And since you’re here (da da da)
The time seems to fly (da da da)
To let you know that you’re gonna be with me
‘Til I lose my mind
***
This game was teetering on the edge of a knife for long stretches. It started off with the new that, despite skating this morning, Roope Hintz would not be returning just yet. The lesser (but also important) announcement was that Radek Faksa was also scratched (we assume while healthy) in favor of Ty Dellandrea. Edmonton had a chance to grab this series by the scruff of its neck and stun the Stars before they got healthy and rolling, and they almost did it, with a first period so dominant that you wondered whether the Stars even had the tools to solve the problems of this series.
But the Stars are deep, and they’ve consistently shown the ability to make adjustments both within a game and within a series. The Oilers did get a goal from their own depth, albeit another frustratingly unnecessary one, but it was also the only one they a managed. And when you hold Connor McDavid to one shot on goal, you’re probably doing something right. He and Draisaitl went pointless, while Evan Bouchard played nearly 28 minutes in an effort that dropped off markedly for the Oilers after the first period.
It’s hard to credit the Stars for a gameplan in this one, since whatever they started with so clearly wasn’t working. The Oilers put up an 85% expected goals number in the first period, and you wouldn’t have been shocked to see Dallas down by two or even three after the relatively paltry effort they gave. But Jake Oettinger was the calmer, better goaltender, and he got them to the precipice of victory in time for them to stake their claim. It reminded me, if you can believe this, of some poetry that I heard some dear former students reciting a few months back:
My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now,
we all have weathered worse. Some god will grant us
an end to this as well.-Virgil, from the Aeneid
If Dallas could handle Colorado and Vegas, there just cannot, must not be any give-up happening against Edmonton. They simply aren’t good enough to warrant a defeatist attitude, and as much as Dallas deserves brickbats for their periodic failures, it is also the case that they have played the Oilers twice without losing in regulation. Keep that up, and you’ve got every chance of coming back to Dallas next week with some very good vibes.
All right, let’s get into the experience that was Game 2.
***
It was a scrambly start, before it turned into a “bailout the Titanic” situation. But Jamie Benn got the Stars up with a bit of a sketchy goal (from a goaltending perspective) far-side on Skinner during a 2-on-1 after a great Wyatt Johnston breakout pass from along the boards. It was a fantastic play by the player you’d expect to be fantastic, which he was, once again. The Wyatt Johnston line has so often been the Stars’ best line this postseason, regardless of the players on his wing, and Jamie Benn and Logan Stankoven were just the most recent beneficiaries.
As a side not, how many times in the past five years have we bemoaned Jamie Benn’s shot not quite measuring up to the one that won him a Skills Competition contest way back when? Well, Benn led the Stars in a lot of ways tonight, and his shot was a reminder that you are never safe when Jamie Benn has the puck on his stick. He may not be 22 anymore, but that isn’t an assurance of anything other than more facial hair.
Unfortunately, the Stars weren’t able to change the game to the type they’d like to play, because the third defense pairing got caught flat-footed along with Tyler Seguin, and Connor Brown (whom you can picture very clearly) scooped up a plump rebound to even things back up. Alex Petrovic stopped getting as regular turns in the lineup after that, putting up only 8 minutes by the game’s end, and you began to wonder if DeBoer would start to make some changes just to wake his team up. You also wonder if Petrovic’s shifts will start to resemble Nils Lundkvist’s of old, but we’ll hold off on our predictions in that depressing department for now.
Edmonton grabbed control of the period after that, which is to say Edmonton turned the entire period into a power play at 5-on-5, with a lot of small chances turning into big problems, requiring Jake Oettinger to come up big more than once, even on dribblers towards the crease. Edmonton was sending all three forwards to the net every time they had a look, and Dallas spent a lot of time trying to regroup and clear the puck rather than counterattack, leading to a few sustained shifts of survival.
The pressure from Edmonton continued, and it culminated in a high-sticking call on Esa Lindell, and the Oilers got an early power play with the game tilting in their favor. But Dallas’s penalty kill stood fast, and Oettinger made another couple of saves after some hesitant whistling by the officials made things even more frantic when he thought it had it covered, but apparently didn’t. Interestingly, that would be the only real power play for the Oilers once again, as a garbage time penalty was quickly negated. Dallas held Edmonton to basically two power plays in two games thus far, so they have yet to really deal with the scariest part of this team. But this really has been, as Sean put it the other night with Gavin, a weirdly clean series thus far. If Dallas can stay out of the box anywhere close to what they’ve done thus far, it’s going to make everything a whole lot easier.
Speaking of making things easier, the Stars did the opposite when Dadonov dropped back to cover for a pinching defenseman. You never want to see forwards skating backwards, and when Dadonov had to play defense, he ended up getting his corner turned, and it all led to a pile up into Jake Oettinger, who seemed none the worse for wear, thankfully. The less said about anyone’s health the better, these days.
Edmonton’s pressure seemed to come, at least in part, from their forechecking with three forwards high in the neutral zone during Dallas’s transitions, forcing early passes by Dallas and often quick tip-ins into the offensive zone. This wasn’t a trap like Vegas, staggering their players and countering after turnovers at their defensive blue line, but rather aggressive checking and quicker counterattacks than Dallas seemed to be ready for. I’ll take a closer look at this tomorrow, I think, but that was my initial read of things in the opening frame before Dallas adapted a bit.
That said, The Stars still got some looks, even with the shots on goal sitting at 16-4 through the first period. In fact, Logan Stankoven made a nice deke in the final minute to get the best look of the period for either team, as Stuart Skinner had completely lost track of the puck and left half the net wide open. But the erstwhile goalie managed to do some sort of birdlike desperation flail that covered the high net well enough to repel Stankoven’s shot, and the Stars entered the first intermission tied in number, if not in feel.
