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Dallas Stars 2019-2020 Season Thread

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4 hours ago, Beau Vine said:
4 hours ago, perfectchaos007 said:
I love how that miscue behind their net became the difference in this game. He's going to think of that goal all night

I liked how that caused the goalie to get pulled in favor of career AHL goalie. That's going to stick in his head too.

I didn't see much of the game as I was doing shit around the house and the 5 PM start completely slipped my mind. Turned it on just in time to watch Colorado score on the 5-on-3 power play near the end of the second period to cut the lead to 3-2. I was cooking dinner and casually watching the third from the kitchen but wonder how Francouz got pulled after Makar's monumental fuckup led to Gurianov's goal. Roope's just before was a thing of beauty. That seemed weird to me.

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The Dallas Stars pushed the Colorado Avalanche to the brink of elimination with a 5-4 victory in Game 4 on Sunday. It was the first game of a back-to-back, with the Stars now having a chance to end the series on Monday evening.

1. For some time now, I’ve referred to the Dallas Stars as the NHL’s most exciting team until the game starts.

They provide off-ice drama and storylines aplenty, but goals and track meets were unheard for the regular season and round-robin version of this team.

In this postseason, however, which is already weird enough in terms of timing, the Stars have completely thrown out the boring moniker that many — myself included — felt would define them.

The Stars have been playing exciting, back-and-forth games with offensive swings for both sides. The flair for the dramatic has been transposed into the game itself. Now, another crazy swing could put Dallas in the Western Conference Final.

A goal by Colorado with 2.6 seconds remaining only added to the dramatic flair.

A 5-4 finish is more fun than 5-3, right?

2. That goal by Vladislav Namestnikov made Denis Gurianov’s third-period goal the game-winner.

And if you were looking for ammunition in the Cale Makar vs. Miro Heiskanen debate, this game was a perfect example of why Makar is the more exciting player but Heiskanen is the one you would pick to build a franchise around.

Makar scored a pretty power-play goal for the Avalanche, but his work in his own zone led to a pair of Stars goals that both started and ended the Dallas’ five-goal onslaught.

In the first period, he was bullied by John Klingberg and couldn’t tie up the svelte Swede as he went hard to the net and beat Makar to the puck for a 1-0 lead.

In the third period, with Colorado reeling from a goal by Roope Hintz, Makar had a mental gaffe as he turned the puck over behind his own net and effectively teed up Gurianov with a primary assist to put Dallas up 5-2 at the time.

 

I would pay to watch Makar play, but he also creates excitement for the other team at the other end of the ice.

3. Stars interim coach Rick Bowness typically starts his FCC line of Andrew Cogliano, Radek Faksa and Blake Comeau to set a tone.

On Sunday, they set a tone on the first shift in a physical first period and then contained Colorado’s top unit effectively at even strength.

Colorado’s top line left Game 4 frustrated. They didn’t score, and their only points came on the 5-on-3 when Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen assisted on Makar’s aforementioned power-play goal.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing for Colorado is that they got three goals from the other lines and still couldn’t beat the Stars in this game.

4. There was what has become the typical Stars statement run. But this time it didn’t happen when they were trailing by multiple goals.

Instead of responding and counter-punching, the Stars started their rally before their opponent ever had a chance. Things snowballed — excuse the pun — and the Avalanche were buried in the first period by a dominant Dallas start.

It was 3-0 before the Avalanche even had a shot on goal, and that first shot at Anton Khudobin didn’t occur until 18 minutes, 26 seconds into the first period. Somehow, during that stretch Colorado also had a pair of shotless power plays.

Before the game, Rantanen told the NBC Sports broadcast that he felt his team had fallen asleep for parts of this series, and the TV broadcast then used that excuse to describe Colorado’s showing in the opening 20 minutes.

Colorado deserves blame; you don’t go shotless on a pair of power plays without being liable for a defeat. But that’s also greatly discrediting a Dallas team that came out and put together maybe its best first-period start in, well, years.

