Why the Stars Haven't Been Hitting Back in Response to the Slashes on Roope Hintz

The team has a consistent approach to these things, like it or not

The Dallas Stars are not the Florida Panthers.

For one, the Florida Panthers already won their Conference Final matchup, and they’ve arrived in the Stanley Cup Final for the third straight year. Dallas hasn’t been there since the 2020 Bubble Playoffs, and the Stars on the brink of ending their season in the Conference Final for the third time in as many years. The two teams that last met in Finalnd appear to be worlds apart, right now.

Some of that apparently discrepancy might also be the difference in paths they’ve had to take, as the Stars have faced a gauntlet of outstanding teams in the playoffs for the last two years, not to mention getting bounced by the eventual champions in Vegas back in 2023.

The Panthers finished two of their three series in five games, including jumping out to a 3-0 lead against Carolina. Winning the West is probably the bigger mountain to climb between the two Conferences—especially when you start in the Central Division.

But the other big difference right now is in the style those teams play. Florida plays a hard, nasty game, as was most evident in the first round against Tampa Bay, when both teams were suffering injuries on bad hits, and it seemed like we were debating fines and suspensions every other game.

They’ve paid the price for that approach, as Florida leads all teams in penalties per game this postseason, just as they did in the regular season. The Panthers give their opponents a rough ride, and if a team takes liberties with any of their players, they are going to serve some time for it, usually.

However, the Panthers’ penalty kill has also been the best in the playoffs, after being 10th in the regular season. When it’s mattered most, the Panthers have gotten a big penalty kill, and that’s allowed them to keep pushing teams around, legally or otherwise.

Dallas, on the other hand, was relatively free of such drama through two rounds of the playoffs. Jamie Benn got fined for popping Mark Scheifele in the nose after a scrum, sure; but until Roope Hintz went down with an injury after Darnell Nurse slashed his skate in Game 2, it seemed like Edmonton and Dallas were likely to revert to what we saw last spring: great hockey with an emphasis on special teams and goaltending.

Instead, Roope Hintz’s inability to play in Game 3 demonstrated something that has become all too apparent about this Stars team: they aren’t built to play like Florida, so they don’t. Darnell Nurse hasn’t really taken much grief on the ice after his slash to the Stars’ top center, and when Evan Bouchard greeted Hintz in Game 4 by slashing him in the same foot once again, the lack of a response by Dallas was striking.

It’s not that Dallas is incapable of laying the body on opponents. After all, Zach Hyman is out for the playoffs after a hit by Mason Marchment caught just enough of Hyman’s wrist to cause significant damage just as Hyman released the puck. Connor Brown is still working his way back after leaving the series mid-game following a big hit from Alex Petrovic, too.

But overall, the Stars haven’t been dishing out the same level of slashes, borderline/dirty hits, and general guff-giving that Florida does. As a result, Edmonton’s top scorers have looked comfortable and confident, and they’ve propelled them to a 3-1 series lead.

It’s left many wondering why Dallas hasn’t tried to take a bit nastier of an approach, if only to throw Edmonton off their game. Why haven’t the Stars responded to the slashes to one of their best players with outright reciprocation, or even challenging one of Nurse or Bouchard to drop the gloves to answer for their play?

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The first reason seems the most obvious: the Stars have been trailing for most of the series. Thus, going after a player and risking at least a two-minute penalty, or possibly more, could be a price Dallas can’t afford to take. Edmonton’s power play has scored in every game of the series, and that 5-for-14 performance has been huge against a Dallas penalty kill that used to be one of their biggest strengths.

When you can’t trust your penalty kill to bail you out, the idea of going after a player to send a message suddenly becomes less appealing. But still, couldn’t there be a balance between the two, a way to stick up for a teammate without completely handing a power play to the Oilers every time?

That’s been a looming question for the past couple of games. Yesterday, Pete DeBoer was asked about what the Stars’ response needs to be in the moment when they see Bouchard’s follow-up slash on Hintz, and he deferred to the officiating and the league.

“Well, you know what,” DeBoer said of Bouchard’s slash on Wednesday, “The referees and the league have to take care of that. You don’t see that much outside of junior hockey. Hopefully the league takes care of it.”

Sam Steel answered similarly when asked how the bench wants to respond to those plays.

“Yeah, that’s something that we don’t like,” Steel said. “I know the refs came over and said something…and they’re looking for that as well. But we don’t like anybody taking liberties on our guys.”

Oskar Bäck echoed Steel, though it’s a bit unfair to ask a fourth-line player how they’re going to respond to a top defenseman going after a top center’s injured foot. Still, Bäck said a couple of things on Wednesday about how the Stars can’t “do something too stupid,” while they’re trying to win a game.

