Wednesday Practice Update: Seasonal Illness, Defensive Decisions, Goaltender Interference, and More

As they did last year, the Stars are dealing with some sniffles right now

If the title of this piece seems familiar to you, it’s because we used a very similar one almost exactly one year ago, when the Stars were likewise dealing with illness going through their lineup.

This year, Nils Lundkvist and Nate Bastian are players we know so far to have been afflicted with some manner of seasonal bug—though Glen Gulutzan said they’re not the only ones dealing with it right now.

“Yeah, it’s going through,” Gulutzan said. “We’ve had a few guys. [Bastian] was sick, obviously he didn’t play, but we’ve had other guys with sickness. A few of the staff, too. Just that time of year.”

The only players noticeably absent from practice today in Frisco were Matt Duchene and Mikko Rantanen, though Gulutzan said afterward that both “should be players” on the upcoming road trip to San Jose and Anaheim later this week.

“One maintenance and one sick,” Gulutzan said. “Kept away one guy who’s sick and puking, and the other guy was just a maintenance day.”

When asked if he could specify which player was which, Gulutzan smiled.

“I’ll let you guess. See how they play.”

At the coach’s insistence, I will hazard just such a guess and say that Rantanen might be the sick one. Sam Nestler of DLLS had previously reported that Matt Duchene was planning to visit his specialist in the Bay Area during the Stars’ road trip, which could equate to a “maintenance day,” but feel free to make your own supposition.

Guesses are just that, so we’ll wait and see how both players look in San Jose tomorrow night, assuming they’re able to participate.

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As for the other players who practiced today, the forward groups looked like this:

Erne-Johnston-Bastian
Robertson-Hintz-Benn
Hryckowian-Steel-Bourque
Bäck-Faksa-Blackwell

To continue today’s theme of guesswork, I’d say it’s likely that Bastian was skating as a placeholder for Mikko Rantanen, with Adam Erne potentially doing so for Matt Duchene, who moved up to that top-line left wing spot in place of Sam Steel for the entirety of Monday night’s game against Los Angeles.

As for Erne, Gulutzan also said today that they are hoping to activate him from LTIR on this trip, and that he could be a player in either San Jose or Anaheim, presuming he gets cleared to return by then.

It was an interesting practice from the start, with the humid air affecting the rink early on before later clearing up.

As for the blue line, players rotated through some pairings, so I’m not going to say definitively what you might expect tomorrow night. But I think we can deduce a couple of things, so let’s go player-by-player:

• Thomas Harley began the Kings game playing next to Ilya Lyubushkin, but he was moved back to a pairing with Alex Petrovic for the third period. I asked Harley today how long it took him to settle back in after an extended absence, and he said “maybe a game or two,” but that he’s feeling comfortable now.

  • One other thing about Harley: Late last season, when an injured Miro Heiskanen was getting close to returning, I asked Harley if he thought it was easier for a defenseman to play on the power play immediately after returning, or if that’s something he would want to put off until he had gotten some games under his belt. Harley said then that he thought it was easier to get comfortable if you were playing on the power play, since you would be getting more touches of the puck and having a bit more time and space to work with as your timing came back.

    • So with that said, I wonder if Harley not playing on the top power play (or with Heiskanen, who creates time and space for everybody else on the ice) might be a mildly tricky thing for him as he continues to settle back into a rhythm with whatever defense partner he plays with. With that said, I did think he looked sharp on a 4-on-4 set the other night, and my sense is that the Stars believe he’s in a good place, too. Patience is usually the way to go with great players. He should be fine.

• Nils Lundkvist began the game playing on his off-side with Petrovic, only to be moved to the right side in the third period on a pairing with Lyubushkin, the latter of whom then played on the left.

  • I talked to Lundkvist about that assignment today, and Lundkvist said he can’t remember having played on the left side in the NHL before, though he has done so in Sweden on occasion. He gave all the right answers about how it’s a different challenge, and how he approaches everything with a positive outlook, but I suspect playing on the left side might not be something Lundkvist has to do long-term, or perhaps any time again soon.

    • In fact, putting some pieces together from other folks I’ve spoken with, it wouldn’t surprise me if we do see Harley-Lundkvist put back together before too much longer. It’s easy to forget just how many games Lundkvist missed (not to mention Harley), but the Stars have consistently shown patience in easing players back into the lineup after long absences, as they did with Jamie Benn and Matt Duchene. That could be the main reason for keeping Lundkvist down on a third pairing, for now, until the team’s re-integration plan puts him back with Harley, in another few games.

• As for Lyubushkin, I continue to find him an utterly fascinating player. The fact that he can play his off-hand side comfortably (as he did in the third period) is not nothing. In fact, I think it’s quite something, as has been Lyubushkin’s ability to play comfortably up the lineup with players like Thomas Harley or Miro Heiskanen last season.