5. We mentioned the FCC line earlier and how they set the tone. You could see that starting even before the opening faceoff when Cogliano sparred with Rantanen before puck drop in the circle.

It helped light a fire for the entire team, and as you’ve likely read many times now, I describe Jamie Benn as a first-shift player. How Benn performs on his first shift says a lot about his game for that evening and whether he’ll be a force in the contest.

The Stars have come to mimic that overall mantra and came out like chaotic bumper cars without breaks.

They hit everything that moved. The stunned the Avalanche, and the mentality was particularly effective around the front of the net, where Dallas continued to deliver body blows to a clearly-shaken Pavel Francouz in the Colorado net.

6. I was going to say something smart about Faksa’s offensive bite, but Bill beat me to it.

 

To elaborate a bit more, Faksa is a confidence-driven player who is extremely superstitious.

He’s so superstitious, in fact, that he needs a seat in the locker room that views the clock. During normal times, when he’s playing well, his girlfriend makes the same meal each game day so as not to mess with his routine.

It’s a macro part of Faksa’s life that tends to carry itself over into the micro moments. When Faksa is feeling it in a game, it carries over to his following shifts. In Game 4, he used the confidence from his assist to give Dallas 2-0 lead on the power play.

It was the first of two power-play goals for the Stars, who made the score 3-0 on an immaculate tip by Benn, who made me look smart by following up his first-shift impressions.

7. The Stars cratered a bit in the second period, and we’ll get to that soon. The needed third-period insurance, however, was provided by the Stars’ crash-and-dash duo of Hintz and Gurianov after Colorado had clawed back into the game.

Hintz scored the pretty goal, another power-play tally, and it went against everything we typically associate with the Finnish forward. Hintz is the flash, driving and putting opposing players on their heels. He’s not a consistent in-zone creator at this point in his career.

But in the third period, Hintz waited, waited and waited some more under immense pressure. While pulling the string, he got Francouz out of position before wiring home his goal to make it 4-2

 

Thirty-two seconds later, Gurianov got his, and it was another goal where Makar was to blame. Gurianov’s sped put him in position to finish on the forecheck, but anyone would have been able to shovel that puck into the empty net after the horrendous turnover by the Avalanche defenseman.

8. Gurianov led the Stars with 20 regular-season goals. He is now tied for the NHL playoff lead (eight goals) with Vancouver Canucks captain Bo Horvat.

9. Anton Khudobin had a quiet first 18:26 of the game, but he needed to make five saves in the final 94 seconds of the first period.

Those saves weren’t only vital to keeping it scoreless (duh) at the time, but those stops were difficult and revved up Khudobin for the second period, when the Avalanche finally found a level of desperation.

And with that desperation, the goals started to come for the Avalanche in the middle stanza.

A 3-0 lead turned into a 3-2 margin for the Stars, and it was a pair of first-round picks who helped Colorado set the stage for the dramatic third period.

10. Valeri Nichushkin did something Dallas always thought he’d do — he scored big goals in a big game.

The only problem is those goals came against them, as the former first-rounder scored twice to start a potential Colorado rally and then kept them in the game after the Hintz and Gurianov two-fer.

But, I mean, we all knew this would happen at some point, right?

After he went an entire season in Dallas —  including one playoff game —  without a goal, we knew that Valeri Nichushkin would finally find the back of the net against his former employer (who still happens to be cashing him buyout checks this season and next).

Nichushkin lost his confidence in Dallas in his final season. He got so down on himself about not scoring that by the middle of the season, it consumed him. It changed his play, and by the end of his time in Dallas, the former first-round pick was such a shell of himself that he was afraid to even shoot the puck.

Things changed in Colorado. It took him about 10 regular games to feel confident in his play and feel like he was trusted by Avalanche coach Jared Bednar.

