Last night, the Dallas Stars headed into a matchup against the Toronto Maple Leafs riding three streaks. The first, the more well known, was a five game point streak to start the season, their only loss being in the shootout to the Vegas Golden Knights. They were one of only four teams who had yet to lose in regulation, the others being Vegas, the Colorado Avalanche, and the Boston Bruins, all three of whom were, heading into the night, undefeated.
The second streak was a four game losing streak to the Maple Leafs, with the Stars’ last win over Toronto coming on February 13th, 2020. The third was a seven game losing streak to the Maple Leafs at the American Airlines Center, with their last home win against Toronto being January 31st, 2017. To put things into perspective, that was Auston Matthews’ first career game against the Stars.
So at least one streak had to snap last night, and, perhaps to no one’s surprise, it was the point streak. Because at the end of the day, the Stars just can’t beat the Maple Leafs — in the salary cap era, Dallas is 8-12-5 against Toronto, with half of those being a four game winning streak to start. Since the 2010-11 season, Dallas has only won four times, never back to back, and have three separate four game losing streaks, the third having now been extended to five games.
It’s the Stars second worst losing streak to another NHL team, behind only the Vancouver Canucks at six consecutive losses. But that’s only a recent slump — for comparison against Toronto, the Stars are 29-22-6 against Vancouver in the salary cap era and 19-14-4 since 2010-11, including a ten game winning streak between 2013 and 2015 and a 14-2 stretch between 2013 and 2017. As former DBD great Erin Bolen tweeted (and yes, it will always be called a tweet), every team has “that one dumb opponent,” and for Dallas, it’s Toronto.
And you know what makes it even more frustrating? The Stars should have won this. Or, at least, they had numerous opportunities to. That Thomas Harley shot that just went above the crossbar? Tyler Seguin crashing the net? Roope Hintz and Jamie Benn getting a rush on the penalty kill? The scoring opportunities were there.
And that’s just counting the chances that actually had, well, a chance. There were so many potential scoring chances that were ruined due to an unlucky bounce of the puck or two, especially in the first period. Perhaps no play better encapsulates this than when the puck was passed right to Jamie Benn, literally right in front of a wide open net… only for it to bounce off his skates instead of his stick and into the endboards.
So Dallas didn’t get the bounces, and when they did, they didn’t convert. The Maple Leafs, on the other hand? They were able to capitalize on their chances. Dallas took a penalty to negate their power play? Toronto immediately scores at 4-on-4. Toronto gets called offsides? No matter — Mitch Marner will just score seconds after the ensuing faceoff. Jani Hakanpää takes a double minor, but Dallas manages to clear? Just kidding, Matthew Knies makes a sprawling save to keep it in the offensive zone and Toronto immediately scores their third goal.
As a whole, it’s hard to be upset with the Stars’ performance (beyond their horrendous power play, of course). They still look like a good team, albeit one that is still working towards their full stride rather than dominating out the gate like some of the others mentioned earlier. But at the end of the day, they still lost a game that could have very feasibly been 4-1 the other way.
This wasn’t my intention when thinking of the bullet points for this game originally, but my talking points do correlate pretty much perfectly with the stat card for Dallas:
• I feel Mason Marchment had his best game of the season last night, so it was no surprise to see him at the top. He scored the lone Stars goal of the game off an assist from Matt Duchene (coming in at a solid fifth in GameScore), which is ironic considering this marked the first full game in which Marchment was demoted from Duchene’s line down to the fourth.
I still think Marchment is better than what we saw last year, and tonight added some credence to that theory. But at the end of the day, I also agree with my colleague David Castillo that a Marchment-Seguin duo just shouldn’t be a thing, and if that’s the case, is there really a home for him anywhere but the fourth line? I think Dallas would ultimately be content if Marchment was a high end fourth liner, but it would be begrudgingly so, given his $4.5M price tag (for three more years).
• The second name on the list was even less of a surprise. It’s getting a lot of traction on Twitter (again, yes it will always be called that) from fans and media alike, but it still feels under the radar: Nils Lundkvist looks good to start the season. I admit, I was a bit worried about how he’d start off this year given how the end of the last season went for him, but he’s looking ever part like the player Dallas expected when they traded a first round pick for him a little over a year ago.
Assuming development continues to go well for the Stars young defensemen, Dallas looks like they’ll have a deadly Top 4 in a couple years between, Miro Heiskanen, Thomas Harley, Lundkvist, and Lian Bichsel. Heck, as things stand, Lundkvist already has a strong case for being the Stars’ third best defensemen.
• The other defenseman with a strong case? Believe it or not, Ryan Suter, who coincidentally also came in third in GameScore and whose defensive impact was twice that of Lundkvist’s, behind only defensive partner Miro Heiskanen (who was fourth overall). He hasn’t been great every game (see: Ducks, Anaheim), but overall, he looks like the player the Dallas brass thinks he is and not the one fans and media tend to think he is.
This does come with an asterisk, however, because there’s still a big question looming: will he be able to keep this up? His average ice time has only dropped about a minute from last season, and that’s largely due to being taken off the power play — he’s actually seen an increase in TOI at even strength and the penalty kill. Only his Heiskanen and Thomas Harley have more time at even strength.
Odds are, we’ll see Suter begin to regress as the season goes on and the minutes take their toll. Which is a shame, because I honestly think Suter could be a solid third pairing defensemen, i.e. with more limited minutes. Issue there, of course, is how exactly would you even do that barring a long term injury on the blueline? He and Esa Lindell are locked in on the left side, and you might as well ink Harley there as well. And since Lindell isn’t exactly inspiring confidence lately (and there’s a negative percent change Suter’s ever paired with Hakanpää), the best you could probably do is pair him with Lundkvist on a “second” pairing and put Harley and Heiskanen together full time.
…Which, to be fair, might be the Stars’ long term goal anyways, given how Harley occasionally replaces Suter on that pairing late game. And a Lunkdvist-Suter pairing did have some success last season. Stay tuned.
•Finally, let’s jump to the other end of the card for the one player with truly poor game. I mean, Hakanpää was just flat out bad last night, making error after error, all culminating in a costly double minor high sticking penalty that gave Toronto their third goal of the evening. Now, from the stands and on the brief replay on the jumbotron, it looked like David Kampf might have hit himself in the face, but even if he did, the Stars were offside — why was Hakanpää fighting for the puck to begin with?
His advanced stats have looked good in some games, but I can’t help but wonder how much of that is because of his partner, Thomas Harley. And sure, he’s a big part of the Stars’ penalty killing unit, which was perfect until last night (which, perhaps not coincidentally, he was not a part of due to being in the box). But I’ve always maintained a stance that if your whole reason for being in the lineup is to play a couple minutes of special teams a night, maybe you shouldn’t be in there to begin with, less your team is running with seven defensemen.
There is a possible solution long term for this season, namely making a trade at the deadline for a defenseman. Hakanpää is already the logical first man out assuming Lundkvist keeps this up, and if the newcomer is able to kill penalties well, the concerns about Hakanpää’s contributions there would be diminished. But that’s easier said than done, given the current state of pending UFA defensemen. If you’re looking for a RHD who’s good defensively (and plays for a team that might realistically be selling), Chris Tanev is kind of your only option if you want someone who’s actually good. In fact, he’s better than good, which is why he may come with a hefty price tag in a bidding war Nill might not win.
Granted, that could be avoided if the Calgary Flames continue to be bad and Nill tries to pull the trigger early, say sometime after New Year’s. But until such a deal actually happens, we might have to just cross our fingers and hope that Hakanpää at least treads water this (post)season… or that Joel Hanley can come in and save the day again.