AfterThoughts: Toby Petersen Earns Head Coaching Victory as Dallas Stars Defeat Detroit Red Wings 6-5 in Game 2 of Prospects Weekend

This was a fun one

Tonight, we’ll do a bit more of a standard AfterThoughts piece on Game 2. At the end of the game-specific notes, We’ll talk about a couple of players in particular that stood out across both nights, for one reason or another.

The lines for Game 2 had some changes, with Jaxon Fuder being elevated to the top six, and Niilopekka Muhonen and Dawson Sharkey drawing out for Kaleb Pearson and Aidan Hreschuk.

The lines were:

Ertel-Scott-Hemming
Fuder-Shlaine-Schmidt
Martino-Chisholm-Pearson
Gorzynski-MacDonnell-Paquette

Taylor-Bertucci
Hreschuk-Bergsland
Punnett-Cristoforo

Tiefensee in goal

Muhonen spent a fair bit of time this morning working with Max Fortunus, who coaches the defense in Texas. After making a couple of costly mistakes in Game 1, it was a positive (if expected) sign to see Muhonen putting in the work the next day, even if he wasn’t going to play that night. Any athlete knows that you only ever get better if you’re capable of learning from your mistakes, and that is one thing this weekend is very good for doing, even if the teams aren’t evenly matched.

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Update: Per the team, there were about three thousand fans in attendance on Saturday night (2,954), with another 2,034 coming out on Sunday evening. And from being there, I can tell you that Saturday felt like a pretty full house until the score got out of hand, while Sunday’s relatively smaller crowd got quite loud as the Stars came back in the third.

Overall, it was good to be back in a loud hockey rink again.

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First Period

It was immediately apparent that tonight was going to be a different sort of game than Saturday’s. Jaxon Fuder scored after some strong forechecking from the Shlaine Line (copyright pending) snuffed out a breakout, and Dallas took their own turn scoring a first-minute-of-the-period goal. It was a a result of a more aggressive-looking forcheck for Dallas, as Fuder more than justified his promotion up to the second line by Toby Petersen.

Hreshchuk and Pearson’s energy was apparent early on, with Pearson pushing the play in the offensive zone in the first period, and Hreschuk adding a hit or two himself in a new-look second defense pairing for Dallas. He also hit something else later in the game (no spoilers yet).

Detroit nearly equalized shortly afterward when a horrible bounce off the corner boards caught Tiefensee behind the net. But Kevin Bicker fanned on the first shot, and Tiefensee was able to get back into the net before the puck was sent his way, letting Dallas off the hook.

Justin Ertel executed Plan Captain five minutes in, mixing it up with Justice Christensen low in the Detroit zone after taking the puck in. The two wrestled pretty earnestly and both served some time for it.

Tiefensee had to make a Grade-A stop on Detroit defenseman Maxim Dirracolo a minute later from point-blank range, but he squeezed the gear effectively enough to keep Dallas’s 1-0 lead intact.

Artem Shlaine made it 2-0 after a nifty backhand effort alone on the doorstep found the five-hole. It was a good read by Fuder to step up and grab the loose breakout pass, and he fed the wide-open Shlaine, who finished the job.

Tiefensee also made some slick stops at the midpoint of the first, including a very technically sound save pushing to his left as Detroit put a quick little one-timer right on net along the ice.

Dallas got into penalty trouble later on, as Charlie Paquette and then Fuder took consecutive penalties. Tiefensee made some good stops during the PK, but with 20 seconds left in the second penalty, Detroit finally got a pass through to Shai Buium on the far side, and he was able to elevate it over a sprawling-but-helpless Tiefensee to halve the Stars’ lead.

Fuder took a second penalty late in the second—talk about living long enough to see yourself become the villain—but the Stars nearly capitalized, when Emil Hemming intercepted a puck up high and took it north, with Trey Taylor jumping into the play. Hemming sent an area pass toward the net, and Taylor’s speed got him to the puck first, where he was able to swat at it and force a save out of Michal Pradel.