Maybe that 10-game benchmark was foreshadowing because in his 12th playoff game he scored his first goal of the playoff to spark Colorado’s comeback efforts in the second period.

He still didn’t elevate the puck on that first goal, but it found the back of the net and the Avalanche had life at that moment. His second goal came with a bit of help — it deflected off Benn’s stick — but it stunned Khudobin on the rush and rang off the inside of the post.

11. The Stars took too many penalties. Again.

Taking two penalties on one shift was a recipe for disaster at the end of the second period.

With Jamie Oleksiak and Comeau in the box, the Avalanche took advantage of the two-man advantage on a gorgeous finish by Makar that Khudobin didn’t have any chance on.

That goal came with 26 seconds left in the second period. Colorado still had 1:37 of power-play time to start the third period with fresh ice but didn’t capitalize, and that penalty kill made sure the Stars were adding insurance when Hintz found the back of the net.

12. Heiskanen set a new franchise record for points by a defenseman in the playoffs with his assist in the first period.

Heiskanen now has 16 points in the playoffs, surpassing the 15 that Craig Hartsburg had with the Minnesota North Stars during the 1981 playoffs.

“I think with just another year under his belt, getting a taste of the playoffs last year, he knew what to expect this year,” Benn said. “An elite player like Miro, he’s going to raise up his level. He’s definitely done that in this playoffs. You can see him take over games. It’s a treat to watch every day.”

Hartsburg isn’t as well known in Dallas because of the franchise relocation and how his career was cut short because of poor knees. But Hartsburg is really the original offensive defenseman in franchise history. If he had played in Dallas, he’d be remembered by older fans and part of franchise lore.

Of course, Sergei Zubov is the gold standard for the franchise offensive defenseman, and he’s rightfully in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Zubov’s best postseasons with Dallas came in 1999 (no surprise) when he had 13 points and in 2003 when he had 14.

We are already comparing Heiskanen to Zubov, and it’s not a stretch.

“There’s more to come. There’s better to come. He’s just going to keep getting better so it’s nice that he got this record, that’s fine,” Bowness said. “But Miro’s value to our team is just not only on the points that he’s generating but the quality minutes that he gives us and his ability to get us out of trouble. Sometimes that’s really overlooked about his game. I know there’s a lot of attention on his points and everything else but there should be just as much attention on his ability to get us out of trouble, his ability to skate the puck out of the zone, his ability to make the right play at the right time to get us out of trouble … When things aren’t going well, put Miro on the ice and he’ll settle it down.”

13. Corey Perry took an early penalty that could have derailed the Stars’ early momentum.

After that, he did his job and lived up to his reputation as a pest that gets under the opponent’s skin.

Perry drew four penalties in the game, and in a stunning turn of events, he actually got the benefit of the doubt on a couple of the exchanges that led directly to the man advantage where the Stars cashed in.

It’s an interesting thing to examine in a game like this because the Stars effectively bought out Nichushkin last summer so they could sign Perry.

14. Overall, Jim Nill’s past offseason additions have been paying off in this playoff run.

Perry was a low-risk signing that’s yielded a nice reward, while Pavelski has been a godsend in big games for the Stars with both his goals and how he handles key moments.

There are so many small elements within Pavelski’s game that have come out in the postseason. For example, on the final faceoff with 2.6 seconds remaining — already a Hail Mary moment for Colorado — he effectively killed off the game by winning the draw forward and ensuring nothing wonky would happen with Colorado’s speedy forwards on the ice.

15. Ben Bishop has practiced recently but remains unfit to play. If he were fit to play, he’d likely be getting the Game 5 start on Monday in the second game of a back-to-back.

That back-to-back may have had an impact on why the Avalanche gave Francouz the mercy pull and went with Michael Hutchinson when Dallas took a 5-3 lead. Hutchinson has never started a playoff game and with Philipp Grubauer injured. Francouz was likely going to start back-to-back games no matter what.

