Wild vs. Stars Game 5 AfterThoughts: Evening Up, Winding Down

Yet again, Dallas couldn't get a goal when they needed it most

Song of the Game

It's no good if the pain doesn't make you feel like you earned it
And I probably deserved it

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Let’s start off with what you’re seething about: at five-on-five tonight, Dallas out-attempted Minnesota 52 to 33. In all situations, the Stars attempted 66 shots to Minnesota’s 49 after being tied 40-40 through two periods. That sounds pretty good, right?

In fact, Dallas had 15 scoring chances to Minnesota’s two in the third period. That is a large margin! It did not end up reflecting the final score, or even the third-period score. The only goal Dallas did muster in the third period was a tricky Jason Robertson shot that banked in off a defenseman.

Minnesota won the most important battle tonight and got the result. That’s quite literally all that matters in the playoffs, and it was the same thing we all harped on before the game: Dallas would need to reverse their troublingly low conversion rate of scoring chances at 5-on-5 to win the series. Tonight, they just kicked that same trend down the road again. They will not be able to do so another time.

“We missed the net too on a few that could have turned into something a little better,” Gulutzan said afterwards. “That was one of the big things I noticed, is that we did kind of get to the interior with some attempts. Some got blocked, and some we plain old missed. This time of the year, you need to be dialed in there and get some of those.”

Mikko Rantanen echoed the same thing: Dallas had some puck possession and zone time, but they got a lot of good shots missed and blocked, and that can win or lose a game. Tonight, it did exactly that.

“It’s really not that frustrating,” said Jamie Benn tonight. “We knew it was going to be a long series. We knew it was going to be a tight series. We feel we could be up 3-2 in the series, but we’re not. That’s just hockey. We get to go on the road and win one game. That’s all it is. We’ve been a great road team all year. We’ll go up there and try to win a game.”

Benn might be the only person in Dallas who doesn’t feel frustrated. Even Miro Heiskanen’s discontent was evident when he slammed the puck back into the net after Kaprizov’s empty-net goal to finish the game. When Heiskanen is off-kilter, you know things are truly amiss.

Losing Arttu Hyry early in the second period didn’t help, either. The Stars were already playing without Nils Lundkvist, and losing one of the more positive players in their bottom-six less than halfway through the game only contributed to a lineup that was already fighting it a bit.

“I thought, as a whole, we gave up too many unforced errors,” Gulutzan said. “Even coming down into the second goal, which was a PK goal, before that we took the Too Many Men [penalty]. We needed to have that puck deep, too. It cost us on a line change on a clear possession. So we need to clear up the puck play that we are inflicting a little bit on ourselves. And I think almost all three goals looked that way.”

I’ve learned over the year that fans very much enjoy blaming one or two players after a loss, rather than spreading it around. I think that’s because it’s easier to fix one or two spots in the roster rather than admitting a more widespread flaw. If Tyler Myers’ turnover on the first goal and loss of position on the McCarron goal were the only issue for Dallas tonight, then you can make him a scapegoat and wish for an easy replacement that doesn’t seem readily available.

I don’t think it’s as simple as that tonight, though. Jake Oettinger made some huge saves, but he also let in a Matt Boldy shot from distance on the kill that the Stars simply haven’t been scoring themselves in this series. Mikko Rantanen has generated a lot of scoring chances in this series and even gotten a goal himself, but his line has consistently been outscored in this series. At even-strength, the superstar winger has been on the ice for zero Dallas Stars goals, and four Minnesota Wild goes. In a single series, that is always going to be the title of the book regardless of the twists in each chapter.

Minnesota won two games after Dallas won two, and now the Stars will have to turn the trick a second time starting up north on Thursday. Tonight’s game was not the sort of 60-minute affair that inspires a whole lot of hope in the Stars’ ability to do so.

For some decent stretches in this game, the Stars had life and puck possession. But with the overriding narrative of their impotence at five-a-side, that possession began to feel like a bit of a self-own. They were creating chances—lots of them!—but not the sorts of chances they needed to win against this team.

