The title says it all.
No more comparisons to last year’s Western Conference Final. No more ad nauseam about LTIR loophole abuse. No more agonizing over the Stars’ best team in arguably 25 years potentially getting sent home in Round 1. Those narratives have all ceased.
Oh, some will continue into the second round, of course. Who’s hot (Wyatt Johnston, Jake Oettinger) and who’s not (Roope Hintz, Joe Pavelski). Pete DeBoer’s inability to (right or wrong) trust Nils Lundkvist and instead roll five defensemen. How Dallas, after drawing the defending Stanley Cup Champions in Round 1 gets a single day off after their Game 7 before taking on a Colorado Avalanche team that hasn’t played a game of hockey since April.
But if only for a short moment, we get to leave all talk of the Vegas Golden Knights behind us. No more analyzing the goal-tending decisions by Bruce Cassidy. No more booing the opposing captain by the fans. And, perhaps, no more wondering about what could have been had Dallas bested Vegas last postseason.
As I said, relief.
But the relief was more than just the result. Call me crazy, but even though it was a Game 7, I actually felt a strange calm for most of the entire game. More specifically, the calm started 14:34 into the first period, when Wyatt Johnston opened the scoring for Dallas with the most perfect shot imaginable on Adin Hill:
That mood naturally soured late in the second period, when Nils Lundkvist made a play that we will certainly talk about later that directly led to Brett Howden getting Vegas on the board. But there was still a silver lining, all because of that first goal: that this was only a game-tying goal, not a goal giving the Golden Knights the lead.
Still, I prepared myself for another, let’s call it teeth clenching third period, with the entire season on the line. A feeling that immediately evaporated less than a minute in when Radek Faksa of all players gave Dallas their lead back:
In a series that was full of missed opportunities or unlucky bounces for Dallas, the Stars got one when they needed it most. Just like that, the weight was lifted once more, only even more so. Whereas with Johnston’s goal, I had a strange, unsubstantiated confidence that Dallas was then going to win the game, now it felt like an absolute certainty in my mind. It just required Dallas running out the clock.
But that’s not what the Stars did. Quite the contrary, Dallas continued to put heavy pressure on Vegas, at one point outshooting them 9-1 for the period. Even the Golden Knights’ lone power play, coming at the perfect time to let them tie the game back up and give us a nail-biting finish, came out flat. Sure, the Vegas was able to pick up the pace back up as the period went on, but with the way Jake Oettinger has been playing this series, it didn’t really matter if they were generating pressure again, did it?
That’s not to say that Oettinger and the Stars didn’t have their own share of luck, of course. There were several cases in which Vegas should have probably scored on Dallas, most notably when Jack Eichel missed the wide open net to end the second. But again, bad puck luck and missed opportunities plagued Dallas all series long — to see all of that entropy seemingly shoved onto Vegas for the final game was strangely cathartic in a way.
And so Dallas gets to move on, while the Golden Knights are sent home to clear out their lockers. As already mentioned, the Stars won’t get much of a chance to recover as they face off against the well rested Avalanche in Round 2. But as stressful as it was, perhaps some of my fellow writers are correct in that playing the Golden Knights have helped prepare Dallas for Colorado in a way the Los Angeles Kings never could have.
Can you say the same for how the Winnipeg Jets prepared Colorado? Given the vast differences between Rick Bowness’s old team and his new one, I don’t think you can.
• As David Castillo mentioned after Game 6, there was legitimate concern about how a whistle-light Game 7 would favor Vegas, who were at their best this series when the games got physical and they were able to throw their weight around. And yet, at the same time, it feels like the lack of penalties is what ultimately helped sink them.
Consider how ineffective the Golden Knights were at 5-on-5 this series. From Jesse Granger:
DeBoer has made a living taking away the best players on the opposing teams in the playoffs, and he was able to do it again in this one. Vegas’ Mark Stone, Chandler Stephenson, Tomas Hertl, William Karlsson, Ivan Barbashev, Shea Theodore, and Alex Pietrangelo were all held without a five-on-five goal in the first round.
Most of the Golden Knights’ offense came while someone was sitting in the sin bin, especially when it came to captain Mark Stone. Heck, in the Stars’ sole power play of the game, Dallas didn’t manage a single shot on net, whereas Vegas managed a couple!
