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Dallas Stars 2019-2020 Season Thread

Longhorn_Fan68

By Longhorn_Fan68
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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53,897

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Just turned it on and saw 5-0, then saw Bishop in net. WTF?

And why does Colorado always get double the PPs opportunities that the stars do? It’s bullshit
We just spent 20 minutes holding our dicks while they spent 20 minutes attacking our goal, so now is not the best time to ask that question.
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wood

wood 11,094

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4 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:
12 minutes ago, wood said:
Yeah it's not like leaving the net empty really has an upside at that point.

Not like it has a downside, either.

Not a huge one, but if I'm the coach there thinking about moving on to game 6, I'm more inclined to stop their meaningless goal #7 than score our meaningless goal #4. Just my preference.

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C-Man

C-Man 26,946

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Fuck Bishop. Dobby is better and should have gotten the start. He better start game 6 and they better beat the Avs like they stole something. 


I see the reasoning. It just failed miserably and let the Avs develop some confidence. Dobby didn’t exactly stand on his head in Game 4 and I’m sure they’ve been trying to find a spot to get Bishop into the action in the event he’s needed. Back-to-backs are exceedingly rare for goalies, though I think we had one in the Calgary series. The schedule has not been set up with the our best interests all that much this postseason.
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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53,897

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Rick Bowness has information that we don’t have.

We’ve been reminded of that quite frequently in the past 48 hours, as Bowness has used that line — “we have information you don’t have” — in three different media availabilities when asked how he’s managing his goaltending situation with Ben Bishop and Anton Khudobin.

It started on Monday morning. Bowness brought this up while discussing Bishop’s role in Game 5 after the Stars starter had been “unfit to play” for 18 days while Khudobin had carried the load in net.

At the pregame availability when asked about goalies, Bowness said, “You don’t have the same information we have, clearly. So we have to make decisions based on the information we have.”

After the game, when Bishop went from “unfit to play” to Game 5 starter rather quickly, Bowness said, “Again, we are making decisions with information that we have, that you do not have.”

Bishop was pulled after allowing four goals on 18 shots in the first period. He was bombed by the Avalanche, and it wasn’t his fault the Stars lost, but he looked shaky. Khudobin entered the game and stopped 20 of 22 in the remainder of the 6-3 loss.

On Tuesday, with a chance to follow up on his decision, Bowness once again said he had information that we don’t have.

That “information” is just as vague as “unfit to play.” It could mean anything.

When it comes to Bishop, we wouldn’t have that much information on his health in a normal postseason, of course. He’d be classified with a “lower-body” or “upper-body” injury that the goalie himself almost certainly would refuse to discuss, just as he did after Game 5 over Zoom. Whatever ailment was bothering Bishop would remain a secret, but there would at least be accountability on other facets of this decision.

For instance, Bowness said Bishop looked sharp in practice over the past couple of days. I’m not in Edmonton; The Athletic has a reporter attending games in Edmonton, but he and the rest of the media world are forbidden from even watching practices, so you either have to take Bowness at his word or become a toothless cynic who really can’t refute it because we truly don’t know how he looked in practice.

If Bishop really was as good as advertised in practice and said he was at 100 percent, it made sense to start him in the second game of a back-to-back in Game 5. While Khudobin has handled the workload well enough as the 1B, his Goals Saved Above Average at all strengths checks in at negative-2.44 in the playoffs according to Natural Stat Trick.

Khudobin was great during the regular season — he was third in the league with 17.78 goals saved above average — but the truth of the matter is his playoff performance has been merely good, not great. The Stars have been winning games as a team this postseason, not just because of their goaltending. That applies to both Bishop and Khudobin.

The Stars have also preached confidence in Khudobin, but on Tuesday, Bowness said the Stars had considered the option of playing goalie prospect Jake Oettinger at some point, maybe during a back-to-back, while Bishop was injured. Oettinger has never played a single second in an NHL game. The fact that the Stars would even consider playing him sheds some light on the fact that while Khudobin has been good, it’s good on a sliding scale after he had zero starting playoff experience before the bubble.

That brings us to Game 6, another closeout opportunity, and the information Bowness isn’t sharing with the rest of us.

If Bishop is fully healthy, and I mean 100-percent healthy, he should start in Game 6. Over his career, Bishop has bounced back from bad outings extremely well. He’s allowed four goals or more in six playoff starts, and Bishop has a 5-1 record with a .949 save percentage in the games following a four-or-more-outing. The only loss when coming off a four-plus start? Game 7 against the St. Louis Blues last season. As you may remember, that game only made it into double overtime because of Bishop.

But if Bishop isn’t 100 percent — and I have a hard time believing he is after his rebound control and tracking in Game 5 — then the Stars need to start Khudobin, who has played well enough to win the first round and helped put Dallas up 3-1 in the series before the Game 5 loss.

This is where Bowness and Stars goalie coach Jeff Reese have to be the adults in the room.

Bishop will undoubtedly tell them he’s ready, just like he told them he was ready for Game 5. He’ll want the net, and he’ll be confident that he can bounce back and close out the series. Bowness and Reese can trust Bishop, but they also need to use that information that’s classified to the rest of the world properly in assessing whether Bishop is just a proud athlete or actually ready for a vintage bounceback performance.

In the end, we’ll only be able to judge the Game 6 decision based on the result rather than the reason. And maybe this is an intentional smokescreen by Bowness, who by flaunting this hidden information and not sharing anything puts full focus on himself and not the goaltender preparing for a vital game.

That’s OK. But if you are going to flaunt the knowledge that no one else has, you had better make the right decision.

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