I wasn’t able to see the game live last night. So to avoid getting spoiled once I actually did sit down to watch, sometime in the third period I wager, I made sure to turn my phone on “Do Not Disturb” in order to avoid any potential spoilage, as had happened for me in Game 1.
Despite my efforts, I still nearly ruined it for myself when, towards the end of the first, I absentmindedly checked my email and saw the first word of Sean Shapiro’s 20/20 for the night: “Ugly.”
The good news was that that word in of itself didn’t spoil anything — it could have referred to either the Dallas Stars, the Vegas Golden Knights, or both. To the game at large, a period of play, or a single event. Of course, given how that first period went for Dallas, in which they seemed to get eaten alive by Vegas, my hopes had already taken a hit.
But then, in the second period, the switch suddenly flipped. Specifically, when Wyatt Johnston, our Game 3 hero, scored on the power play. Given how the series at large had been going (save for maybe Game 3), where Logan Thompson was giving up rebound after rebound that Dallas just couldn’t get their stick on, it seemed almost karmic to watch Johnston finally capitalize on such an opportunity.
The dam broke open, and the rest of the second looked a lot like the previous game in Vegas, with the Stars absolutely bulldozing Vegas. Dallas constantly applied offensive pressure, the fourth line broke through to give them the lead (more on them later), and whenever Vegas got a chance, Jake Oettinger was there to stop it (also more on him later).
Still, the word ‘ugly’ was hanging around in the back of my mind, and the pessimistic portion of my brain was telling me that it wasn’t referring to the start. Sure enough, when the third period came around, it mirrored the first: Dallas was unable to transition or get pretty much any scoring chances, while Vegas throwing their weight around and getting multiple good looks at Oettinger.
Some people referred to it as the Stars turtling, reverting back to Ken Hitchcock and Rick Bowness, habits, but honestly, it didn’t look that way to me. It looked like Vegas was playing the exact kind of game they wanted — physical and disruptive — and that Dallas couldn’t help but get dragged into it. It was a sigh of relief when Roope Hintz, after sacrificing his body to block a shot, was able to ice the game with an empty net shorthanded goal.
So yeah, it was ‘ugly.’ But that brings us to the age-old maxim: “They don’t ask how; they ask how many.” Maybe Vegas “deserved” to win (although the expected goals beg to differ), but they didn’t, just like how Dallas probably “should” have won Game 1 but didn’t. The Stars were able to avoid heading back to Dallas facing elimination, and instead became the only team this postseason to make a series 2-2. That’s what’s important at the end of the day.
And hey, ugly or not, I can’t help but almost feel good about the game regardless. As I said, Vegas got the exact kind of game they wanted, with the exact matchups they wanted, all while forcing Dallas to try and switch up lines (and continue to intentionally roll only five defensemen), and they still lost. It’s those kinds of losses that tend to sting the most, I think, because what is your solution for next time? Just hope that Dallas plays worse?
We’re guaranteed at least two more games of this series, and there’s a good chance we get all three remaining. It’ll be a close one for sure, but I still can’t help but feel that Dallas has the edge, recency bias aside.
• Welcome back fourth line — after being seemingly invisible the first three games, the Stars’ bottom forwards looked like they have all season, putting on a pesky and irritating performance for the other team by spending far more time in the offensive zone than a fourth line should.
In fact, I can distinctively remember at least one fantastic shift from the Stars’ fourth line in each period of play, even when the rest of the team seemed to be struggling or getting pushed around. It was very fitting that they were rewarded with the game winning goal, which was technically Ty Dellandrea’s but really belonged to Craig Smith, who used his teammate as a backboard.
Speaking of Smith, it’s hard not to watch him play and think he was the missing ingredient. He should have never been the one to come out of the lineup to start the series, and while I’m not going to pretend like Dallas lost those first two games because Smith was a healthy scratch, I think the Stars missed him. Your fourth line isn’t (usually) going to win you games, but they can help you get there, especially when you’re up against another deep team in Vegas.
• (Soapbox moment incoming) Like I said, I wasn’t able to watch the game live. I wish I could have, though, if only to see the Twitter reactions to Jake Oettinger’s first goal against.