  • With that said, Lyubushkin’s game can sometimes become a bit more complicated than it needs to, and that’s when he can get into trouble. His philosophy as a defenseman is that his job is to make his defense partner better, so when he starts to be the more noticeable player on a defense pairing, it’s usually not a good sign.

    • Anyhow, if Harley-Lundkvist does become a defense pairing again before too long, Lyubushkin may end up having to play on the left side with Petrovic until Lian Bichsel returns, and that pairing

      • Fun note: With a few different interviews in Finnish going on in the dressing room today, I asked Lyubushkin today (half-jokingly) if he spoke Finnish, and he said yes—but with the sort of sly smile that makes you not completely sure you aren’t being messed with. (Yet another reason why I need to learn Finnish myself.)

In any case, one possibility is that we could see the same defense pairings on Thursday in San Jose that we saw in the third period against Los Angeles: Heiskanen with Lindell, Harley with Petrovic, and Lyubushkin playing on the left side of a pairing with Lundkvist.

But as always, how a game starts may not be how it ends. That’s why we watch, after all.

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As for a defenseman who is no longer with the team, Gulutzan answered a question about the choice to put Vladislav Kolyachonok on waivers (where Boston ultimately claimed him) like this:

“We talk about it, and the likelihood of somebody going through, or not going through,” Gulutzan said, in answer to a question about his discussions with Jim Nill.

Gulutzan also added that you try to take a look around the league to anticipate whether teams might be looking for another player, and Boston was a team that was on their radar, given that the Bruins had three or four defensemen out of the lineup right now.

“It’s double-sided, because you can’t carry that many [defensemen] for that long. You need young guys to play. You’re hoping he goes through, but you’re excited for the player who gets an opportunity, right? Rather than going back to the minors, he’s a young guy that can play in the league, and you want to see him do that. It’s a tough decision, but ultimately, it’s good for the player.”

(Side note: Sean Shapiro also spoke to GM Jim Nill about the Kolyachonok claim yesterday as well as a few other things, so give his piece a read, too.)

Odds and Ends

• Oskar Bäck isn’t going back home to Sweden for Christmas, but he said some of his family is flying out to visit him, which he’s looking forward to. One of the signature Bäck family Christmas traditions is, of all things, playing Canasta, which you may be familiar with. (For my part, I’m every bit as rubbish a partner in Canasta as I am in Pinochle. I’m pretty dangerous in Euchre, though.)

• Casey DeSmith said that one thing he’s noticed about this season so far is that although he’s had quite a few “bad break” sort of goals—like he did with the miscommunication with Miro Heiskanen the other night on the Kings’ power play goal—he’s also had a lot fewer of the more standard sorts of goals going in. On the one hand, DeSmith said, it’s almost hard not to wonder how good things could be, if not for those odder sorts of goals going in. But on the other hand, he’s having such a good season, that it’s a trade-off he’s more than willing to take.

  • DeSmith currently boasts the 2nd-best save percentage in the NHL among goalies who have played at least 10 games. When you pair that number with his 8-1-3 record, I suppose it makes it a lot easier to live with a little bit of misfortune every now and then.

• Gulutzan said that of all the games they’ve played this year, he thought the Kings games was the one where Stars players were most noticeably funneling pucks to the net—particularly players lower down the lineup, who might not have the skill to execute highlight-reel plays like Mikko Rantanen. Gulutzan said that’s been something the coaching staff emphasized the morning before the Kings game, along with 50/50 battles and neutral zone work, but that getting pucks to the net from their depth players was at the top of list. Safe to say, they did that.

• The Stars are well-aware that other teams are stacking the blue line on power play entries, and that Neil Graham has “a good handle” on what they can do to adapt. Gulutzan described it as a game of adjustments and re-adjustments: “We’ll play cat and mouse the whole time.”

• When it comes to the coach’s challenge, Gulutzan said he watches every single challenge for goaltender interference around the league in an effort to stay apprised of how the rule is being called. Gulutzan said Stars’ video coach Patrick Dolan discouraged him from challenging the no-goal call against Los Angeles following Rantanen’s collision with Darcy Kuemper, and Gultutzan said Dolan was right to do so, given that the call on the ice had been no-goal, and that an injury had happened on the play. Those are all factors that a team has to take into account before deciding to risk a penalty by challenging.

  • More Gulutzan on goaltender interference challenges: “What I know from my years is: Did he go to the blue by himself? And, if so, does he mess up the goalie’s ability to play the puck? The big one for me is, is he going there on his own? And if he does go there [into the crease] on his own, you’re in trouble. That’s what I know, for sure. Even if his path is going there and he gets nudged, and he keeps going there, you’re still in trouble, in my opinion. But it’s when he gets buried into the blue that you’re gonna challenge.”

• As for the challenges for missed stoppages related to hand passes—a hot topic across the league right now—I have not talked to anyone in hockey who thinks there is a secret sauce to figuring them out. From one to the next, I’ve yet to discover any clear standard to determining which plays get overturned and which don’t. (If you know, please inform the rest of us.)