The California Kingsnake is known to be largely immune to rattlesnake venom, hence its royal title. But something you might not know about said monarch serpent is that it is vulnerable to other types of venom, including that of certain ring-necked snakes which is largely only dangerous to reptiles.

Even the mighty tend to have a weakness, and Minnesota has gained the upper hand in this series through what looks like a thoroughly repeatable formula: weather Dallas’s chance-creation, and strike when the mistakes come. Tonight, each strike was laced with lethal venom, while Dallas couldn’t land the killer blow (or missed it entirely).

The chance I come back to was right after Arttu Hyry left the game. The top line had the puck in the Minnesota zone, and they generated two great chances: a low-to-high shot for Thomas Harley, and a backhand in front for Johnston right afterwards. Here they are:

How many times do you see those chances go in? Tons, right? But one thudded too-low into Wallstedt’s pad, while Johnston atypically put his quick backhand move wide of the far post. If I had told you there was a giant puck magnet buried beneath the ice somewhere, you wouldn’t dismiss the possibility immediately.

If you’re Glen Gulutzan, you can fixate on a lot of things in this game that Dallas can do better. But man, when you look at all the times they got right up to the brink of finishing the job only to not, it’s kind of mind-boggling. Here you have one of the teams with the most lethal finishing ability all season, suddenly not finishing anything at even-strength. You can call it regression or whatever, but it really isn’t anything other than lack of execution. When you combine that with the mistakes made on the goals Dallas gave up, you wind up with a team whose flaws wound up being greater than the sum of their virtues. In 50 games this regular season, that didn’t wind up being the case. For three of the last five, however, it’s been exactly that.

The good news is the Stars have other players to fill in, and I’d take a wild guess and say that Michael Bunting will find his way back into the lineup for Game 6, with Justin Hryckowian likely moving back down to center the third line.

“We’ve got guys ready to play. They’ve worked hard and wanted to get an opportunity,” Gulutzan said in reference to shaking things up. “So if we’ve got an injury with Artie [Hyry], we’re gonna shuffle. We’re gonna have to shuffle lines. We’ve already been shuffling, right? Because we don’t have Roope, so we’ve shuffled things around. In-game, we did again in the third period with some lines, and we were forced to today because we lost a player early. So we were shuffling the deck a little bit, and usually we’ve had great success with that. Tonight, we just couldn’t convert on some of the looks.”

If Dallas can’t start converting by Thursday, they won’t have any more tonights left.

Highlights and the Lowdown

Once again, Gulutzan put the Duchene line out to start up against the Boldy line, and we began the game with the two best lines in the series to that point.

Both sides made some forays into the others’ zone, and traffic at the net was the clear goal for Dallas. Jamie Benn was set up for a dangerous one-timer in the slot that whistled past the net, possibly ticking off a player on its way in.

But Minnesota would get on the board first after Myers tried a slap of a breakout pass that went right to Minnesota, and it was fed right back down to Kaprizov all alone at the net. Oettinger made a huge stop one-on-one, but Kaprizov got the rebound and fed it over to Zuccarello, who was open on the back door, and he put it in past a sprawling Myers to make it 1-0.

After some good bounce back by Dallas, a Quinn Hughes turnover along the wall led to a Bobby Brink slashing penalty, and Dallas’s power play had a chance to even the score nine minutes into the game. And tie it they would.

I’m not sure what else there is to say about the Dallas power play at this point. After Mikko Rantanen and Matt Duchene pulled at the seams of the PK box, a simple exchange up high set up Miro Heiskanen for a one-timer with the highway open, and he put the puck past a not-quite-set Wallstedt to make it 1-1 with their fourth power play goal in as many chances over the last couple of games.

Dallas fed off that goal with a couple more strong shifts, and Minnesota suddenly had trouble clearing their zone. Dallas generated pressure consistently for the next few minutes, and though it only infrequently led to pucks actually getting put on net.

When Minnesota finally did get some pressure with six minutes to go, it was of the dangerous sort, with Hughes and Boldy circling the net a couple of times, and with more gusto when Heiskanen lost his stick. But after a couple of blocks and saves, Dallas was able to clear to survive.

