Wild vs. Stars Game 3 AfterThoughts: Special Players, Special Teams

Survival is the goal

Song of the Game

Do you have an opinion?
A mind of your own?
I thought you were special

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What’s the best way to understand a game like this?

Or perhaps the better question would be: What’s the best way to watch what is actually three games in a giant, one-game-sized trenchcoat with the words SPECIAL TEAMS sewn into its lapels?

Look, whoever lost this game was going to have roughly a million grievances, and half of them legitimate. Glen Gulutzan’s prediction the other night about the series not reverting to its calmer, Game 1 form came true repeatedly in St. Paul on Wednesday/Thursday, as this series featured blood and guts, sometimes in literal form. I have no doubt Wild fans were spittin’ mad about Jamie Benn’s conk on the back of the helmet of Matt Boldy, who lay on the ice for a few seconds and was then taken down the tunnel before returning in the second period, and you can understand why, right? Mats Zuccarello wasn’t in the lineup because of his own head-contact with a Stars player earlier in the series, so to see one of their star players get accidentally-on-purposed like that will surely be mentioned in various emails, text messages, and communiqués.

In a game like this, either team could have made a two-minute montage of uncalled infractions, given how things were officiated at times, but then again, a ton of penalties were called, so it wasn’t as though it was whistle-swallowing time. It was just inconsistent, and as the power plays mounted (we got to 15 in the end), it felt like something had to give. It took nearly five periods of hockey for that to happen.

It’s not often that a team gets seven power plays in a playoff game. It’s even less frequent that said team gets five of those seven power plays in the third period and overtime. And I have to think it’s close to unique for a team to go 0-for-5 on said power plays. I mean, look at what Minnesota had to work with here:

That, right there, was why Minnesota lost this game—and why Dallas won it.

After scoring on their first power play of the game, Minnesota finished 0-for-6 in a penalty-infested street fight. Absolutely, the officiating wasn’t anywhere close to consistent, but you can’t point fingers anywhere but into the mirror when one of the best power plays in the league lays an egg like that. Yes, the absence of Zuccarello is clearly a critical blow for the Wild, but this is the team with Quinn Hughes, Kirill Kaprizov, and Matt Boldy. That’s a whole lot of awesome on that top unit.

Quinn Hughes, by the way, finished this game with 43:47 in ice time, and that included 12:01 on the power play. And while the Wild did technically get a power play goal in the first, it actually came with the second unit on and the penalty five seconds from expiration. Which leads me to believe that Hughes may not be back to full health. Because I simply refuse to believe that the Quinn Hughes we’ve seen all year in Minnesota could have that much time to discombobulate opposing skaters and fail to create even a single goal, unless he’s fighting something.

After this game, though, I’m sure a lot of players will be feeling it. This was where the series got truly nasty, though ironically, one of the bloodiest altercations was an accidental one, when Duchene fell onto Marcus Foligno after a shot block, and Foligno’s face went into the ice with Duchene on top of him. A major penalty was called (with blood on the ice and whatnot) in order to trigger a review, but the officials determined that there really wasn’t anything malicious in the play.

Malice was elsewhere, though. After an early slash on the glove of Jake Oettinger after a whistle, Dallas put up the phalanx in front of their goalie on subsequent stoppages. The ethos was more or less the same one Gandalf uttered on the bridge of Khazad-dûm, though instead of nobly vanquishing an unspeakable foe by a metaphorical re-enacting of the go-down-to-go-up theme of one of Plato’s dialogues, Wyatt Johnston just poked the toe of his stick into Kirill Kaprizov’s wedding vegetables. To each his own, I guess.

I have no idea how you officiate a game like this one, though. Genuinely, both teams could have had ten power plays, and it would have been pretty justified. Instead, the decision appeared to be to aim for seven apiece and then put the whistles away. But that only works for judgment calls, and when Yurov sailed a puck into the seats in double overtime, the Stars got their eighth power play of the night, and scored their third such man-advantage goal to win it.