Unfortunately, the good would end there, as Carson Bantle would stash a puck after it banked off the post and lay agonizingly in the crease behind Tiefensee. Chaos was happening, and at least one Stars player got their stick broken in front of the net before Bantle found the puck and put it in to tie things up late.

Overall, it was a much better first period for Dallas, but the penalty trouble erased their lead. Still, breaking even against a team as deep as the Detroit prospect group is not a bad accomplishment in any 20-minute set, which is to say, good job by Dallas.

Second Period

Cameron Schmidt started the second with a couple of almosts, after Fuder (again) led a good rush into the Detroit zone and handed a puck off for a quick shot that was just a tad bit too fast for Schmidt. He got another chance with the puck on the right side, but it once again slid off his stick before he could put it on net.

The Shlaine Line (I’ve given up on the copyright, lawyers are difficult, feel free to use it) generated another good look from the slot, and Pradel was forced to catch up to a tipped shot ripped from the slot by Shlaine, who was looking for his second goal.

The next shift was another good chance for Dallas, with Taylor making an incisive read that ended with him feathering a puck to the netfront that very nearly got slammed home. But it didn’t, and the Red Wings would eventually take the puck the other way, and the long and the short of it is that Liam Kilfoil took the puck in a one-on-one rush with Ayrton Martino covering for a pinching defenseman, and Kilfoil exploited the matchup to put a nice backhand over Tiefensee’s shoulder to make it 3-2.

Harrison Scott took the Stars’ latest penalty halfway through the second period, and once again, Dallas got a great shorthanded chance. Shlaine led a 3-on-1 rush with Bergsland and Fuder, but despite a feed from Shlaine to set up Bergsland and get the goalie moving the defenseman’s wrister was saved by Pradel. And about 30 seconds later, Nate Danielson rushed in and found space between the circles to fire a third Detroit power play goal into the net, sending it over Tiefensee’s shoulder. 4-2, Detroit.

Aidan Hreschuk nearly got it back, as he would put a shot from the top of the circle off the crossbar and out of play, as Dallas continued to find some better momentum than they did for much of Game 1. It would have been a great moment for Hreschuk, but he had a positive game nonetheless.

Hemming and Ertel also combined down low to test Pradel from in tight late in the period, but there wasn’t much real net to hit. Dallas would finally get another power play after Kilfoil took a penalty in the final minute of the period, and Schmidt and Hemming both looked dangerous on Bertucci’s unit, with Hemming in particular sending two shots at the net. But one was saved and one hit the outside of the net, so if you’re a math expert, then you have probably calculated that this means neither went in.

Dallas would have to settle for taking 1:20 of power play time into the third period.

Third Period

And once again, Dallas decided to copy Detroit’s “Score in the first minute of a period” formula from Game 1. (It’s a good formula, from what I can see.) Angus MacDonnell would capitalize on some of that remaining power play time 27 seconds into the frame after a great play by Justin Ertel, who laid a big hit along the boards to slow down a clearance attempt, then collect the puck shortly afterward and feed it perfectly to MacDonnell in the slot, who one-timed it off Pradel’s body and in to make it 4-3.

The one-goal margin then took a brief break, as Ondrej Becher (who is not Kevin Bicker) fired a one-timer off the post and in after some extended Red Wings zone time to make it 5-3 for Detroit. And in some games, that would be a dagger goal.

But this was not that sort of game. Ayrton Martino countered immediately, forking a puck into the net after working hard to get interior position and do some quick but persistent work on the doorstep to get Dallas back to 5-4. And lo! Trey Taylor would decide Dallas had been trailing for too long, and he joined a rush a minute later and tied the game up after a nice pass through the middle found him coming down the left side. Brand new ballgame.

After that, it was the Arno Tiefensee show, as the big German was under siege halfway through the third period. But he held serve, including a couple of manic sequences around his net with bodies sprawling everywhere, and the goaltender kept his net, with a nice glove save in particular standing out to send a puck just over the bar—shortly before another shot from distance got through traffic and hit his pad, letting him know it was there. But he sorted it out, and through it all, the game stayed 5-5.

Until it didn’t.

