Heading into the playoffs, there was one thought on most everyone’s mind: the Vegas Golden Knights were the worst possible reward for the Dallas Stars winning the conference.
Even if you felt that Dallas would win round one regardless of who they played, I’m not sure there’s a single Stars fan who would have preferred Vegas over the Nashville Predators or the Los Angeles Kings. These are the defending Stanley Cup champions, after all. Who beat Dallas 4-2 in last year’s Western Conference Final. Who went 3-0-0 against them this year. Who added Tomas Hertl, Noah Hanifin, and Anthony Mantha at the deadline and, oh yeah, got Mark Stone back perfectly healthy just in time for Game 1, and conveniently not a single game earlier.
And yet, this team didn’t exactly look like a juggernaut, did they? The Golden Knights only generated 15 shots on goal. Logan Thompson, who got the start over last year’s playoff hero in Adin Hill, looked shaky at times, getting beaten five-hole twice and letting in a soft third goal that had no business going in. You wouldn’t have known it simply by listening to the broadcast, but Vegas looked vulnerable, much more like the final Wild Card spot team the regular season said they are and much less like the unbeatable juggernaut everyone treats them as.
But despite all of that, Dallas still lost 4-3, in a game that felt like it had gotten out of hand as early as a minute into the second period when Jack Eichel scored the Golden Knights’ fourth goal. The Stars’ top line was mostly quiet the whole night. An early goal was negated by offside, and another possible scoring chance was stopped short for the same reason. The deadly power play went 0-2 while Vegas went 2-2.
In many ways, I’d say that Jake Oettinger’s performance was perhaps a microcosm of the Stars’ at large. No, Oettinger wasn’t the reason they lost — you for sure can’t blame him for two of the goals, and then you can throw in a tough screen for a third. Yet at the same time, he didn’t do anything to win them the game either. And that pretty much sums up the Stars’ performance: they didn’t beat themselves, but they certainly didn’t do much to stop Vegas from doing so.
And that’s why this game was so disappointing. It would have been one thing if Dallas lost a close, one-goal game to the reigning champions, who fought them tooth and nail to steal a game on the road. Instead, it’s like the Stars just sort of shrugged their shoulders and said, “That’s okay, we didn’t want to win Game 1 anyways.”
There’s a silver lining in that Dallas is likely to be properly motivated for Game 2, and should be expected to respond in force. Of course, Vegas will also look to clean up their own game, and thus provide much more of a challenge for Dallas the second time around. And even if Dallas wins Game 2, all that will do is effectively make this a 5-game series in which the Golden Knights have home-ice. That’s the punishment for losing a home game as the higher seed — you effectively concede your that advantage.
All that being said, I’m far from doom and gloom. I still think Dallas is the better team by a decent margin, and I still expect them to wrap this up with a series win before Game 7. But they’ve already made that the road to get there tougher, and they only have themselves to blame.
• I’m not going to go into the whole Mark Stone thing, as that’s been repeated ad-nauseam. All I’ll say is that, much like drawing Vegas in the first round to begin with, it is what it is. It may be unfair, but it is legal, so there’s no use crying about it. Best path forward is to just take care of business against Vegas and make it a non-issue going forward.
• As mentioned earlier, the Golden Knights handily won the special teams matchup, which was the difference maker in this one. That stings because it was supposed to be an area where Dallas had the edge, but it’s hard to make general takeaways after a single game. Do a better job next time around, especially on the penalty kill, less Pete DeBoer opts to try and rush Jani Hakanpää back into the lineup as a reinforcement.
• I hold a natural disdain against offside review, but this was one of those cases where you say, “Yeah, that should have been called at the time.” It’s unfortunate, because it was a great goal by Ryan Suter (and might have spelled a very different outcome in this one-goal game), but I’m fine with that getting called back.
What hurt is that it seemed to kill the momentum Dallas just took back after allowing an early goal, and then Jonathan Marchessault’s goal further deflated the Stars minutes later. Combine that with Hertl scoring less than two minutes after Jamie Benn put Dallas on the board for real and the Eichel goal at the start of the second, and like I said earlier, it felt like this game was out of hand less than halfway through.
• Speaking of that Benn goal, that was a sick breakaway move. And what a takeaway by Logan Stankoven to get the puck free for Jason Robertson, who scored goal number two. As mentioned earlier, both of those goals were five-holes — that’s something I’m paying attention to whether I’m Dallas or Vegas. The Stars are likely going to try and exploit that some more, which means Thompson needs to clean up that area of his game if he wants to stay on the ice in favor of Hill.
• Sorry for the late posting on this one. I should be able to get Game 2’s up at a more reasonable time. Which, of course, means it’ll probably end up being two days late or something.