It’s got to be maddening, if you’re Minnesota. Here you are, the most skilled team in Wild history, and yet Dallas is up 2-1 in the series thanks in large part to winning the special teams battle. And worse, Dallas is also dealing out hits that have taken players out of your lineup, clean though one of them may have been. The injustice of it all has to burn, I would imagine.

From the Dallas side, I’m sure they couldn’t care less. The Stars have now reclaimed home ice, and they’ve also largely quieted the Wild’s most dangerous weapon for two games in a row. And if a power play stops feeling confident, things can take a little while to get right again—often, much more than the time afforded going into Game 4 of a playoff series.

As for that Stars penalty kill, how about the adjustments made by Alain Nasreddine’s group? Bäck, Faksa, Steel, and Blackwell (with some help from Hyry, too) kept the Wild from most of the good spots, and they hurried them into missed shots when they did manage it. Radek Faksa’s work was particularly admirable, as he had five blocked shots all by himself, and nearly won the game at the other end on multiple occasions, including a puck that he tipped back through an empty crease behind Wallstedt. It probably took a piece of his heart with it.

Faksa, like Mikko Rantanen, experienced both courses of fortune’s wheel, taking a penalty that looked potentially devastating only to get let off the hook by the rest of the Stars’ PK, and then come up with a huge moment later on. In Faksa’s case, he drew a penalty for Dallas right after his team killed his tripping penalty on Kaprizov. And on that power Faksa drew, the Stars would score the game-tying goal.

Miro Heiskanen was everywhere in this one, playing 43:05 (surely a career-high), including 10:57 on the power play and 9:54 on the penalty kill. Those are just numbers, but if you stop to think about what it would feel like to spend ten minutes killing a penalty with Quinn Hughes somewhere on the ice, then you begin to realize just how special a player Heiskanen is. He also sent the puck on net that Johnston won the game with, by the way.

Mikko Rantanen’s pass to find Matt Duchene in the third to tie the game bookended the regulation scoring, which Rantanen had opened with a goal himself, off a beautiful pass from Robertson (again, on the power play). He had six shots on goal and another unnecessary penalty (as well as a second sketchy play in double overtime that was not called), but the good outweighed the bad in this one by a wide enough margin.

Jason Robertson racked up another three points, including a beautiful 2-on-1 rush goal that demonstrated Jesper Wallstedt’s mortality. It was the only 5-on-5 goal Dallas would score tonight, and it was also Robertson’s third goal in three games in this series. I think he might be a playoff performer.

Wyatt Johnston played 30 minutes in this game, which is a number forwards just don’t reach unless you’re Nathan MacKinnon on like a random January game. Power play minutes are easier than others, but half an hour of playoff hockey is still half an hour of playoff hockey, and Johnston capped it off with a goal he won’t forget. (Though he’ll have to keep it straight in his mind with some effort, given the growing number of goals in that category). His takeaway on Quinn Hughes earlier in the game might have been even more impressive, in some ways, than his goal. But of course, the goal was the most important. Overtime is overtime.

Nils Lundkvist played another dominant game, and I thought he and Thomas Harley looked strong to very strong every time they were on the ice. In fact, all three defense pairs for Dallas were great in this one, with Tyler Myers and Lian Bichsel taking regular turns well into the depths of overtime, which is not something third defense pairings often are trusted to do. Zach Bogosian only played 11 minutes tonight, while Jake Middleton played 17. Lian Bichsel was the lowest TOI-haver on the Stars, with 22:27.

And defense in general was the key achievement, for Dallas. Yes, Minnesota had a lot of the puck in the latter stages of the game, but Dallas managed to avoid giving up the worst chances, and they got more than as good as they allowed. They played a patient, counterattacking game that served their purposes. Against a team as good as Minnesota, you simply find the way that works.