Tristan Bertucci, with under four minutes remaining, dipped a shoulder and took the puck down low along the left side. He drew two Detroit players’ attention before deftly feathering a puck through them and right to the stick of Ayrton Martino, who hammered the pass far-side and in to put Dallas up, 6-5.

Detroit had a couple of looks late, but Dallas held on for a victory that they had pretty well earned, capping off yet another Dallas/Detroit prospect weekend.

Final Thoughts

• Toby Petersen won his first game as a head coach in the Dallas organization tonight, and he admitted that it was nice to have that box checked off, regardless the context of the game. He also talked afterwards about how collaborative the coaching process has been with Travis Morin and Max Fortunus. The two Texas assistant coaches know a lot of the players on the Dallas roster quite well, having coached many of them in Cedar Park in recent years, and Petersen gave them plenty of credit for how many good ideas had been exchanged, especially before Game 2.

  • “I’m paying attention to a 5-5 game, and I notice Mo’s drawing on the board,” said Petersen. “I used to be that guy. He’s drawing up the 6-on-5 play, just in case, for us, just in case we need it.”

• Petersen said the team went through some systems things between Games 1 and 2, focusing especially on defensive zone coverage and breakouts, saying those had both cost Dallas in Game 1.

  • “I thought we did an excellent job, particularly on the breakouts tonight, making some of those adjustments. But the big psychological thing was just, you know, digging in. Being a little harder. Guys can’t be dancing around our zone so much without feeling a little contact. So again, every guy in there, I thought did a good job of fighting for pucks more, making sure they were a little harder to play against.”

• Petersen also said that the decision to put Trey Taylor with Tristan Bertucci was something he relied on Fortunus to help make. Petersen also mentioned that he was confident that Aidan Hreschuk’s addition would “right the ship” with the rest of the defensive depth and moving Bertucci up to the top pairing with Taylor. Seems like it certainly did

  • “Both of them are great skaters, which obviously helps them at this level,” Petersen said of the Taylor-Bertucci pairing. “You’ve gotta be able to get up and down the ice, and they’re able to do that. They can transport the puck without any other options. They can kind of carry it themselves, get the line [change], get it deep.”

• Arno Tiefensee mentioned that he skated with Moritz Seider and Tim Stützle over the summer in Mannheim. Tiefensee, as devotess of Stars Thoughts will know, was on the German IIHF World Championship team this summer. Tiefensee also mentioned that part of the adjustment in North America involves playing the puck more.

  • “You’ve gotta play the puck more. That’s what the coach in Mannheim always told me to,” Tiefensee said, “But now I realy have to do it.”

  • Tiefensee also said there are a few more dump-ins (which necessitate said puckhandling) on the smaller ice in North America, as opposed to more rushes with possession on the wider ice in Germany.

• Evaluating goaltenders after two games in which the Stars surrendered 6 and 5 goals to a deeper team is a tricky proposition. We talked about Ben Kraws and Tiefensee both vying for the one open spot in the AHL before the tournament, with the remaining goalie likely being assigned to the ECHL to begin the season. I don’t think this tournament gave a ton of clarity on that front, to be honest. Tiefensee won a 6-5 game in which he admitted there were some goals that “shouldn’t go in,” whereas Kraws had to backstop a group that wasn’t playing as well in Game 1.

  • I’d keep an eye on the early preseason games to get a bit more information on the AHL goalie situation, personally. And hey, Game 1 will be here in less than a week. Good timing.

• Emil Hemming had what I would describe as a “fine” weekend, for a juniors player. His line was better tonight than in Game 1, and you could see him looking to generate high turnovers a couple times in hopes to creating a breakaway. Overall, this tournament didn’t boost Hemming’s stock much for me, but it didn’t hurt it, either. In a more even matchup, his shot would probably get more of a chance to be deployed. But he’s still 19 years old, so I think you’re willing to wait to see how his season goes. Remember, Lian Bichsel didn’t exactly wow in his final Traverse City showing, and he was still ahead of where I think Hemming is now, in terms of his NHL pathway. Patience is important with good young players.

