Originally, I had 300 words written about sandwiches to start this Afterwords off.
I’ll pause for a moment to allow you to ponder that.
Perhaps it was my 1:00 AM brain speaking (and maybe still is, since it’s only 30 minutes later and I’m still not sure if I should have deleted it), but the analogy made sense in my mind — the most important part about the sandwich is bread, because that’s what makes it a sandwich1. Similarly, what often decides a hockey game is not necessarily what happens in the middle, but what happens at the beginning and the end. The “bread” of the game, if you will.
(You can see why I decided to CTRL-A + DEL).
The Dallas Stars once again did not play a “perfect” Game 3 last night (technically this morning too) in Minnesota. In fact, the “middle” was not very appetizing at all, considering they gave up three unanswered goals and looked like they were heading for another series deficit. But they did have a perfect beginning to the game, as well as a good enough end to win things in double overtime.
After all, those three goals by the Minnesota Wild would have been a lot worse had Dallas not already built a 2-0 lead. After Marcus Foligno’s comments after Game 2 about how the Stars couldn’t hang 5-on-5 with the Wild, it was pretty funny to watch the Wild immediately take a penalty and then give up a power play goal just over a minute in, courtesy of Mikko Rantanen and Matt Duchene. And then Jason Robertson, a.k.a. Mr. Automatic, of course managed to score in his third consecutive game to extend the lead and ensure that us Stars fans never shut up about his Olympic snub, regardless of the results of that Gold Medal game.
And then of course we had the end… of regulation, in which Duchene notched his third point of the night by scoring the game-tying goal halfway into the third. The Stars continued to finish strong as time expired and we headed into the first overtime… which admittedly was not very good for Dallas as a whole, given their whole two shots on net, two penalties taken, and overall inability to maintain any real possession with the long change. Kind of puts a damper on the whole sandwhich analogy, huh?2
But the second overtime was all Dallas, complete with their own pair of power plays. And at the end of the night, the Wild learned the hard way that you just can’t keep taking penalties against the Stars if you expect to win in the long run, as the other Mr. Automatic in Wyatt Johnston scored a tip that would make Joe Pavelski a very proud professional billet dad:
So thanks in part to the strong start but mostly the strong finish(es), the Stars managed to reclaim home ice advantage and take the series lead. Again, it wasn’t perfect by any means, but you hardly ever get “perfect” in the playoffs, and when you do, it’s not particularly sustainable. And while I honestly would still expect this series to end up tied 2-2 after Game 4, let’s just say that I’d much rather be the team looking to avoid that scenario then the team that feels like they desperately have to force it.
• Is it possible to be frustrated about a power play that went 3/8 in the playoffs, including the game-tying goal that forced overtime and the game-winner two periods later?
I mean, I know I just went on and on about how it’s the start and finish that end up mattering most, and that’s pretty much how the Stars’ power play delivered. But the Wild took three non-offsetting penalties in the second period, none of which the Stars were able to capitalize on. More specifically, two of those combined for forty seconds of 5-on-3, and not only did the Stars fail to score then nor the next 80 seconds with the man advantage, but the Wild scored to take the lead literally right after that.
In other words, if the Stars were going to score three power play goals (or heck, just two), couldn’t one of those been there in the second, given that it would have likely resulted in a 3-2 lead instead of a deficit, and thus potentially won the game in regulation and allowed us all to go to bed at a reasonable time?
I suppose you could call frustration an example of “suffering from success” — after all, you expect the Stars to score there because they’re such an elite power play, which means pretty much any time they don’t feels like a failure or a missed opportunity. And when it comes to keeping things in perspective, I’m much happier about where the Stars’ power play unit is now compared to the last three playoff runs.
• The Stars’ penalty kill, meanwhile, is not an elite unit, but boy did they play like one. The Wild, who were just behind the Stars as the third best power play unit in the regular season, went just 1-for-7 on the night, scoring on their first but failing on the next six. Three of those, by the way, came in the third period while they were trying to extend (or reclaim for one) their lead, and two of which were in the first overtime period.
And yet the Stars penalty kill unit stood strong, highlighted by Radek Faksa who spent approximately a bajillion years killing a penalty without a stick, even managing to block a shot and help disrupt another one. The Stars’ penalty kill guru had a great game, and more than deserved to have gotten the game-winner when he later deflected a shot just wide behind Jesper Wallstedt. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
(Funnily enough, the Stars don’t need to necessarily buy their penalty kill unit beers as atonement, considering most of the penalties came from those same players themselves. Except for Jamie Benn, of course — Robertson gets a pass for obvious reasons).
• Also weird to say: despite 34 penalty minutes and fifteen(!) power plays being dolled out, it felt like there should have been a lot more calls. Specifically, Dallas got away with a good chunk of stuff, not necessarily at the beginning when the home crowd immediately started jeering the refs, but definitely as the game went on and especially in overtime. Heck, so long as we’re playing “what if” questions, there was a missed hi-stick by Dallas in the first, and the next stoppage was a minute or so later when the Stars scored their second goal.
So yeah, I feel like the Wild got the short end of the stick when it came to penalties called. That being said, before any of their fans complain about officiating being a deciding factor in the game… maybe consider not going 1-for-7 on the power play as previously mentioned? It takes a bit of wind out of the argument.
• Moving away from penalties, this was a great performance from all of the Stars’ top players: Miro Heiskanen (who played 43(!) minutes), Matt Duchene, Jason Robertson, Nils Lundkvist, Wyatt John-wait, Nils Lundkvist?
Jokes aside, I wasn’t surprised to see Lundkvist grade out so well on the stat card. I felt he’s been very good this series so far, and really on the whole of the season as well. He’ll always be remembered as a player Dallas traded a first rounder for, but keep in mind that ended up being a late first, and history shows us the type of player you usually hope to get from such picks is… well, someone like Nils Lundkvist, only years down the line and not right now during your contending window.
Is he a bonafide Top 4 defensemen? No, but he’s pulling his own weight and then some. Given he spent pretty much the entire Pete DeBoer tenure in the doghouse, to the extent that him so much playing in a postseason game was inconceivable, I can’t help but be thrilled about that.
• Finally, there’s only one person in the world who would watch Mikko Rantanen’s assist on the Duchene goal and describe it as having “the patience of a Tibetan sand artist.” Man, I love Razor.
- For the sake of avoiding arguments, we’ll say “bread” here applies to any structural food-stuff that can contain food within it, to appease all placements on the sandwich alignment chart. ↩︎
- Unless, of course, we’re talking about a triple decker sandwich, in which there is a third piece of bread in the middle. But then you have to consider whether the third piece counts as “bread” or just another “middle” ingredient, and you’re starting to understand why I realized this was a very, very bad metaphor. ↩︎