Yet in a game they spent the majority trailing, Vegas was unable to get a call to put that non-even-strength mojo to good use. And when the finally did get on the power play in the third (on a call weaker than the one they themselves were called for in the first), they were unable to take proper advantage of it.
What doe that mean for the Stars? Well you have to be thrilled with their 5-on-5 performance, especially against a team like Vegas. That and Oettinger’s resurgence is something to build off of going into Round 2.
• Nils Lundkvist made every one in Dallas groan when he blew his coverage and allowed Brett Howden to skate right up to Oettinger’s back door in the second period:
It was a bad, bad play by Lundkvist, and he paid the price dearly — he didn’t play another shift the entire game, keeping his TOI at a low 3:09 instead of… umm… 3:49?
I mean really, what is the supposed takeaway from this? That Pete DeBoer didn’t trust Lundkvist? We already knew that! Since Dallas went down 2-0 in the series, Lundkvist has averaged 2:22 TOI (rounded up) each game. He was already over that this game, and I’m supposed to feign shock that he was stapled to the bench after this?
This would normally be the time where I would say, “If Ryan Suter or Jani Hakanpää made that same play, they wouldn’t have gotten benched,” pointing out how young players are (in general) treated unfairly compared to veterans. But the truth is that it’s not an equivalent situation, because Suter and Hakanpää would have never been in Lundkvist’s situation. And I don’t mean the on-ice one: I’m talking about playing a couple minutes a night max, with the clear understanding that any negative plays will probably end your night early. Lundkvist knew what the stakes were, and the reaction from DeBoer was entirely predictable and not even that outlandish.
Now, if you want to get into the unfairness of being put in that position to begin with… well, not to beat a dead horse, but I still don’t get why DeBoer is playing Lunkdvist to begin with if he’s going to play so little. Put literally anyone else in the lineup, or if he’s there solely in case of injury, just don’t put him on the ice until such an injury occurs! Don’t shatter whatever semblance of confidence your young player has left, then put him out to defend a one goal lead you don’t trust him to hold only to pull a Surprised Pikachu when he gets scored on.
• Okay, back to some positives: Wyatt Johnston was fantastic as always, Jason Robertson continued to go underappreciated as always, the fourth line continued being arguably the best fourth line in hockey, and Chris Tanev… well, Chris Tanev was doing this all series long:
The not so happy thoughts, as well as the likely blame had Dallas lost the series, mostly center on Roope Hintz and Joe Pavelski, the former of which was quiet all series (save the final minutes of Game 4) and the latter of which has finally been bested by Father Time, who was apparently was not happy with being avoided for so long and thus decided not to pull any punches.
But we’re focusing on positives here, so I’m instead going to call attention to something a lot of people have been mentioning, including I swear Pete DeBoer himself if I was just able to find that stupid quote on Twitter, whose search engine feels like it’s degrading every-
Ahem, sorry about that. Anyways, remember how Jason Robertson had a slow start last year, to the point where people were questioning whether he was “built for the playoffs?” Well he certainly shook off that label as the Stars’ postseason grew longer, and I have faith Hintz will as well. Pavelski… well, there’s at least a slight hope.
Point being: Colorado is a new series, where what happened against Vegas has little bearing on what happens next. Save your narratives until after Games 1 and/or 2.
• Pete DeBoer improved to 8-0 in Game 7s, tying Darryl Sutter (8-3) for most in NHL history. That stat is absolutely ridiculous, to the point that I kind of want every series Dallas plays from now on to reach Game 7, just to see when the magic dies out.
DeBoer, by the way, seemed to enjoy the win greatly:
• Finally, I want to close off this Afterwords, and this series in general, with a different post-game quote:
Given how the Golden Knights got blown out by the Anaheim Ducks to end the season, it certainly felt like that, didn’t it? Even people in the media were talking about how “no one wants Connor McDavid,” even as the Kings celebrated getting the win to move up to 3rd in the Pacific.
Well, it just goes to show you: Dallas was the Number 1 seed for a reason. Let that be a lesson that Colorado does not heed going into Round 2.