• The same is true of Niilopekka Muhonen, who was scratched after a tough Game 1. He has some very good tools, as Rich Peverley mentioned at Development Camp, but in a Game 1 where Dallas got outplayed pretty soundly, Muhonen was one of a few players who had some forgetting moments. Like Hemming, he’s still just 19, and sometimes a tough game against a better team can show even good players what they still need to improve upon.

• Harrison Scott had a quietly better Game 2, and his line was very solid. But I thought the Stars’ best line in this game was the Shlaine Line, with Jaxon Fuder and Shlaine combining for two goals in the first period and doing very good work in general. Dallas was getting noticeably more offensive-zone possession in Game 2, and this line was one of the reasons why. It was also the line on the ice for Trey Taylor’s game-tying goal in the third period. Schmidt was the third member of that line, but it’s no disservice to the 18-year-old to say he was the third-best member of a very good line. He created a bit here and there, and he wasn’t cheating on any plays. For his first competitive games for Dallas in any non-juniors context, you’ll take that, I think.

• Ayrton Martino’s two goals were a good reward for him after Game 1, as was Taylor’s. Both players deferred on a look or two in Game 1, and it seemed like they’d decided not to do so again. That’s a positive sign. Martino should have a chance to fight for a spot in Texas after a short cameo late last season,

• Petersen praised the fourth line in Game 1 that featured Brandon Gorzynski, the youngest player on the Stars’ prospect team. I didn’t think that line had as much to do in Game 2, but that was in part a result of the better offensive work by other lines.

• Angus MacDonnell getting a power play goal to ignite the eventual comeback was a boost for him, especially after a long recovery from shoulder injuries over the summer. You’ll need to continue to see steady scoring from the 5-foot-10 forward as he plays more in more professional hockey, and he showed a bit this weekend.

  • I wonder if MacDonnell (who scored well over a point-per-game for Brampton last year) could end up being what Brad Gardiner didn’t quite turn into for the system as a whole. The Stars let Gardiner’s rights expire over the summer, and my sense is that the organization didn’t see enough progress for a player in his fourth year in juniors.

• Okay, we’re getting way too long—guess the season really is back—so let’s finish up here with some brief thoughts that more knowledgeable AHL people like Stephen Meserve will surely end up correcting me about a month from now:

  • Trey Taylor was even better in Game 2. The partnership with Bertucci (who played on the right side of the pairing) was much more dynamic than the one with Muhonen in Game 1, and it felt like both players were a bit more unleashed, in a good way. Looking forward to watching a full season of him in the AHL.

  • Tommy Bergsland got a bit of time with Texas last year (including a few playoff games). I look at Michael Karow, who is going into his fifth season as a steady piece of that Texas defense corps, and I wonder if Bergsland could eventually find some similar longevity in the AHL as a sort of right-shot version of Karow with a bit more offense tossed in. As we know, right-shot defensemen do not grow on trees (though I’m told folks are working on this).

  • Justin Ertel split his season last year between Texas and Idaho before playing in a couple of Texas’s playoff matchups. He captained this weekend’s Dallas team, but I have had a hard time pinning him down as a player in my relatively small number of viewings. I saw some good things at times, including some poise in Game 1 when others were far from calm, but I also have trouble seeing a path for him to hold onto a spot in Texas long-term without taking a decisive step this fall.

• Training camp starts in earnest this Thursday, when we’ll continue to see many of these players battling in both practices and preseason NHL games against very solid competition. If this weekend was any indication of what we can expect, it should end up being quite fascinating indeed.

• Game 1 looked more or less like a full house, whereas Game 2 on a Sunday night (a school night) at 6pm was closer to maybe half-full. That still ended up being more than enough of a crowd to root for a home team comeback in the third period, and they got one. It was a fun weekend.

• Lastly, I wanted to thank the readers who stopped by to say hello in person in Frisco this weekend. It really is weird and delightful to hear that folks enjoy reading this space as much as I enjoy writing in it, but I suppose that means we weirdos have to all stick together. There are worse fates, I am sure, than being here together. Cheers!