The Wild really do appear to be in a rough spot, both mentally and creatively. Despite surging back from a 2-0 deficit to take a 3-2 lead, they couldn’t land the knockout blow. And when you can’t increase the margins, you’re usually going to be overanalyzing every marginal decision, for better or for worse. Why couldn’t they turn all their overtime possession into more actual scoring chances? Why couldn’t the power play find a way to simplify, or complexify, or transmogrify themselves into something that could at least score on one of those final chances?

I don’t know the answer to Minnesota’s woes. Certainly Dallas has its own infirmary to maintain, so the sympathy will be nonexistent. But the key difference, right now, appears to be this: When Roope Hintz wasn’t able to play, Matt Duchene was able to step up as a 2C and center a dangerous scoring line while also filling in on the top power play. The Wild have not seen similar results with Vladimir Tarasenko, who has had to move up the depth chart in the absence of Zuccarello.

Maybe taking pride in that role is why Duchene was there to save a goal at the top of Oettinger’s crease by sweeping a loose puck away after Boldy and Eriksson Ek had a shorthanded 2-on-1 rush that was better than almost anything they created on the power play. Maybe Duchene is thriving so much in these playoffs because he’s being asked to do more. Whatever the reasons, Duchene has already matched or surpassed his goal totals from the past two playoff runs in Dallas.

Maybe that is what Glen Gulutzan has really done: take a lot of familiar pieces and find a way to make them work differently. Certainly, his hiring was made with an eye toward a better fate in the playoffs, and three games is no referendum. With that said, you’d have thought that Minnesota would have been ready to exploit matchups on home ice and bully Dallas to the brink of the series before it even got back for Game 5. Instead, the Stars are the ones doing the (real or perceived) bullying, and that could make things tricky for a Minnesota team looking to avoid a 3-1 series deficit on home ice.

But we’ve seen the Stars flip a 2-1 series in both directions, so pronouncing anything after three games seems naive, at best. If that Kaprizov shot sneaks inside the post, the Stars are the ones facing a 2-1 deficit on the road, and things are quite different. This early in a series, you have to be steady, but there’s a risk to being too patient. One would expect to see Minnesota try to push the pace as ferociously as they can in Game 4. The players they have available will be a big factor in how strongly they can do that dictating, though.

And by the way, how about Jake Oettinger, who clearly picked up on the blocker-side targeting from Minnesota after letting in the McCarron goal from distance and adjusted? Going from allowing that goal to shutting a team out the rest of the way is no mean feat, and Oettinger found a way to reset and regroup on a night when he wasn’t quite as sharp as Game 2—though I’m not sure any goalie really could be, with all the penalties in this one. There’s a special kind of talent involved in playing well even when your game isn’t razor sharp, and he exemplified that trait tonight.

Three years ago, the Wild were the team up 2-1 after three games, only for Dallas to rip off three wins in a row. I’m not sure that anyone will be resting on their laurels after this marathon, but certainly the Stars will be thinking about this game for a couple of days while they recuperate. There is a lot more good than bad in the performance we saw in Game 3, and a lot of the bad seems extremely preventable. That’s as much as you can ask for in a tight series, though: Take care of your own business, and you’ve got a path to grabbing this series by the collar and shaking two more wins out of its lunchbox.

Whether the next of those wins will require special teams galore or turn out to be a 2-1 nail-biter, this team seems like they can actually hang in this series, which is what you would hope to see (and feel) from the third-best team in the NHL. Minnesota currently doesn’t have a giant stick to threaten the Stars with, and that has to be a good feeling. In the playoffs, even a little confidence can go a long way.

Highlights and the Lowdown

After the Duchene line created an immediate scoring chance (and Jason Robertson shot), Jonas Brodin tripped up Sam Steel to put Dallas on a power play right off the bat. And they wouldn’t take long to punish the early miscue.

Matt Duchene made a quick entry play and pass to Jason Robertson as the power play struck with speed rather than trying a more deliberate entry. They caught Minnesota flat-footed at the blue line, and Robertson had enough space to make a nice pass, which Rantanen finished on his backhand like he was putting away the groceries.

Matt Boldy would go down in the Minnesota end a few minutes later, drawing a chorus of boos from the fans expecting an even-up call, but no dice. Instead, the Stars kept rolling lines, and Minnesota continued to look just a bit nervous as the first ten minutes played out.

Nick Foligno would put the Stars back on the power play with a pretty blatant pull-back on Lian Bichsel that led to a Holding call, and his incredulity did not change anyone’s mind.

The power play looked sharp, but Dallas passed up a couple of A- looks for potential A+ ones, and the result of all that deference was one in-tight look for Robertson, and a point shot by the second unit that ricocheted back and forth and just wide of the net.

The most important part of the power play might have happened at the end, when Jamie Benn caught Matt Boldy’s helmet as he leapt over the Wild forward’s extended leg.

Boldy stayed on the ice for a few seconds, and he would miss the rest of the period after heading down the tunnel.

It would be the Wild’s fourth line that would cost them the next goal, as Marcus Foligno tried a drop pass to McCarron that went awry, and Jason Robertson’s eventual shot on a 2-on-1 with Duchene beat Wallstedt’s glove to give Dallas a 2-0 lead in the first period.

Minnesota’s nerves continued to show up, and Arttu Hyry nearly made it 3-0 on a 2-on-1 of his own just a minute or two later after blocking Jake Middleton’s shot and getting by him:

But after Joel Eriksson Ek’s face was hit by Jason Robertson’s stick, the Wild got a power play of their own, and they would need 1:55 of the 2:00 to convert it, before Marcus Johansson benefited from a puck battle behind the net that got fed out to him with traffic, and he buried it.

The period would end with that 2-1 score, though Oettinger had a couple more big saves to make as the Wild seized some momentum after getting on the board.

Matt Boldy would return for the second period, either having passed initial concussion protocol or having gotten some other sort of treatment. Whatever the case, Minnesota was glad to have him back, and he would show why when he set up Joel Eriksson Ek for the tying goal with a nice rush through traffic and a blind pass back into the slot that found Eriksson Ek:

Minnesota started rolling after that goal, and Dallas spent a lot of the next five minutes in their own zone as Minnesota probed around the outside, trying to pick Dallas’s defensive structure apart.

Wyatt Johnston nearly victimized Quinn Hughes with a great takeaway at the blue line, but he just didn’t quite have the momentum to beat Kaprizov up the ice, and Minnesota avoided any damage.

A crazier sequence followed up, beginning with a quick up by Wallstedt during a crucial Dallas change that missed its mark. That led to a rush the other way where Sam Steel tried a toe-drag move. He would miss the net, and Jamie Benn would then take a hooking call on Eriksson Ek, putting the energized Wild onto the power play.

Boldy would hit the iron from the slot early in the power play, signaling that he was feeling just fine, thank you very much. A fracas happened when Eriksson Ek whacked Oettinger’s glove after a clean save, and Tyler Myers buried him into the ice. Both players would sit, and the last of the power play ran out when Ryan Hartman tried a subtle trip on Oskar Bäck during an entry play that the officials caught, which they generally do, on account of he’s Ryan Hartman.

More penalty discussion came after Marcus Foligno went down to block a Duchene chance from the slot, and he ended up bleeding from his face after Duchene tumbled over and onto him.

A major penalty was called, but after review, it was rescinded, and things carried on without result. It would not be the last power play of the period, however, because Ryan Hartman cross checked Radek Faksa a couple of times, and the cumulative call was made to put Dallas on their fourth power play.

Rantanen and Robertson made a couple in-tight attempts, but Matt Boldy made the biggest play when he sent a clearance down the ice and over the glass, putting Dallas up two men with 40 seconds left on the initial call.

One way or the other, the game would turn on that moment, and it did—but not for the Stars. Minnesota killed all the penalties, and then Michael McCarron fired a puck from distance right after Boldy got out of the box, and it sizzled past Oettinger’s blocker to give Minnesota their third straight goal in a full-throated home building.

