Three Cool Things: The Relentless Dallas Power Play, the Other Ceci, and Thomas Harley
Let's talk about some cool stuff
Today, we’re introducing a new series called Three Cool Things, wherein I choose three things that I find particularly cool and talk about them. This is probably not a very crucial introduction.
#1: The Dallas power play is creating chances like (almost) nobody else
The job of a power play, as every Stars fan has heard, is to create three things: momentum, scoring chances, and goals.
You won’t score on every power play, but sometimes that’s not your fault, so all you can do is just pressure and create good looks, and hope the goaltender doesn’t go unconscious with his play for two minutes.
Speaking of which, Mackenzie Blackwood has been doing heroic work for Colorado in holding Dallas to “just” four power play goals in five games. Blackwood has faced the most shots from an opposing power play of any goalie in the playoff so far, as Dallas has sent 31 pucks his way. And those haven’t been lobs from distance, either; Blackwood has also faced the most scoring chances of any goaltender in the playoffs, per Natural Stat Trick. And he’s been outstanding at frustrating some really incredible chances all series.
Those Dallas power play numbers become easier to believe when you look at this graph of shots by Dallas (shown in tan), which shows Dallas creating the second-most overall offense of any power play in the playoffs (behind only Toronto’s terrifying five-forward unit).
In fact, Blackwood has stopped 12-of-12 shots from Dallas’s power play in the most dangerous areas of the ice (per NST). You could easily see that frustrating some teams, and certainly in Game 4, it felt like the Stars might be running out of ways to solve the Colorado netminder.
But when you step back and look at the whole picture, you realize that Dallas has adapted their approach to put four crucial pucks past Blackwood anyway: Tyler Seguin and Wyatt Johnston, who scored crucial power play goals from the circle on quick shots, and Roope Hintz and Jamie Benn, who beat Blackwood with deft high-tip plays from between the circles further out.
Blackwood’s athleticism and outstanding play could really have started to make the power play sag, but Steve Spott’s group has found a way to turn their fantastic puck movement into good-enough goal generation, and that’s all you need to do in a playoff series—be better than the other team.
Oh, and let’s just throw Colorado’s shot generation map up here for fun, too, for comparison, and also because it’s kind of obvious what their approach has been:
(Guess which side of the ice Nathan MacKinnon is usually on.)
Colorado has scored three power play goals to Dallas’s four. The penalty kill deserves all the praise it’s gotten—and so does Jake Oettinger—but the Dallas man-advantage has been resilient in the face of great goaltending, and that’s been enough to tip the series when they’ve needed it most. So far.
#2: Cody Ceci’s brother is an MVP and a league champion
Cole Ceci, younger brother of the Stars’ defenseman, led the Evansville Thunderbolts to the SPHL1 championship last week with a .962 SV% and 1.30 GAA, along with two shutouts.
I had a chance to chat briefly with Cody the other day, and he mentioned that when they were growing up, Cole was a defenseman, like himself. His memory is that Cole was around 12 years old when he made the switch to goalie, and obviously Evansville couldn’t be happier about it.
The Thunderbolts entered the playoffs as the seventh seed (of eight teams), but they blitzed the competition in the playoffs thanks to outstanding goaltending from Ceci, who played seven games in fifteen days. Evansville won the championship when they took two games in a row over Knoxville, winning 4-3 in double overtime in Game 1, then 2-1 in overtime.
Two things to note about that schedule: First, Cole Ceci’s two wins against Hunstville, with 105 saves over two games on back-to-back nights to take the best-of-three series after dropping Game 1.
Second, Ceci also beat Knoxville in the SPHL Final on back-to-back nights again, with both of those games going to overtime as well.
Maybe something about clutch playoff performances runs in the family.
#3: Thomas Harley
Pete DeBoer told a story today about what Thomas Harley’s defensive game looked like in training camp back in 2022, when DeBoer first arrived in Dallas.
“If I could rewind to that first training camp, I remember running one-on-one drills, and he couldn’t have been softer,” DeBoer said on Tuesday. “At that point when we sent him back, it was a long way to go. And to his credit, he listened. The coaches down there worked on it with him. They understood the mandate. They didn’t preach offense, they didn’t play him on the power play.”
As you’ll recall, Harley had played 34 games for Dallas in the 2021-22 season prior to DeBoer’s arrival, so he had gotten more than a cup of coffee in the NHL to that point. But the Stars decided Harley needed to work on his defensive game, so back to the AHL he went, with the coaches in Texas—Neil Graham, Max Fortunus, and Travis Morin—helping him to start winning those one-on-one battles he hadn’t been strong on in training camp.
“They based how they were judging him on how he was defending, and he bought into that,” DeBoer said. “I think that was the right path, because he started to recognize the importance of it to play at this level, and he added that to his game. The offensive instincts have always been there.”
We’ve heard this part of the story before, of course. Harley would come back up to the NHL late in the 2022-23 season after doing that work, and not even two years later, he was playing for Team Canada at the Four Nations Face-Off.
“It’s a great lesson for young players,” DeBoer said. “Instead of pouting and saying, ‘That’s not who I am, I’m an offensive guy,’ he added that layer to his game, and all of a sudden, now he’s a world-class player.”
That story about one-on-one battles was only the appetizer of this cool part, though.
Here’s what caught my eye this morning when looking at the top six defensemen in ice time (all situations) during the playoffs:
Yeah, Harley has been playing more minutes than the Norris Trophy guy below him. He’s been putting a Heiskanen-less Stars team on his back for three months now, and he’s gotten his team to a 3-2 series lead.
But the other question is: how have those minutes been going? It’s one thing to play minutes, but quite another to play well during them, right?
Here are Harley’s 5-on-5 numbers: He’s been on the ice for five Dallas goals, and just one Colorado goal in 108 minutes. See for yourself:
Some of that 5-1 advantage might be due to better goaltending, but a whole lot of it is consistent with Harley’s regular season, in which he was a +29 at 5-on-5 nearly 10% better than expected—a differential which was first in the NHL among the few dozen players with at least 1,400 minutes at 5-on-5 this year.
And just for good measure, don’t forget Harley was leading the team in scoring until Wyatt Johnston popped off last night.
In summary:
Harley leading the league in ice time
He’s scored two big goals and set up three more
Harley has only seen one Colorado goal in over 108 minutes at 5-on-5 against the best players Colorado can throw at him
Harley has done this all without Miro Heiskanen
If Harley keeps anything even remotely close to this performance up during a deep playoff run, you could easily to see him winding up with an NHL version of Cole Ceci’s award.
For the uninitiated, the SPHL is the professional hockey league right below the ECHL.