Yes, the Dallas Stars Can Beat the Colorado Avalanche without Miro Heiskanen

(But it would be even easier if they didn't have to)

I love the first round of the NHL playoffs. Most hockey fans do, and why wouldn’t you? Every matchup is two teams giving it everything they have after 82 games of managing their health, the schedule, and the salary cap.

In the playoffs, it’s just about winning the next game, no matter what. And you can see that in the hockey, which is, I would argue, as good as all but perhaps two or three other series later in the playoffs, depending on matchups and health.

Aside from situations like Miro Heiskanen’s, players don’t get healthier after the postseason starts. Players pick up bumps and bruises and play through them, because that’s just what you do, and it makes the hockey more desperate, but also more trench warfare than competing airstrikes.

It’s still great hockey, full of every last bit of desperation and commitment you’ll ever see—think Mikko Rantanan making that diving play to block a pass last night—but I tend to think the pace is at its best in the opening round.

For Dallas, they have the good fortune to draw Colorado, who are as pace-y as they come. And while the Stars defeated Colorado in November in Dallas, you probably have a better (worse) memory for the two subsequent losses in Colorado, when the Avalanche welcomed Dallas to town and pretty much stomped them both times.

Or at least, that’s been the collective memory of that matchup, with everyone desperate for the Stars to overtake Winnipeg in order to avoid the Avalanche in the opening round. But despite how good Colorado looks lately (and how much better the underlying numbers were for their two home wins over Dallas), this season matchup has really only been the barest beginning of the engagement that is a seven-game series.

To wit: that second “stomping” above wasn’t that at all. The Stars scored two goals in 20 seconds to force overtime last month. That means the Stars have played the Avs three times so far, and they have a 1-1-1 record. That’s more than enough to make for a competitive series.

Another reason for not only hope, but outright optimism, should be this: in all three Dallas/Colorado games this season, the losing team scored three goals. That’s a far cry from Winnipeg, who look like the true Team To Beat this year. The Jets lead the Stars by a combined score of 13-5 in the season series, with all three of their victories being comfortable regulation wins.

The Avalanche, on the other hand, are decidedly not the Jets. Their defense has tightened up considerably since the trade deadline, but their goal-scoring still lags behind Dallas, as does their goaltending. The Stars’ defense has been allowing chances at a ridiculous rate, but you already knew that, and besides, the Stars still took Colorado to overtime despite doing that in their most recent game anyway. But I’ve another to make, so here are some numbers from March 7 through today:

Colorado / Dallas (All numbers from March 7 - April 11)
5-on-5 xGA/60: 2.26 / 3.08 (expected goals against per 60 minutes)
5-on-5 GA/60: 1.84 / 2.25 (actual goals against per 60 minutes)

If you just do some quick-and-dirty subtraction, that means the Stars’ actual goals-against numbers have been 0.83 better per game than you’d expect them to be, whereas even with Scott Wedgewood’s ridiculous last seven games, the Avas are only 0.41 better per game than expected.

That’s not something you want to ask of your goalies night to night, but it also means the Stars’ goalies (both of them) have been red-hot during the Stars’ worst defensive run perhaps in the Pete DeBoer era.

It’s obviously torquing the numbers a bit to claim this as an outright good thing—better defense is preferable to worse defense—but in a short playoff series, a goaltender can make up that much ground in any given game. And the Stars already experienced that when they shocked Colorado by punching back in the third period and taking the game to overtime.

They say you want your best players playing their best when the playoffs roll around. And Jake Oettinger is playing much better than Mackenzie Blackwood lately. And that doesn’t even begin to take into account the fact that Blackwood has never played a game in the playoffs.

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Here’s another reason you shouldn’t expect this series to be a drubbing by the Avalanche: They aren’t the fearsome offensive machine they used to be.

To wit: In both 2022 when they won the Cup and last year, Colorado put up over 300 goals both times. They are not even close to that number this year.

In fact, this year, Colorado has 265 goals, and is on pace for around 272 goals. That’s akin to the 274 they scored two years ago when they got knocked out in the opening round by Seattle.

Here’s this year’s Colorado team. Click on the picture if you wanna dig in, but note that their power play offense is -2%, and how their Finishing is nearly dead-even with their expected goals.

And here’s last year’s Colorado team, which Dallas beat in six games: