Game 28 AfterThoughts: No Excuses for the Inexcusable

“Pretty ugly,” said Jamie Benn.

“Slow start. They were a lot better,” said Miro Heiskanen

“Not close to competitive enough. Disappointing. It was everybody. Our Video Review coaches were our best players tonight by far.”

The Stars are a team built on the mantra of “No Excuses.” From Jim Nill on down, this organization has echoed that phrase, and regardless of whether you’re missing a player like Tyler Seguin or a call doesn’t go your way, the belief is that this team is good enough to do something special.

That’s why it’s so disappointing, and even mystifying, when they put an effort like tonight’s game on the ice. Through 40 minutes, Nashville deserved to be ahead at least 3-0, and probably more. Gustav Nyquist bottled a great chance, and Thomas Harley saved the team’s collective bacon twice on puck sitting in the paint.

On top of that, the team had two successful challenges to wipe Nashville goals off the board. And the one goal they did get was from a 20-year-old defenseman, off the rush, in his first NHL game.

And to top it all off, Nashville was playing without their best player, on an eight-game losing streak, and with a backup goalie. Roman Josi missed this game with an injury, and Nashville also lost defenseman Michael McCarron to a skate cut early in the first period, then nearly lost Luke Schenn to a blocked shot later on. They had players in the lineup I think even Andrew Brunette had never heard of, and the Stars only allowed one Nashville power play, which they killed off.

So when you add all of those things up, the quotes from the Stars above make sense. But the only word for the performance I can add to them is this one: Inexcusable.

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Okay, actually there are a lot more words, too. You probably suspected as much, but I just recorded an episode of Spits & Suds with Gavin about this game, so give that a listen if you don’t want to read all of this. I was hoping to publish three piece all in one day on this here website, but I think midnight is just about to sneak up on me. Alas and alack.

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The Stars expected to face a bit of a desperate team, given Nashville’s disappointing season to date (this is a euphemism for “absolute train wreck”, which would be an unkind way to describe their year). Being the last-place team a third of the way through the season in which you shelled out a ton of money in free agency is bad for any team, let alone a team caught betwixt and between the way the Predators’ roster is.

For what it’s worth, the Nashville morning skate reflected that same desperation, as Andrew Brunette was leading a hard and fast series of drills with pretty uniform attention and participation, in great contrast to the Stars’ optional skate beforehand. One suspects that the Stars will not continue to get two days off after a heavy schedule if they put forth efforts like this when they return to action, though.

All that to say, the Predators came out quickly, and Dallas didn’t match their play for the bulk of the first period. But Jake Oettinger was on his game, and Dallas survived. I imagine the Predators are getting tired of other teams doing that to them.

Bichsel’s first shift didn’t exactly start with aplomb either, as he got called for cross-checking while battling with Mark Jankowski in front of the net. It was a bit of a borderline call, but the result was two minutes of Nashville doing what they do best, which is looking like they should score without ever actually doing it, as one or two pucks got near the net and even behind Oettinger, but were cleared off the line without result.

The scariest moment for opposing forwards and Bichsel early was when Michael McCarron laid a hit on Bichsel as he was clearing the puck, leading to Bichsel’s falling down, and his left skate’s appearing to cut McCarron somewhere on the side of his head or neck. McCarron quickly skated off the ice and back to the room.

Bichsel and Ilya Lyubushkin were paired up for this game, which makes sense. In fact those two were the only positive plus/minus players on the entire team, thanks to Bichsel’s goal. Pete DeBoer had said before the game that they wanted to ease Bichsel into his first NHL action, so putting him on his strong side with an NHL veteran RHD like Lyubushkin made sense. But it took the Stars’ first coach’s challenge of the season to erase a goal against for the pairing, after a Navhille rush chance led to defenseman Adam Wilbsy beating Oettinger high before Bichsel could get over to block the shot. But the challenge was clear and obvious, and the goal was erased. Also, we should erase all off-side reviews in the NHL forever.

All in all, Bichsel’s first period of NHL action was mixed, but given that a lot of the team looked to be playing with the nerves any rookie has to deal with in their first NHL action, the Stars were probably perfectly happy to have escaped with a 0-0 score. Bichsel wound up with just under 16 minutes of ice time, and he didn’t look overmatched, despite the rest of the team absolutely looking just that.

Gustav Nyquist had the best of a series of chances Oettinger saved in the second period, in which he got a pass on the doorstep with time to make a move and try to pull Oettinger forward and down, but Oettinger stood tall, and Nyquist couldn’t beat him. The chance was mirrored almost immediately the other way when Mavrik Bourque got a feed in front off a great forecheck by Stankoven, but Bourque once again couldn’t quite capitalize on the scoring opportunity.

