Preseason Game 2 AfterThoughts: Stars Steal Special Teams Ordeal, 3-2
First, let’s all give our best wishes to Peter DeBoer for a full and speedy recovery from his appendix surgery.
Stars coach Pete DeBoer is not on the bench tonight in Colorado because he is having surgery to have his appendix removed. During his yearly training camp physical, they discovered an issue and decided to remove it.
— Mike Heika (@MikeHeika) September 24, 2024
All right, moving on. This post will be abbreviated today for two reasons: First, because it’s the preseason, and second, because Gavin and I spent almost an hour discussing the game (and other topics) on last night’s podcast. You can give that listen everywhere, including at this link: https://www.audacy.com/podcast/spits-suds-podcast-67080/episodes/stars-win-2nd-preseason-game-in-last-second-game-winner-from-bichsel-ad1b4
Preseason baseball is dull as all get out. Players are extremely limited in what is asked of them, and everyone is just trying to loosen up and get ready for the games that count. It’s easy enough for borderline roster players to still try to swing or catch or throw their hardest, but no starting pitcher is asked to go deep into games, and no catcher is asked to play three games in a row.
Preseason basketball and football are similar, though with a bit more physicality involved. Still and all, no one is going full speed in those games.
Hockey is different, as it always seems to be. The borderline players are giving it their all in order to win a spot in the best league in the world, and that necessitates a response from the veterans, if for no other reason than their own safety, and their teammates’. You simply can’t afford to go half speed when the other guy is bearing down on you.
So while I don’t pick apart these games too much, they aren’t meaningless, as we said Saturday. But if you ever wanted to see a preseason game try its very hardest to be meaningless, you’d probably point to a penalty-infested contest where Dallas barely brought the required number of veteran players, and where Colorado likewise sat all of their top dogs.
Sure, Lian Bichsel had a glorious winner to beat the clock, and sure, he also had a mistake or two. Almost every player had a mistake or two in this one, however, as the goalies could well tell you. Odd-man rushes and breakaways were plentiful, and that made the Texas Stars’ presumptive goalie tandem all the more impressive for what they did, with Magnus Hellberg in particular frustrating Colorado on a plethora of grade-A chances, the majority of which came with his team shorthanded. Remi Poirier was no slouch either, pitching a 7-for-7 inning to lock things down in the third for the Stars’ comeback. It’s not just the defenders who look to be quite good in Texas this year.
As for the other players, what can you say? Nils Lundkvist got to run more power plays last night than he has in a long time, and you can see why Jim Nill brought him back. There’s potential there, and perhaps this will be the year where it can translate to the NHL when he gets an opportunity. But potential is only just that, until it isn’t.
On the other end of the development spectrum, take Brendan Smith and Ilya Lyubushkin. The two veterans were solid and steady, with Lyubushkin in particular making a great play to pinch hard and get the puck back to Stankoven, who set up Bichsel for the winner. That’s a play that’s easier to make in the dying seconds, when the risk of a turnover on a blind pass back to the point is basically nil. But even so, it showed that Lyubushkin is much more than just a hard-nosed defender beloved by GMs for his ferocity. He is also, as all NHLers are, one of the best hockey players in the world.
Wyatt Johnston looked like a player eminently comfortable with the environment, pulling a couple of slick moves to cross up the opposition with the ease we’ve come to expect from one of the best players on the team.
Mavrik Bourque played wing on a line with Sam Steel and Emil Hemming, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see the team use him at wing as needed rather than planting him as a third-line center ad infinitum. Flexibility is king for DeBoer, as it always has been. As my dad would say, semper gumby.
Tristan Bertucci looks like a player ready for full-time AHL duty, but he won’t be eligible to come up to Cedar Park until the OHL season ends. It’s easy to focus on the players closest to cracking the Dallas depth chart, but Texas needs players on its second and third pairings, too.
Note: An earlier draft of this post incorrectly speculated that Bertucci would be in the AHL before the end of the OHL season, which he is not eligible to do. Bertucci and Emil Hemming were loaned back to Barrie this morning.
We’ll have more this week, but it was fun to watch a game that would normally have been relegated to a visiting radio broadcast, and it was especially fun to watch a game that had drama to cap off a lot of messiness. Daryl Reaugh was the perfect guest for that wild second period, and I give Brian Rea and Brent Severyn all the credit in the world for trying something new on a new network. We are, as ever, living in unprecedented times, and it’s nice for that to mean something other than a global disaster for once.