The Privilege of Victory: Burying the Narratives after a First Round Victory

To the victor go the unspoiled memories

Connor Hellebuyck just avoided a catasrophic first-round loss against St. Louis. That means the Stars will get to see whether that experience hardened him or rattled him, which is to say we’ll decide whether Hellebuyck is A True Playoff Goalie after the results come in, just like many folks have done with Jake Oettinger for his career.

But for Jets fans, they have to be breathing a massive sigh of relief on Hellebuyck’s behalf, because who wants to go into the offseason with everyone talking about how the shiny trophies your all-world goaltender just won don’t shine so brightly under the harsh spotlight of the postseason?

Depending on how the second round goes, that narrative may resurface. Winning one round only really solves big problems if you’re Buffalo or Ottawa, but for the moment, the Jets have gotten a reprieve, and that’s as it should be.

For the Stars, their first-round victory does much the same. The spotlight was never going to focused on one single player the way it was on Hellebuyck for Winnipeg, but there were some nasty narrative land mines lurking before and during this series, even bleeding into the third period of Game 7. Of course, thanks to Mikko Rantanen, the Stars pogo-sticked their way around all of them to safety in one of the most dramatic and memorable playoff games any Stars fans will ever see.

So today, let’s revisit just how many of those potential narratives were quashed by Rantanen’s superheroics, and shovel some extra dirt of them just to be safe. The anxiety comes back tomorrow, but let’s take one more day to be grateful for a couple of the stories we won’t have to seriously countenance. For now, at least.

You Can’t Flip the Switch

Losing seven straight games the way the Stars did had everybody around Dallas grousing, including the coach. And rightly so, given the way they were blowing leads in fashions more darkly comical than a vaudeville antagonist. Evgenii Dadonov and Sidney Crosby dueling hat tricks? Poof. The record-setting Vancouver Meltdown? Gone. The Jamie Benn 400th goal-that-wasn’t in yet another flop in Detroit? Once Benn scored that power play goal in Game 3, his goalless streak down the stretch became something you could actually laugh about (though I wouldn’t advise doing so in front of either of Benn or Lian Bichsel).

Even Pete DeBoer’s regular season avoidance of three consecutive regulation losses finally ceased, in that same Detroit loss. And Tyler Seguin’s long-awaited return in Nashville looked like just what the doctor ordered 16 seconds into the game when his line scored, only for Dallas once again to fail to hold a lead while losing Jason Robertson besides.

It was a bitterly disappointing way to end the regular season. Going into the playoffs, everyone agreed that you can’t really flip the switch from that level of ineptitude to defeating a healthy Colorado team about to add Gabriel Landeskog, right? A team playing this badly, without Miro Heiskanen or Jason Robertson? Good luck figuring out all those issues in time to weather the thin air of Colorado.

But it turns out the Stars absolutely did flip the switch. Even after dropping Game 1, they managed to remind everyone which of the two great teams had played the most playoff games of any team in the past few years. Dallas bore up under the pressure, and they landed the killing blow with a baseball bat Colorado sold at a garage sale back in January. This sounds gruesome, but it’s only sports.

Colorado Earned the Better Bounces

When that goal went in, you felt two things: Disgust and admiration. The former, because are you kidding me, and the latter, because you absolutely will not see a goal like that again any time soon, and maybe ever.

And as the series went on, it seemed like Colorado kept earning bounces like that. The next goal in Game 1, even, when Nate MacKinnon shot a puck off Ilya Lyubushkin’s business, allowing it to knuckle past Jake Oettinger. And who can forget the horrible, no-good, Aeschylusian own goal in Game 6 that appeared to have torched Dallas’s last, best hope to cash in on a whirlwind second period from Mikko Rantanen and Roope Hintz?

And hey, let’s throw officiating in this category, too. Nathan MacKinnon basically commanded the officials to call a high-sticking penalty in Game 1, and they obeyed. It was the right call, absolutely, but when you looked at how things combined for Dallas to lose Game 1, it sure felt like everything was breaking for the Avalanche.

There were, in the end, some missed calls for both sides, and things all evened out. But in Game 6, after a phantom high-sticking call on Thomas Harley and a “now we’re calling this actually” interference call on Mikael Granlund, Stars fans began to feel quite aggrieved.

But this series doesn’t have to be one you feel that way about, anymore. Because the Stars got a massive bounce off Sam Girard’s skate, and if you don’t think Mikko Rantanen earned every inch of that beautiful deflection, I don’t know what to tell you.

Fate isn’t always kind, but it’s nice when its obedience to Newton’s Third Law takes place within the same playoff series, rather than over a lifetime.

Jake Oettinger Was Only a Playoff Goalie in 2022

It’s a shame that Oettinger’s first playoff series as the starting goaltender had to set a bar so absurdly high that no human being could possible hope to stay there.

He was always bound to come back to the land of mere mortals, and in 2023, his eventual numbers made it look like he kind of did.

Six games vs. Minnesota (who sort of blew it by trying to alternate goalies early on and letting Dallas back in the series after the traditional Stars’ Game 1 loss), Seven games vs. Seattle (that featured losses with 5, 6, and 7 Kraken goals), and then the horrible disaster against somebody literally named Adin Hill, as Vegas nuked his postseason stats for good that year, despite two rebound victories after Jamie Benn’s ordered absence.

Last year was better, and I still think he got a bit of an unfair shake after Stuart Skinner and Edmonton managed to stifle Dallas’s power play. The team that loses doesn’t always lose because their goalie let in more, even if that’s what the scorekeeper says.

Nonetheless, everyone would agree that Oettinger needed to show up against (checks notes) Mackenzie…Blackwood? Okay, sure, I guess. Anyway, after Game 1, Blackwood looked every bit like he was set to play the part of Stuart Skinner or Adin Hill once again, a relatively obscure goalie playing great when it mattered, while Jake Oettinger wasn’t great enough on the other side.

Except, after those bounces, Oettinger did play great when it mattered. He did reinforce Dallas’s penalty kill and shut down almost everyone except possibly the best player in the world. And in Game 7, Oettinger finally closed the door as Dallas took a third-period lead with four minutes to go.

And unlike the last seven games of the season, Oettinger held that lead. Unlike earlier games in the series, Oettinger simply didn’t allow a rough bounce or a tough penalty to undermine his team. He was exactly what you hope a franchise goalie will be: reliably excellent when you need him the most.

As a reward for that fantastic performance, Oettinger now gets to face the best goaltender on the planet. That’s Life in Central Division.

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No matter what happens in the second round, you will not have to wince when you hear about Mackenzie Blackwood, bicycle kick goals, or flipping the switch again any time soon. These narratives have been put to bed for good, even if other ones are likely to start rearing their head tomorrow night.

Anyway, these were the three big ones that stuck out to me, but I’m sure I missed some, so I’ll open the comments to everyone on this post. What narratives are you glad you won’t have to hear about, now that the Stars won this series? Let me hear from you, and remember: be sure to smash that WUPHF button and share with all your Tamagotchis and pogs and pet rocks.