell went to Harvard, so maybe he knew what he was doing, as the subsequent kill saw Wyatt Johnston get a shorthanded breakaway that looked for all the world like Dallas’s chance to get back into the game.

But Skinner got just a piece of it, sending the puck over the crossbar.

Dallas would kill the remainder of the penalty, and then they would go on their own power play after Hintz and Nurse exchanged whacks by the goal, with Nurse catching Hintz’s skate with a hard slash that crumpled Hintz.

The Stars’ top center had to be helped off the ice and down the tunnel, and the officials called a major penalty in order to review the play on video. But after looking at it, they made what I think is probably the correct call, downgrading it to a minor. Hintz had just given Nurse a cross check right beforehand, so Nurse’s retaliatory slash wasn’t all that out of the ordinary.

The only problem is that the slash came down right on top of the skate, where there’s nothing more than a tongue and laces. The worry, of course, is that something could have gotten fractured in that situation.

As for the hockey, Dallas couldn’t capitalize on the power play, and that sort of felt like the ballgame right there. A 3-0 deficit is bad enough, but when a team can’t make the other team pay for injuring their top center, it tends to cause more sag than surge, and that’s what ended up taking place.

Stuart Skinner hadn’t had to come up big too often through 50 minutes, but he made his best stop of the night in the 52nd, when a set of 4-on-4 hockey came after Bichsel and Podkolzin exchanged pleasantries. During the two minutes of less-clogged ice, Dallas got the Oilers spinning, and Heiskanen ripped a shot off the end boards that bounced perfectly to Lindell, who immediately fired it on net.

But Skinner managed to reach out with his stick and make a fabulous save, stamping out the embers of Dallas hope just as they were starting to glow. Skinner got his stick behind the puck, managing to bank it just above the goal line and out the other side with a save reminiscent of Jake Oettinger a year or two ago.

Mattias Janmark nearly made it 4-0 with four minutes to play when he poked a puck five-hole on Oettinger, but the Stars goalie got some good fortune as the puck slid into the post and along the Stars’ goal line before Heiskanen cleared it just ahead of Janmark’s follow-up attempt.

From there, it was all but perfunctory. Dallas pressured hard with the extra attacker, but Skinner had already done enough to seal the win, and Dallas couldn’t test him much in the final minutes. Edmonton got a late power play after Rantanen saved a goal with a slash on Hyman just before he shot the puck, so if there’s any consolation to be found in that final bit of the game, it was that the Stars managed to only get shutout 3-0, this time.

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Game 3 is in Edmonton on Sunday afternoon. Safe to say, it’s going to be a pretty big one.