Sam Steel and Steven Stamkos (which was the first and last time Stamkos really jumped out at me in this one) got into a scrum after a scoring chance by the Stars’ third line, when Steel lunged in for a puck on Justus Annunen’s pads, and the Preds didn’t take kindly to it. But that resulted in a 4-on-4 spell, which is where Miro Heiskanen and Thomas Harley’s partnership looks its most lethal. But despite a great rush by Harley, it would be the persistence of Ryan O’Reily that capitalized on the open ice.

Nils Lundkvist had a couple of poised and creative plays with the puck early on to manufacture scoring chances, but none of them resulted in a goal. And that stung even more in the second frame, when Marchessault puck-jacked him behind the net on a high rebound, feeding Ryan O’Reilly for another Grade A chance the Predators would finally manage to capitalize on. It was not a great moment for Lundkvist, though again, it would be unfair to pile on him when his teammates were also so flat in this one.

It wouldn’t get better any time soon, as Nashville scored two goals in the next two minutes after the first tally. Marchessault found Tommy Novak coming off the wall with speed, and it was a twofold breakdown, as Mavrik Bourque had been covering for Heiskanen down low, and Jamie Benn got beaten off the wall by Novak after they both went into the boards. The result was a slick pass from Marchessault that found an open Novak, and he traversed the top of the crease with enough speed to the tuck the puck around Oettinger’s left pad.

That was followed up almost immediately by Kevin Gravel, who was called up in Josi’s absence, tossing a tippable shot to O’Reilly, who perfectly bunted the puck through Oettinger off his stick’s shaft, making it 3-0 over halfway through a game that looked far too similar to the last time Dallas played Nashville, but without the Stars goal-scoring. It was a great game by O’Reilly, who looked every bit the player Nashville wanted when they signed him. It’s nice when a team’s leaders can lead by example like he did.

Dallas’s best chance to make a statement before the end of a miserable second period came on their first power play of the game, when Filip Forsberg took a slashing penalty that really wasn’t necessary on the Stars’ breakout. But with just 34 seconds left in the period, the Dallas power play did not look any more awake than the rest of the lineup.

The third period saw a Stars team that clearly had been chastened. Bristling from whatever encouraging words Pete DeBoer had cooked up for them, Dallas came out with jump for the first time all game. Both the residual power play time and the following shifts saw Dallas—and Wyatt Johnston in particular—creating chances, including a cross-crease pass to Benn that somehow didn’t beat Annunen. That was probably the best chance to get back into this one, and perhaps the only real one.

The right wings got shuffled as the third period went on, with Stankoven moving up beside Hintz and Robertson, Johnston moving down with Benn and Steel, and Dadonov taking Duchene’s right wing. It felt like Dallas just needed to get that one goal to infect Nashville’s surely fragile psyche with doubt, and they would get it when Lian Bichsel scored his first goal in his first NHL game. The crowd exploded, which was surprising given how quiet it had been all game, and Jamie Benn made sure to get the puck for Bichsel afterwards. Those nice moments are always fun.

Dallas made their second challenge of the game when Filip Forsberg grabbed Oettinger’s mask on a flurry around the crease, failing to leave the crease or release Oettinger’s mask for far longer than was necessary. The result was Oettinger being delayed in regaining his balance, and not getting a strong push in time to stop Blankenburg’s shot, with hit the bottom of his outstretched skate on its way in. It was a challenge the fulfilled two of the most crucial criteria for goaltender interference reviews: an attacking player in the crease of his own volition, and his materially impeding the goalie’s ability to make the save. Good challenge, good call, no goal. As DeBoer said, Patrick Dolan and Chris Demczuk were probably the best players for Dallas in this one, given the two goals they wiped off the board.

With four minutes to go, Dallas had a chance to claw something out of a rubbish contest, and DeBoer pulled his goalie. But the Stars couldn’t set up any sustained offensive zone possession, which was hardly surprising given, well, *gestures to the entirety of the game preceding that moment*, and the Preds iced two successive pucks that Dallas couldn’t get to first, thereby negating the icing calls. Zachary L’Heureux potted an empty-netter from O’Reilly, who had the sort of Leadership Game you would expect from him in a contest like this, with a pair of goals to boot. By the way, you pronounce L’Heureux “luhr-UH”, in case you were curious. These are the things you can discover in a game like this. Knowledge, folks.

Overall, the Stars lost a game they deserved to lose, and Justus Annunen sealed his posts almost perfectly all night. The old saw about Finnish goaltenders being great with their pad work (remember Kari Lehtonen, or Pekka Rinne?) held true to the last, with Annunen robbing Wyatt Johnston on one last shot in garbage time just to pour salt in the wound, somehow getting back to his post with more alacrity than Dustin Wolf did the other night. That shot was representative of the game for Dallas: Sparks of hope here and there, but consistent disappointment in the end. Sometimes these games happen, you have heard after losses to Anaheim and Chicago, and now Nashville. The trick for the Stars going forward will be to make sure Sometimes doesn’t turn into Oftentimes, or else it will be Decision Time. And nobody likes decisions time. Personally, I prefer Turbo Time. If you know, you know.