The third period would arrive with Minnesota looking to build on that momentum, and an Esa Lindell tripping penalty on the first shift looked every bit like it would be that. Instead, Dallas killed the penalty rather well, and the Stars came back with a decent push of their own on a couple successive shifts, including one where Bourque tried a wrap/stuff attempt with the Wild gassed and Wallstedt stickless, but the Wild goaltender was able to cover.

Then the Stars got into more penalty trouble when Radek Faksa tripped Kaprizov in the offensive zone, and you could see Faksa thinking just how costly that penalty could be as he sat in the box, staring a thousand miles ahead. But once again, the Stars came up with a big kill, and Faksa would get out of the box and go on to even his ledger up by drawing a tripping call of his own behind the Wild net with a hard bit of puck possession and determination. Jason Robertson would get a glorious look dead in between the circles, and he would rip it right off Wallstedt’s mask, breaking a buckle in the process.

Then it was the Matt Duchene show, which he began by saving a goal at one end after Oettinger made a big save on a 2-on-1 with the puck sitting right in front of the crease…

…and then finished after Mikko Rantanen showed incredible patience after a bunch of saves by Wallstedt to finally create a look nobody was going to stop, tying the game at three apiece.

Here’s another look from the goal line, where you can see Spurgeon almost saving the puck himself. What a play, what a shot.

Dallas got a couple more looks after that, including a rush by Faksa to the net and another offensive zone sequence with multiple looks. But instead, Minnesota would get momentum out of almost nothing, thanks to one of the most avoidable tripping penalties you will ever see, by (you guessed it) Mikko Rantanen, who poked Hughes’s skate out from under him with nothing going on in the Minnesota zone to give the Wild a golden chance to re-take the lead with 7 minutes to go on the power play.

But—stop me if you’ve heard this one—the Stars’ penalty kill came up big again, and we got to the five-minute mark of regulation with the penalty fest looking entirely up for grabs. More and more things began to go un-called, however, and regulation tightened up with both sides looking a bit tense. An overtime hero would be required to resolve this one.

Overtime

Overtime began with a furious Wild sequence that ended with Esa Lindell prone on the ice next to Oettinger after absorbing some of a Faber shot from the top of the circle. Duchene broke his stick after another D-zone faceoff a minute later, and the Stars had to ice the puck just to get back to level. It would be a theme for the first overtime, during which Dallas would do a whole lot of defending and not much else.

Minnesota continued to have the bulk of possession, with Dallas very content to protect the slot in their own zone, and only a couple of Minnesota icings got Dallas anything like offensive-zone time in the first ten minutes. But whenever Dallas did get the puck in the neutral zone, they were generally looking to create a three-forward rush, and you could see Minnesota tensing up on the occasion that happened.

But the best chances would come on power plays—two of them, in fact. The first one was drawn by Quinn Hughes, when Steel reached out with his stick and got it into Hughes’s…knees? Anyway, Hughes went down, and the Wild got the first power play of overtime.

And the Stars came up with another big kill, including an absurdly dramatic sequence where Radek Faksa’s stick was broken, and the Stars were caught with a 5-on-3.5.

Duchene said after the game that he had his head on the bench with one eye watching because of how disastrous that moment seemed. But a stickless Faksa and company made some huge blocks with Minnesota smelling blood.

But you thought it was all for nothing when Oettinger sprawled over to where Kaprizov had gotten a puck along the goal line. The superstar wingers collected the puck, and ripped it past Oettinger…but off the post.

Dallas would, eventually, manage a clear to get a full change with four players (all with sticks), and it felt like momentum was back on their side. And it was, for a bit.

But then Jamie Benn took a pretty indisputable holding penalty when he lost position on Nick Foligno and got his arms draped on him with a minute to go in the first overtime. The good news was that Dallas would make it to the end of the first overtime with the game still live.

The bad news was that they had to start the second overtime on the penalty kill for 1:10.

