Last night, the Dallas Stars played a 5-4 overtime game against a division rival that they should have won in regulation after being up 4-2 and oh wow this is really familiar.
But unlike the (first) Chicago Blackhawks game, last night’s tilt against the Colorado Avalanche was a bit different. For starters, it was against one of the best teams in the league, not the worst, meaning both that the Stars’ 4-2 lead was far more impressive and that the Avalanche’s comeback was far more to be expected. After all, though Colorado never led the game, it was always rather close, in what looked (at first) to be a true heavy tilt between two top teams.
But there was a key difference between the two teams, and it’s one that I’ve harped on all year long: the defensive depth.
Consider: Colorado defenseman Bowen Byram missed most of the third period last night due to apparent injury. He isn’t exactly a star of the Avalanche defense, but he does log 20:20 a game on average, third on the team’s blue line. Meanwhile the actual star of the defense, Norris Trophy winner Cale Makar, appeared (to me) to have an off night. GameScore seems to back it up — Makar was third worst out of the Avalanche defensemen, ahead of only Kurtis MacDermid (the 7th dman who didn’t even play five minutes) and Jack Johnson (the 7th dman who, ever year, is treated by some new sucker as a Top 4 calibre player):
Factor in how suspect their goaltending has been all year (Alexandar Georgiev has started 32 games, but posts a .896 SV%), and you might expect that would spell trouble against a Stars team with three lines that can do some damage. But while Dallas did score four, only one of which came after Byram left due to injury.
Meanwhile, when 3-2, Dallas lost Miro Heiskanen in a nasty collision with Scott Wedgewood in his first (and only) shift of the third period, forcing Dallas to play five defensemen the rest of the game. It was no coincidence that three of the Avalanche’s five goals came after that injury, including with the goalie pulled in the late 3rd and in overtime, both situations where Heiskanen would have likely been on the ice.
Now, this is an apples vs oranges thing, to be fair — they’re both fruit, but comparing losing Byram to losing Heiskanen is just foolhardy. But again, we’re focused on depth here: the Avalanche lost Byram, and they went along just fine, aided only somewhat by having a 7th defenseman dressed. But when Heiskanen went down, the Stars began “double shifting” pretty much every defenseman (Joel Hanley included) in a scramble to keep a defensive presence intact.
Yeah, that’s right — the Stars didn’t just double shift Thomas Harley, their clear best second defenseman on the roster. They played him more, yes, but not even the most:
To be fair, Dallas was protecting a lead, so Lindell getting more ice time than Harley is at least understandable (the entire 3rd period was 5-on-5). Still, it’s a far cry from the initial online reaction, in which fans expected Harley to be elevated as the savior. And it’s also worth noting that in terms of average shift time, Harley’s actually went down in the third, compared to Lindell’s and Ryan Suter’s which went up.
But perhaps the best way to illustrate the impact of Heiskanen’s absence is not by 5-on-5 shift times with only five defensemen, or even by the difference in score. No, that would belong to the overtime period — naturally, Thomas Harley started for Dallas, but the big question would be which defenseman would go in after the first shift change.
The answer? Nobody. The Stars took a defensive zone faceoff(!) with three forwards: Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz, and Radek Faksa taking the draw. Once they exited the zone, Faksa came out for Tyler Seguin. The next shift saw Harley go back in, after which he was replaced by an actual defenseman in Esa Lindell…. who lasted for 25 seconds before getting replaced by Hintz, as the Stars went back to 3 forwards.
In Pete DeBoer’s defense, the Stars did have several quality scoring chances with three forwards on the ice. To his detriment, however, they also did when the Avalanche got a 2-on-none and Nathan MacKinnon buried the puck to win the game.
Dallas has seen 12 overtime games this season out of 37, and it turns out they only trust two defensemen on the ice at 3-on-3: Heiskanen and Harley. And can you blame them? The only other player on the roster you might remotely consider to play a full shift is Nils Lundkvist, until you realize that if Deboer doesn’t trust Lunkdvist to play against Colorado to begin with, there’s almost no chance he trusts him to go in at 3-on-3.
Which all goes back to the same point I made six months ago, that the Stars made a terrible mistake by not addressing their defense this offseason. “F-Around?” Meet “Find Out.” I mean, can you imagine what this defense would look like if Hanley didn’t live up to the potential he showed in last year’s postseason? If he had slumped or buckled under playing a full NHL season?
The Stars’ defense has always been patchwork beyond Miro Heiskanen, which is a precarious place to begin with. If the star player is out long term? Well, better pray Oettinger returns soon and is back to his normal elite self, because Dallas is going to need a goalie to bail them out night after night after night.