First of all, let’s put all talks of turnovers and defensive breakdowns aside — Oettinger should have had that one. I mean, it looked like he did at first, only for it to somehow slip past him. It was 100% a goal that any goalie would wish they had back. And so I would be good money that the initial knee-jerk reaction across all those watching at the time was more or less the same as it’s been all year long: that Oettinger is not actually that good, that the Stars have a “goalie” problem, that they need a 1B for a rotation, etc.
Maybe I’m overly sympathetic to Oettinger (it’s no secret that I’m a big fan), but I honestly think the Stars’ netminder has become a lightning rod of perhaps overly sharp criticism the past calendar year, starting with last postseason. I think after that Calgary Flames series, we all (myself included) were ready to anoint him as the next big goalie, an elite talent a la Connor Hellebuyck, Andrei Vasilevskiy, and Juuse Saros.
So when his peformance was subpar last year’s playoffs, not to mention outright worrisome this regular season, I feel like fans were a lot harsher than they would have been were the expectations lower. There has been less “goaltending is voodoo” and “everyone has an off year” and more outright “Oettinger isn’t good.” As I’ve written many times, you expect your elite goalies to make elite saves, but sometime it feels like almost every goal against is “Oettinger needs to stop that,” and that unless Oettinger is sprawling around the ice nonstop, doing his best Logan Thompson in Game 3 impersonation, he was only “good enough” for the win, not truly “great.”
All of which is to say I think Oettinger was great last night — you can only blame him for one goal against (he did everything he was supposed to on that second), and he took care of business every other time. Could he still find another level? Yes, as can pretty much every goalie. But that next level shouldn’t be the baseline expectation.
(Oh, and those elite goalies mentioned earlier? All below a .900 SV%, with Hellebuyck posting the fourth worst SV%, and Saros the worst. Igor Shesterkin is the only consistently “elite” goalie who has played like it this postseason, and he was playing Washington.)
• I already spoke about it last time, but Pete DeBoer has got to stop dressing Nils Lundkvist only to bench him all game. When asked about it before Game 4, he said he wasn’t too worried about leaning too heavily on his other defensemen, because it was still early in the playoffs when they were full of energy. Which is all fine and dandy if you’re not looking at the big picture, in which exhausting them now makes it harder in future rounds. Actually, I take that back — it still wouldn’t be okay, because it helps lead to performances like this from your best player:
Ouch. Rough night for Miro Heiskanen. Thank goodness for Chris Tanev, who was very noticeable last night in all of the right ways and more or less cancelled out Heiskanen’s bad performance. I’m not sure what DeBoer is trying to do here, beyond maybe hoping they’ll get a three or four goal lead against Vegas and then can feel comfortable putting Lundkvist in, but it’s got to stop.
• Generally speaking, hockey loves their “enforcers.” Matt Rempe is a sensation with New York Rangers fans right now. General Managers love adding players like Ryan Reaves to their arsenal to help “toughen up” for the playoffs (just, uhh, don’t ask how that always turns out for them). There’s a universal philosophy that you need someone out there to get revenge when the other team targets your star or young players, to make them think twice before they do it again (which they will do, because it’s not actually a deterrent).
But this fixation on enforcers completely ignores the fact that you don’t need someone whose sole job is to do that, especially since sending them onto the ice lets your opponent you’re out for blood, which tends to just escalate things further. If you want retaliation, to answer physicality with physicality, it’s better to just have physical players who can answer while also contributing in other meaningful ways.
Why bring this up? Because Jamie Benn is a textbook example of this, save for those games where he unwisely drops the gloves against a far inferior player. This was front and center early in last night’s game, where Brayden McNabb leveled Logan Stankoven only for Benn to immediately return the favor:
Hit, response, message received. Did it stop Vegas from being physical? No, but not anymore than having a forward hit the ice for four minutes a night, doing little more than to scare you that something might happen during those four minutes. And unlike the enforcer, Benn is able to log good minutes while being a positive influence on other aspects of his team’s play.
• Finally, there’s been a lot of talk about how the road team has won every game this series between Dallas and Vegas. Some might even argue that that should concern Stars fans, as their “home ice advantage” may not actually be to their advantage anymore.
Nonsense. The road team has been able to win because these are both very good teams who can easily take over a game no matter where they are. The home crowd is still going to give Dallas a slight tilt in this one, but that’s all it is: slight. It’s the players and coaches themselves that will make the difference here, and as I said earlier, I think Dallas has the edge as the better team.