A Robertson/Johnston rush would nearly give them the lead, and Robertson’s eventual shot through the bodies was barely caught up to by Wallstedt, and the rebound lay dangerously close to the crease, but without being put home. And in the end of it all, Lian Bichsel wound up taking an interference penalty that I assumed was for Robertson’s stick tripping a player, only to find out that Bichsel had interfered with someone. Please let me know if you can enlighten me with the details of this infraction.

Matt Boldy would score with 13 seconds left in the period after getting alone down low and trying a jam play that went in on the third try. But lo, Dallas opted to challenge for goaltender interference after Boldy’s stick pushed Oettinger’s right pad back, and after a couple of minutes, the goalie interference roulette wheel landed on “NO GOAL,” and the Stars were exceedingly fortunate to have made it to the intermission with a tie score.

Dallas nearly scored right after an icing in the first minute when a point shot caught Wallstedt unawares. The puck lay loose near the crease, and a scrambling Wallstedt was replaced in net by a desperate Faber (who saved a goal), but Mavrik Bourque and company couldn’t find the handle to stash the loose puck, and Minnesota survived.

Heiskanen drew a tripping penalty by beating his man in the neutral zone shortly after that, and the Stars had their second power play four minutes into the second period. But despite a couple of dangerous Almosts, Dallas couldn’t go five for five, and the Wild got back to level with the score still 1-1, and they began to get their looks again. Nick Foligno even got a shot from the slot by himself with 12:11 left, but Oettinger’s glove hand won the duel.

At the other end, the Johnston line got a glorious chance after a smart Harley pinch started a good O-zone set, but Johnston’s backhand move all alone went just wide of the far post on the best chance of the lot. A flubbed Duchene pass at his blue line then put Myers in a spot where it was a choice between allowing a Matt Boldy breakaway or taking a penalty, and Myers opted to head to the box by taking an interference penalty.

This kill was the Jake Oettinger Show, and he was called upon to star. Despite a thoroughly revitalized Minnesota power play that created more than a couple of dangerous looks, the Stars killed off the chance, and Myers’ choice was vindicated.

However, the Stars would cause their own problems late in the second period with another penalty, as a needless too-many-men offense gave Matt Boldy another chance to score a last-minute goal. And this time he did so, getting open in the circle a minute into the power play and firing a puck far side past Oettinger with 31 seconds to go to score Minnesota’s first power play goal by the top unit since Game 1.

With Dallas on their heels, Minnesota nearly scored another, but Oettinger came up with a huge stick-to-glove save on a Hartman rebound chance in the final seconds of the period, and Dallas went down the tunnel for the second intermission. Problem was, there would be 1.4 seconds of time put back on the clock, and we had to wait a minute or two for Gulutzan, Oettinger, and company to jog back to the bench to take a final faceoff before the real second intermission arrived, which it did in due course.

Shots on goal were 25-11 Minnesota, though shot attempts were 40-38 for Dallas.

Worse, Arttu Hyry was lost for the game with an undisclosed lower-body injury, which meant Dallas once again had to finish a game with fewer than 18 skaters. In a pivotal Game 5, the Stars had 20 minutes to get back into a game that Minnesota looked in danger of grabbing outright.

Minnesota, for its part, had played without Jonas Brodin since early in the second as well, and he was likewise announced as done for the night.

The third period was a cagey one to start, and Minnesota was looking to counterattack more than force the issue, preferring to keep the interior of the ice protected in their own end at the expense of blue line turnovers. And through six minutes, the strategy was working perfectly, with Dallas not having put a single shot on goal.

After an icing, Gulutzan put Robertson out with Rantanen and Johnston in an effort to generate something, and it did just that, with Rantanen firing a puck five-hole on Wallstedt that the Wild’s goaltender smartly stopped. It was Dallas’s first shot on goal of the period, seven minutes in.

Then came what felt like a dagger, as Myers and Lindell found themselves on the wrong side of the puck after a center-ice faceoff. After Lindell got caught up the boards on a failed dump-in, Myers couldn’t close on Trenin at the blue line before the puck was fed to the middle, and it found McCarron all alone. He went five-hole as Oettinger tried a poke check, and the puck slipped under the pad to make it 3-1.