Bäck also said he didn’t even see the Bouchard slash until after the game, which surprised me a bit, as I would’ve thought that play would’ve been discussed in the intermission, at least, given that it happened right in front of the benches. Apparently it was not, which is surprising, given how crucial Roope Hintz is to this team’s offense.

After the team’s optional morning skate before Game 5, Esa Lindell was asked about the leadership group’s response to plays like that is.

“Probably scoring, trying to win the game. Not to kinda go and retaliate,” Lindell said, “Just do it on the ice. Scoring, like I said, trying to win the game.”

While three players and a coach might not necessarily speak for the entire team, it’s pretty clear from those responses and the Stars’ play that they haven’t been focused on pushing around the Oilers, but on outplaying them. And unfortunately for Dallas, that approach has them in a 3-1 series hole.

But the most important player to ask about the lack of response to Bouchard or Nurse’s slashes probably won’t ever comment on it. That would be Jamie Benn, whom Sean wrote a very good piece on yesterday that you should read, whether you agree with him or not.

Jamie Benn’s Legacy Is Secure — But Maybe His Future in Dallas Shouldn’t Be

The fact is, Benn has always been the guy you would expect to deal with those things, and he usually has. Even last round, he had no problem going after Winnipeg’s top center during a scrum, and Benn got fined for it. But in this round, despite a couple of pretty nasty slashes to Hintz’s foot, one of which caused him to miss a pivotal Game 3, Benn hasn’t been looking to even the score.

The Mark Stone incident from 2023 is a big factor in this, I believe. Benn’s major penalty, ejection, and subsequent suspension made a 2-0 series deficit a 3-0 canyon, and while the Stars actually won both games without Benn to make the series 3-2, I believe he still sees himself as primarily responsible for the end of that playoff run.

And given the fine he got this year from the punch on Scheifele, I also have to wonder if Benn is reticent to risk another game-altering major penalty in yet another Western Conference Final. Yes, you want to stick up for Hintz, but when even one power play has been the different against Edmonton, handing them a potential power play just to send a message could end up costing Dallas the series, and I can understand why Benn hasn’t been grabbing every player he sees in order to do that.

That appears to be the Stars’ calculus as a whole, given the lack of response by Dallas so far. Winning the series would send the most important message there is, and Dallas is willing to submit their pride to the team’s ultimate goal, even if it means appearing to put up with one of their players being abused.

Of course, a comeback seems like a far-fetched hope right now, so naturally, you’re going to hear from people who point to Dallas’s lack of response as a reason for the 3-1 series deficit. You’re going to hear people call Dallas soft, pointing to how Florida and Vegas won cups with physicality while daring other team’s power play to make them pay. Probably you’ve already heard this narrative. It’s out there.

The slashes on Hintz were nasty, to be sure, and I still can’t fathom why Benn got fined for his punch on Scheifele while neither Landeskog’s punch to an unsuspecting Lindell’s head in Round 1 and the second slash to Hintz’s foot in Game 4 weren’t even penalized. I don’t see a meaningful difference between punching a guy in the face and injuring a guys’ foot by using your stick as a weapon away from the play, but apparently Benn’s gloved punches alone were seen as worthy of supplemental discipline. Perhaps that’s a compliment, in its way.

So DeBoer might say the league and the officials need to prevent Hintz’s foot from being targeted, but the referees can’t stop all of that sort of thing, clearly. The officials warned the benches afterward, probably with a threat of calling an immediate misconduct or similar penalty if they saw any further slashes on Hintz like that, but it’s fair to say that the damage has already been done, literally and figuratively. Edmonton took out Dallas’s top center for part of one game and all of another, and Dallas didn’t score on the two-minute power play they got as a result of it. And now they’re on the brink of elimination.

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If the Stars’ power play had just one more goal, this series could be level. The Nurse slash to Hintz happened with a 3-0 lead, four minutes into the third period. The Oilers won that game to tie the series 1-1, and then they took the next two as well. Maybe scoring on that power play to cut the score to 3-1 wouldn’t have done much, but would it have given the power play a bit more confidence that carried into the series later on? Does a goal there by another player give the Edmonton penalty kill more to worry about, giving Mikko Rantanen just a tiny bit more space on a power play in Games 3 or 4, allowing him to put a shot inside the post instead of off it? We’ll never know.

Regardless, that’s clearly the Stars’ approach right now. Their offense has led them through two brutal series without all of their players being healthy, and now their offense is disappearing right when they need it more than ever, both to win games and to punish dirty plays. But when your captain has been burned by trying to retaliate in the playoffs before, and when the rest of the lineup can’t muster an offensive threat, your opponent is always going to feel free to take liberties, and Edmonton has.

The ideal scenario at this point would probably be for Hintz himself to retaliate, should Bouchard or another player try a similar thing. Even with Hintz clearly not at 100%, he’s a 6-foot-3, 215-lb player. If he goes after Bouchard there, I don’t think there’s any chance in the universe that the Stars end up shorthanded as a result, given what’s happened so far.