16. Dallas rolled with the same lineup it used in the first three games of the series.

Jamie Benn – Tyler Seguin – Alexander Radulov
Mattias Janmark – Joe Pavelski – Denis Gurianov
Jason Dickinson – Roope Hintz – Corey Perry
Andrew Cogliano – Radek Faksa – Blake Comeau

Esa Lindell – John Klingberg
Jamie Oleksiak – Miro Heiskanen
Andrej Sekera – Taylor Fedun

Justin Dowling and Joel Hanley also took warmups.

Colorado, dealing with injuries to Erik Johnson, Matt Calvert and Joonas Donskoi, had this look.

Gabriel Landeskog – Nathan MacKinnon – Mikko Rantanen
Andre Burakovsky – Nazem Kadri – Valeri Nichushkin
Tyson Jost – J.T. Compher – Vladislav Namestnikov
Matt Nieto – Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Logan O’Connor

Ryan Graves – Cale Makar
Samuel Girard – Nikita Zadorov
Ian Cole – Kevin Connauton

17. This game was the first game back after the NHL had a two-day player-led postponement that was built around bringing attention to systemic anti-Black racism.

While the NHL players boycotted for two days for social issues, it did have an impact on this series on the ice. Due to the back-to-back between Games 4 and 5, this game felt like it had even more of a must-win vibe for the Stars.

In my view, at least, emotions carry over a bit more in a back-to-back. Colorado is going to push back — I wouldn’t expect anything different — but the Stars are able to carry over the feelings from this win a bit more easily as opposed to the typical hard reset you get with an extra day between games.

18. This has been quite a year to be the Stars NHL Players association representative for Dickinson.

In the past six months, Dickinson has been part of negotiations to re-start the season, extend the collective bargaining agreement, get NHL players back into the Olympics and figure out a bubbe. He also helped organize a player boycott in the bubble.

It’s a leadership role that Dickinson has taken on in off-ice discussions, and therefore has led to a larger leadership role on the ice with the Stars’ young players.

“He’s taken on a big role this year for our hockey club,” Benn said. “Not only as a player but as our rep. He’s our communication through the NHLPA and seeing him step up and be our voice the other day, I texted him after and told him I was proud of him. It’s not an easy job for those guys and every rep on every team … He’s done a heck of a job communicating with us players what’s going and for him to obviously want to make a difference. We saw him and Seggy kneel during that game against Vegas, and that’s one guy that wants to make a difference in this world.”

19. In a bit of Texas hockey news, El Paso was crowned as the 2020 recipient for Hockeyville, USA.

Votes were counted the past two days and El Paso finished first from a group of finalists that included East Grand Forks, Minnesota, Wichita, Kansas and River Falls, Wisconsin.

 

The El Paso County Coliseum will be awarded $150,000 in rink upgrades from Kraft Heinz and $10,000 worth of new equipment from the NHLPA Goals & Dreams fund.

In the past, the winner of Hockeyville, USA has also hosted an NHL preseason game. That’s still being considered, but isn’t a certainty given the current COVID-19 pandemic. If El Paso gets a preseason game, I would imagine it would include the Stars and the Arizona Coyotes, but that’s just an educated guess.

20. We’ll end tonight with an important hockey cliche, which probably rings even more true against a team like Colorado:

The fourth win of the series is always the hardest.

 

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Beau Vine

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The Dallas Stars pushed the Colorado Avalanche to the brink of elimination with a 5-4 victory in Game 4 on Sunday. It was the first game of a back-to-back, with the Stars now having a chance to end the series on Monday evening.

1. For some time now, I’ve referred to the Dallas Stars as the NHL’s most exciting team until the game starts.

They provide off-ice drama and storylines aplenty, but goals and track meets were unheard for the regular season and round-robin version of this team.

In this postseason, however, which is already weird enough in terms of timing, the Stars have completely thrown out the boring moniker that many — myself included — felt would define them.