The even more good news, however, is that the Stars’ penalty kill continued its recent work, and the teams got back to even, which is to say that state of play where 80% of penalties by both sides went uncalled. The best look, for a while, was this tip play by none other than Radek Faksa, who would have been seeing this one in his nightmares for a long time, had the game ended differently.

But after Minnesota got two power plays in the first overtime, Dallas would unsurprisingly get two in the second overtime, including this Esa Lindell chance on the first power play (drawn by Mikko Rantanen) after which Eriksson Ek went down the tunnel for a bit before returning later.

After another couple of uncalled penalties, the Wild got hemmed in their zone for a while, and an exhausted Danila Yurov sent a clearance over the glass, giving Dallas a power play the officials had no choice but to call.

And this time, Wyatt Johnston would make it count, with one of the deftest deflections you will ever see, to win Game 3 in double overtime.

The two teams will have two days off before squaring off again in Game 4 on Saturday in St. Paul.

Lineups

Dallas rolled this lineup again:

Hryckowian-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Duchene-Bourque
Steel-Hyry-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger

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Minnesota, thus:

Kaprizov-Hartman-Brink
Johansson-Eriksson Ek-Boldy
N. Foligno-Yurov-Tarasenko
Sturm-McCarron-M. Foligno

Hughes-Faber
Brodin-Spurgeon
Middleton-Bogosian

Wallstedt

After-AfterThoughts

• With Yakov Treinen and Mats Zuccarello still available, the healthy bodies on both sides were closer to equal going into this game. I have no idea who is actually healthy after that game, though.

• Radek Faksa:

  • on his soccer pass without a stick on the penalty kill in overtime: “Yeah. I’m European, so…”

  • on his tip that went through the crease and out the other side: “I don’t even wanna see that [replay], to be honest.”

  • “I’ve never played a playoff game with so many penalties, probably ever.

• Jason Robertson:

  • on what he was eating to stay fueled after the first overtime: “I don’t know. They’re just throwing stuff at me. I don’t know. I’m learning a lot about myself. I think a couple years ago, we went to double overtime against Minnesota at home with an 8:50 (start), so it’s the second latest game.”

• Matt Duchene:

  • On the Marcus Foligno altercation: “I know the Foligno boys really well. He didn’t know what happened. He felt me fall on him, and I felt his face go into the ice. He came up to me after to say, ‘hey, all good.’ I felt bad. I mean, you don’t want to hurt a guy like that. I know it’s playoffs, but you know, I felt bad. I could feel his snout was going into the ice, and glad he’s fine. Just one of those unfortunate plays. I got to wear his blood on my jersey for the rest of the game, so that was great.”

• This play by Eriksson Ek almost looked a little bit like something he did intentionally, but I have no idea if he did it intentionally, and even if he did, that’s a pretty clever way to get a power play.

• Great game from Tyler Myers and Lian Bichsel, but Myers in particular, who killed penalties in excellent fashion. His own rebounding from some tough games this year has been really impressive—I suppose you don’t stick in the NHL this long if you aren’t pretty accustomed to weathering the highs and lows, though.

• I didn’t realize it at the time, but that Johansson goal in the first rattled off (I think) two different Stars players on its way in:

• Paul Bissonette (of all people) called out Heiskanen’s stick-check on Middleton on the Stars’ first goal. Without this play, the puck may not get through to Rantanen. Great play by Heiskanen.

  

• How about this play by Radek Faksa to nearly make it 4-3 for Dallas in the third? What a game he had, in many ways.

• Joel Eriksson Ek went 27-for-40 on faceoffs in this game, which is an absolute ton of faceoffs to take in a single game. (Hartman went 5-for-21, so the Wild may need Eriksson Ek to keep that pace up.)

• As much as the game was a power play competition, the Stars were also the better team at 5-on-5, keeping Minnesota almost entirely out of the low slot:

  

  HockeyViz.com

• Finally, here’s a shot of the bench when Johnston won the game. Some hearty handshakes, those are.