Now, it’s not ideal to ask Hintz to do that. He’s not a fighter, and he’s far more valuable as one of the Stars’ top scorers than enforcers. But with the Stars’ backs against the wall, they’re going to need to summon more hope, more anger, and more fight than they’ve been able to bring thus far. And Hintz, as one of the alternate captains on the team, might just need to lead them into the fight.

In fact, Hintz has done so before. After Miro Heiskanen got nailed with a horrible hit by Matt Rempe back in December, Hintz went after the massive forward, and that meant something.

As much as I’m sure Heiskanen would love to return the favor, he’s not the sort of player who has the size to go after players like Bouchard or Nurse. If the Stars want to galvanize over those slashes, someone else will have to lead them into the fray, whether Hintz or one of his larger compatriots. And unlike Florida, there aren’t exactly a ton of players to choose from.

Mason Marchment is almost assuredly going to get extra penalties if he starts anything, given his reputation. Jamie Benn is in a similarly precarious situation. Are you really going to ask a rookie like Lian Bichsel, who suffered a concussion earlier in the year, to fight someone on Hintz’s behalf? Is this Mikko Rantanen’s job now? Are you going to ask a penalty-killer like Cody Ceci or Lindell to risk sitting for a prolonged period of time, when a penalty kill might be the most important moment of the game?

At a certain level, the Stars just aren’t built like the Panthers, so they can’t solve problems the same way. And right now, they haven’t been solving many problems at all.

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It might be too late for any sort of a response to mean anything, anyway.

After Hintz left Game 2 and didn’t return, the opportunity for retaliation (even if it was just challenging Nurse to a fight) later in a 3-0 game was still there, but the Stars didn’t take it, hoping to recreate their quick-strike magic from Game 1 until hope finally evaporated.

Going into Game 3, it seemed clear that Dallas wasn’t anxious to hand Edmonton any more power plays than they were already getting, with the prospect of mustering a comeback after a 2-0 first period deficit already a daunting one. Power plays wouldn’t end up mattering in the 6-1 loss, anyway. Playing from behind makes it tougher to even the score in every sense.

When Dallas failed to score on their first power play in Game 4, only for Draisaitl to score his patented one-timer on the Oilers’ first chance? Well, I wonder if that scarred them, much the way Dallas’s power play got into Colorado’s heads a bit in the first round with its opportunistic scoring.

Once you start playing on the careful side, trying not to give the other team power plays, things can spiral in a hurry, and they have. Dallas only got a handful of looks after Corey Perry gave Edmonton the 2-1 lead halfway through Game 4, and that was it. The push has not been able to be sustained, and Edmonton has shown themselves fully capable of pushing back.

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Today, Pete DeBoer said that, compared to the 2-0 deficit against Vegas last year, this 3-1 series feels less daunting of a comeback. That’s a good message to send to his players, and perhaps the Stars will bear that out. But this week, I’ve been thinking of another 2-0 series deficit Dallas faced: back in 2014, when Tyler Seguin was making his Stars playoff debut, and the Anaheim Ducks had won both games at home in the first round.

Jamie Benn, along with Antoine Roussel and Ryan Garbutt, succeeded in getting into the Ducks’ heads a fair bit early in that series, and it showed. Dallas roared back to win both Games 3 and 4 at home to even the series. The matching roughing minors between Roussel and Ryan Getzlaf in Game 3 still live in my memory as the best version of Roussel’s antagonistic behavior, perfectly dragging a better player down to his level. Roussel would then fight Perry at the end of Game 4, and the narrative after that game was how the “pit bulls” were putting the Ducks’ star players off their game.

The two wins were a big statement by the eighth-seeded Stars, but Garbutt famously went too far in Game 5, spearing Perry in the Gentleman’s Assemblage, and despite a Benn shorthanded goal on that major penalty, the Ducks would score a power play goal as well, along with three other power play goals in the game en route to a 6-2 victory and a crucial 3-2 series lead that Anaheim would not relinquish.

If the Stars were going to get in the Oilers’ heads, it would’ve needed to happen before they were in an elimination game. Now, the only way the Stars can really get into the Oilers’ heads would be to win two straight, forcing a Game 7 back in Dallas. As Lindell said this morning, scoring and winning are the best response. He’s not wrong, of course. But when you’re not scoring or winning, fans are going to be looking for the catharsis of a physical response, and the Stars haven’t brought any of the three.

This Stars team has gotten up off the mat time and time again this year, so there’s always the chance they’ll prove everyone wrong one more time and make this series one for the storybooks. But right now, they’re stuck repeating the same old chapter as last year against Edmonton: Not enough goals, and not enough of a response. Of any kind.