The Stars have been playing exciting, back-and-forth games with offensive swings for both sides. The flair for the dramatic has been transposed into the game itself. Now, another crazy swing could put Dallas in the Western Conference Final.

A goal by Colorado with 2.6 seconds remaining only added to the dramatic flair.

A 5-4 finish is more fun than 5-3, right?

2. That goal by Vladislav Namestnikov made Denis Gurianov’s third-period goal the game-winner.

And if you were looking for ammunition in the Cale Makar vs. Miro Heiskanen debate, this game was a perfect example of why Makar is the more exciting player but Heiskanen is the one you would pick to build a franchise around.

Makar scored a pretty power-play goal for the Avalanche, but his work in his own zone led to a pair of Stars goals that both started and ended the Dallas’ five-goal onslaught.

In the first period, he was bullied by John Klingberg and couldn’t tie up the svelte Swede as he went hard to the net and beat Makar to the puck for a 1-0 lead.

In the third period, with Colorado reeling from a goal by Roope Hintz, Makar had a mental gaffe as he turned the puck over behind his own net and effectively teed up Gurianov with a primary assist to put Dallas up 5-2 at the time.


I would pay to watch Makar play, but he also creates excitement for the other team at the other end of the ice.

3. Stars interim coach Rick Bowness typically starts his FCC line of Andrew Cogliano, Radek Faksa and Blake Comeau to set a tone.

On Sunday, they set a tone on the first shift in a physical first period and then contained Colorado’s top unit effectively at even strength.

Colorado’s top line left Game 4 frustrated. They didn’t score, and their only points came on the 5-on-3 when Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen assisted on Makar’s aforementioned power-play goal.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing for Colorado is that they got three goals from the other lines and still couldn’t beat the Stars in this game.

4. There was what has become the typical Stars statement run. But this time it didn’t happen when they were trailing by multiple goals.

Instead of responding and counter-punching, the Stars started their rally before their opponent ever had a chance. Things snowballed — excuse the pun — and the Avalanche were buried in the first period by a dominant Dallas start.

It was 3-0 before the Avalanche even had a shot on goal, and that first shot at Anton Khudobin didn’t occur until 18 minutes, 26 seconds into the first period. Somehow, during that stretch Colorado also had a pair of shotless power plays.

Before the game, Rantanen told the NBC Sports broadcast that he felt his team had fallen asleep for parts of this series, and the TV broadcast then used that excuse to describe Colorado’s showing in the opening 20 minutes.

Colorado deserves blame; you don’t go shotless on a pair of power plays without being liable for a defeat. But that’s also greatly discrediting a Dallas team that came out and put together maybe its best first-period start in, well, years.

5. We mentioned the FCC line earlier and how they set the tone. You could see that starting even before the opening faceoff when Cogliano sparred with Rantanen before puck drop in the circle.

It helped light a fire for the entire team, and as you’ve likely read many times now, I describe Jamie Benn as a first-shift player. How Benn performs on his first shift says a lot about his game for that evening and whether he’ll be a force in the contest.

The Stars have come to mimic that overall mantra and came out like chaotic bumper cars without breaks.

They hit everything that moved. The stunned the Avalanche, and the mentality was particularly effective around the front of the net, where Dallas continued to deliver body blows to a clearly-shaken Pavel Francouz in the Colorado net.

6. I was going to say something smart about Faksa’s offensive bite, but Bill beat me to it.


To elaborate a bit more, Faksa is a confidence-driven player who is extremely superstitious.

He’s so superstitious, in fact, that he needs a seat in the locker room that views the clock. During normal times, when he’s playing well, his girlfriend makes the same meal each game day so as not to mess with his routine.

It’s a macro part of Faksa’s life that tends to carry itself over into the micro moments. When Faksa is feeling it in a game, it carries over to his following shifts. In Game 4, he used the confidence from his assist to give Dallas 2-0 lead on the power play.