Dallas got a power play a minute later when Oskar Bäck was brought down, but the glimmer of light was snuffed out, with Dallas looking, quite frankly, a bit worn out. A Jamie Benn rebound attempt with nine minutes to go nearly got them back within one, but Wallstedt was where he needed to be, and the puck stayed out.

Gulutzan tried different combinations to find a spark, including Duchene with Rantanen, and Dallas found a bit of life as we approached five minutes to go. Benn and Hartman then got Involved in the offensive zone, and Benn more or less mugged Hartman. Somehow, both players were sent off, with Benn getting a cross-checking minor and Hartman an unsportsmanlike for, presumably, being Ryan Hartman. That made it 4-on-4, and Gulutzan pulled Oettinger for the extra attacker to make it 5-on-4 with an empty net.

For 1:51, it didn’t work, and Dallas nearly conceded a goal. But with nine seconds left in the 4-on-4, Jason Robertson made a move that put Zach Bogosian on the ice, and then he banked a shot off Jared Spurgeon at the crease and into the net to make it 3-2.

Dallas had some life, and a quick tip play at the back door nearly tied it up right after that, only for the puck to get missed on its way to the top of the crease. Gulutzan then pulled Oettinger with an offensive-zone faceoff about three minutes to go, and the Stars couldn’t capitalize before Kaprizov got a pass in the neutral zone and held off a desperate takeaway attempt from Heiskanen to find the empty net with one hand, salting away the game with a 4-2 goal.

Dallas would get another power play with about a minute left when Duchene’s stick was splintered by Spurgeon, but it was only cosmetic, and not even that. Minnesota would end the night with that 4-2 lead, and a 3-2 series advantage heading back home.

Lineups

Dallas rolled out these lines:

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

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Myers
Bichsel-Lyubushkin

Oettinger

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Minnesota compiled the below groupings:

Kaprizov-Hartman-Zuccarello
Johansson-Eriksson Ek-Boldy
Tarasenko-McCarron-Brink
M. Foligno-N. Foligno-Trenin

Hughes-Faber
Brodin-Spurgeon
Middleton-Bogosian

Wallstedt

After-AfterThoughts

• Minnesota’s getting both Trenin and Zuccarello back felt a bit like Colorado getting Gabriel Landeskog back midway through last year’s series, no? Smaller scale, obviously, but their absence was certainly felt. Zuccarello’s return clearly got the power play more dangerous chances, even when they weren’t scoring.

• John Hynes didn’t have an update on Jonas Brodin, though he did leave the arena in a walking boot, whether for precautionary reasons or otherwise.

• Glen Gulutzan didn’t have a full update on Arttu Hyry, but he did say the forward is “highly unlikely” for Game 6. That means the Stars will be without Hintz, Seguin, Bastian, Hyry, and (potentially) Lundkvist for their first elimination game of the series.

• Ilya Lyubushkin was a little overactive at times, but I thought he did his job well enough in fill-in duty tonight, playing 12:30 on a third pairing.

  • I still think Lyubushkin could be a useful player to take some of the PK load off Heiskanen at times, but the Stars leaned almost entirely on Harley, Heiskanen, and Lindell on the kill, so that doesn’t seem likely to happen.

• Tyler Myers was the only Stars player to be -2 tonight. He was asked to step up and play a bigger role than usual, and it didn’t go particularly well.

• Miro Heiskanen played 28:22 tonight, more than anyone else on either team. He’s not been the problem for Dallas, but he and Robertson just haven’t gotten enough help in this series.

  • With that said, Heiskanen also has zero goals for during his even-strength ice time in this series. That shouldn’t be possible in five games when he’s averaging almost 30 minutes a night. With apologies to Jamie Benn, I do think there is frustration bubbling under the surface for this team. If they can’t score first in Minnesota to get their collective tails up, Game 6 could be a tough one.

• I don’t love that Matt Boldy power play goal. No two ways about it. You just need a save there, and Oettinger couldn’t make it.

  

  

  Oettinger’s blocker side has been an issue a couple of times in this series. Not as big an issue of Dallas’s lack of even-strength offense, which is the main culprit—but an issue, still.