***
Dallas must have gotten ahold of some smelling salts in the intermission, because they came out roaring to start the second. Logan Stankoven made a nice play to force a bad pass that Matt Duchene stepped up to grab for a shot that Skinner easily brought down, but the real chances came right afterwards. Wyatt Johnston’s line hit two posts during a dominant shift, but like Jason Robertson in overtime last game, the Stars came away with nothing to show for their efforts. It was a sequence that made you fear that the Stars once again weren’t capitalizing on some iffy goaltending from the opposition.
Further pressure from Dallas saw Wyatt Johnston feed Evgenii Dadonov all alone on the doorstep, but Dadonov tried to do what Benn did in Game 6 against Colorado and drag it around Skinner. But Dadnov’s effort only got the puck to sit tantalizingly in the crease, unable to be put home.
The consolation prize this time was a power play, however, after Tyler Seguin’s face got raked by Darnell Nurse’s…glove? Well, I’m sure it still hurt, but that was probably a break for Dallas.
But the Stars still couldn’t solve the Oilers’ penalty kill, and that was despite the notable change of Seguin onto the top unit in place of Pavelski, making the top group a collection of Heiskanen, Robertson, Johnston, Benn, and Seguin. Their best chances came right off the hop, but again, nothing’ doing, and the game began to settle into another tight, low-scoring affair that Edmonton seemed unnervingly comfortable with.
It occurs to me that the first team to start scoring on the power play has every chance to take this series, but as I type this, I realize I’m just saying that scoring more goals helps you win, so I will not type that, lest I be ridiculed. Phew, close one.
Craig Smith got exactly the sort of chance you would want Smith to get, out in front of the net receiving a pass from below the goal line, but he wasn’t able to test Skinner with it. And when the Actual Craig Smith isn’t putting pucks on net, you know there’s a fundamental problem somewhere in the process.
All told, the second period wrapped up with Dallas feeling slightly less overwhelmed than they had 20 minutes prior by virtue of having very nearly taken the lead multiple times. But they still weren’t much more in control than they’d been most of the game. As has so often been the case in these playoffs, it was all going to come down to the final 20 minutes. Would Dallas be able to score during one of Skinner’s hallucinatory save attempts, or would they wind up digging a Vegas-sized hole against a team that hadn’t really seemed to have earned one?
The Jamie Benn-Wyatt Johnston-Logan Stankoven line once again threatened to answer that question early in the third, with a Stankoven bank attempt going off Skinner and traveling precipitously close as it traversed the goal line, but it would be Ryan Suter and Mason Marchment who would capitalize, following that shift with a deft shot-tip combo that slipped under Skinner’s arm to give Dallas a 2-1 lead that felt justifiable, if not outright deserved. Suter may not have been the only one to blame for the Connor Brown goal, but he more than redeemed himself with an eminently tippable shot at the right time for the game-winning tally by Marchment. I am saying good things about Ryan Suter these days, in case any potential jurors are paying attention.
The game opened up after that, as you’d expected, with Edmonton beginning to press and Dallas getting some chances at the other end. Craig Smith then decked Dylan Holloway at center ice during a transition attempt by Edmonton, and everyone could sense that a hockey game was finally breaking out after 40 minutes of cagey probing alternating with arthroscopic repairs.
Throughout the bulk of the third period, the energy ratched up on both sides. Edmonton gave consistent doses of their top-three guys, with Dallas getting just as many counterpunches in. Marchment could have had a natural hat trick with two further chances in the period, but it was open season for both sides, including a five-minute stretch without a whistle that raised the tension noticeably.
Down the stretch, Dallas looked more and more comfortable with the game, even though they had to absorb some serious pressure from the players you’d expect. The most dangerous moment came when Oettinger had a shot go off the upper shaft of his goalstick, but it felt right for a break to go Dallas’s way after they were the better team from the midway point of the game onward. If Skinner can make saves after seeing phantom passes go the opposite direction, the least the universe can do it send a puck aside.
But for all the shakiness of Stuart Skinner, the worst moment of all happened when he was taken off for an extra attacker. Half the Oilers team seemed unaware of what had happened, and Evander Kane was pinched off along the wall while his linemates all went for a change. The result was a wide-open Esa Lindell in his own zone with time to set his sights on an empty net, and summarily burying it as he eased across his blue line. That led to one of my favorite moments of the playoffs thus far:
The teams traded penalties in the final minute, but nothing came of it other than what Dallas needed: a victory to even the series before heading to Canada. For Dallas these days, that’s basically what you hope for: split the games at home before dominating on the road. It makes those rare home wins that much more special, right?
***
Lastly, I’ve seen a couple of friendly folks saying that Sean and I were a bit glib on Spits and Suds the other day when previewing this series. I get the impulse to effectively blame him or me for saying the Stars were the better team when they are not leading the series yet, but I don’t think all that much has changed. Edmonton is going to struggle to beat Dallas if their top guys don’t win games for them, whereas Dallas can lock things down with their middle-six forwards doing the scoring even after a dreadful first period. There’s a proof of concept in this game, though I’ll hold off crowing about anything until we see what happens in Alberta. The Stars were never going to cruise through the Western Conference Final, especially without Roope Hintz. But depth can help you out in a lot of ways, and I suspect those to become more apparent as the series goes along, just as Dallas proved to be the better team as this game progressed. It’s very reassuring to see that, at times, things in this world can wind up better than they started. That’s our job, isn’t it?
Stars Thoughts: Robert Tiffin's attempt to understand the Dallas Stars and everything else 
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