It was the first of two power-play goals for the Stars, who made the score 3-0 on an immaculate tip by Benn, who made me look smart by following up his first-shift impressions.

7. The Stars cratered a bit in the second period, and we’ll get to that soon. The needed third-period insurance, however, was provided by the Stars’ crash-and-dash duo of Hintz and Gurianov after Colorado had clawed back into the game.

Hintz scored the pretty goal, another power-play tally, and it went against everything we typically associate with the Finnish forward. Hintz is the flash, driving and putting opposing players on their heels. He’s not a consistent in-zone creator at this point in his career.

But in the third period, Hintz waited, waited and waited some more under immense pressure. While pulling the string, he got Francouz out of position before wiring home his goal to make it 4-2


Thirty-two seconds later, Gurianov got his, and it was another goal where Makar was to blame. Gurianov’s sped put him in position to finish on the forecheck, but anyone would have been able to shovel that puck into the empty net after the horrendous turnover by the Avalanche defenseman.

8. Gurianov led the Stars with 20 regular-season goals. He is now tied for the NHL playoff lead (eight goals) with Vancouver Canucks captain Bo Horvat.

9. Anton Khudobin had a quiet first 18:26 of the game, but he needed to make five saves in the final 94 seconds of the first period.

Those saves weren’t only vital to keeping it scoreless (duh) at the time, but those stops were difficult and revved up Khudobin for the second period, when the Avalanche finally found a level of desperation.

And with that desperation, the goals started to come for the Avalanche in the middle stanza.

A 3-0 lead turned into a 3-2 margin for the Stars, and it was a pair of first-round picks who helped Colorado set the stage for the dramatic third period.

10. Valeri Nichushkin did something Dallas always thought he’d do — he scored big goals in a big game.

The only problem is those goals came against them, as the former first-rounder scored twice to start a potential Colorado rally and then kept them in the game after the Hintz and Gurianov two-fer.

But, I mean, we all knew this would happen at some point, right?

After he went an entire season in Dallas —  including one playoff game —  without a goal, we knew that Valeri Nichushkin would finally find the back of the net against his former employer (who still happens to be cashing him buyout checks this season and next).

Nichushkin lost his confidence in Dallas in his final season. He got so down on himself about not scoring that by the middle of the season, it consumed him. It changed his play, and by the end of his time in Dallas, the former first-round pick was such a shell of himself that he was afraid to even shoot the puck.

Things changed in Colorado. It took him about 10 regular games to feel confident in his play and feel like he was trusted by Avalanche coach Jared Bednar.

Maybe that 10-game benchmark was foreshadowing because in his 12th playoff game he scored his first goal of the playoff to spark Colorado’s comeback efforts in the second period.

He still didn’t elevate the puck on that first goal, but it found the back of the net and the Avalanche had life at that moment. His second goal came with a bit of help — it deflected off Benn’s stick — but it stunned Khudobin on the rush and rang off the inside of the post.

11. The Stars took too many penalties. Again.

Taking two penalties on one shift was a recipe for disaster at the end of the second period.

With Jamie Oleksiak and Comeau in the box, the Avalanche took advantage of the two-man advantage on a gorgeous finish by Makar that Khudobin didn’t have any chance on.

That goal came with 26 seconds left in the second period. Colorado still had 1:37 of power-play time to start the third period with fresh ice but didn’t capitalize, and that penalty kill made sure the Stars were adding insurance when Hintz found the back of the net.

12. Heiskanen set a new franchise record for points by a defenseman in the playoffs with his assist in the first period.

Heiskanen now has 16 points in the playoffs, surpassing the 15 that Craig Hartsburg had with the Minnesota North Stars during the 1981 playoffs.

“I think with just another year under his belt, getting a taste of the playoffs last year, he knew what to expect this year,” Benn said. “An elite player like Miro, he’s going to raise up his level. He’s definitely done that in this playoffs. You can see him take over games. It’s a treat to watch every day.”

Hartsburg isn’t as well known in Dallas because of the franchise relocation and how his career was cut short because of poor knees. But Hartsburg is really the original offensive defenseman in franchise history. If he had played in Dallas, he’d be remembered by older fans and part of franchise lore.

Of course, Sergei Zubov is the gold standard for the franchise offensive defenseman, and he’s rightfully in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Zubov’s best postseasons with Dallas came in 1999 (no surprise) when he had 13 points and in 2003 when he had 14.

We are already comparing Heiskanen to Zubov, and it’s not a stretch.

“There’s more to come. There’s better to come. He’s just going to keep getting better so it’s nice that he got this record, that’s fine,” Bowness said. “But Miro’s value to our team is just not only on the points that he’s generating but the quality minutes that he gives us and his ability to get us out of trouble. Sometimes that’s really overlooked about his game. I know there’s a lot of attention on his points and everything else but there should be just as much attention on his ability to get us out of trouble, his ability to skate the puck out of the zone, his ability to make the right play at the right time to get us out of trouble … When things aren’t going well, put Miro on the ice and he’ll settle it down.”

13. Corey Perry took an early penalty that could have derailed the Stars’ early momentum.

After that, he did his job and lived up to his reputation as a pest that gets under the opponent’s skin.

Perry drew four penalties in the game, and in a stunning turn of events, he actually got the benefit of the doubt on a couple of the exchanges that led directly to the man advantage where the Stars cashed in.

It’s an interesting thing to examine in a game like this because the Stars effectively bought out Nichushkin last summer so they could sign Perry.

14. Overall, Jim Nill’s past offseason additions have been paying off in this playoff run.

Perry was a low-risk signing that’s yielded a nice reward, while Pavelski has been a godsend in big games for the Stars with both his goals and how he handles key moments.

There are so many small elements within Pavelski’s game that have come out in the postseason. For example, on the final faceoff with 2.6 seconds remaining — already a Hail Mary moment for Colorado — he effectively killed off the game by winning the draw forward and ensuring nothing wonky would happen with Colorado’s speedy forwards on the ice.

15. Ben Bishop has practiced recently but remains unfit to play. If he were fit to play, he’d likely be getting the Game 5 start on Monday in the second game of a back-to-back.

That back-to-back may have had an impact on why the Avalanche gave Francouz the mercy pull and went with Michael Hutchinson when Dallas took a 5-3 lead. Hutchinson has never started a playoff game and with Philipp Grubauer injured. Francouz was likely going to start back-to-back games no matter what.

16. Dallas rolled with the same lineup it used in the first three games of the series.

Jamie Benn – Tyler Seguin – Alexander Radulov
Mattias Janmark – Joe Pavelski – Denis Gurianov
Jason Dickinson – Roope Hintz – Corey Perry
Andrew Cogliano – Radek Faksa – Blake Comeau

Esa Lindell – John Klingberg
Jamie Oleksiak – Miro Heiskanen
Andrej Sekera – Taylor Fedun

Justin Dowling and Joel Hanley also took warmups.

Colorado, dealing with injuries to Erik Johnson, Matt Calvert and Joonas Donskoi, had this look.

Gabriel Landeskog – Nathan MacKinnon – Mikko Rantanen
Andre Burakovsky – Nazem Kadri – Valeri Nichushkin
Tyson Jost – J.T. Compher – Vladislav Namestnikov
Matt Nieto – Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Logan O’Connor

Ryan Graves – Cale Makar
Samuel Girard – Nikita Zadorov
Ian Cole – Kevin Connauton

17. This game was the first game back after the NHL had a two-day player-led postponement that was built around bringing attention to systemic anti-Black racism.

While the NHL players boycotted for two days for social issues, it did have an impact on this series on the ice. Due to the back-to-back between Games 4 and 5, this game felt like it had even more of a must-win vibe for the Stars.

In my view, at least, emotions carry over a bit more in a back-to-back. Colorado is going to push back — I wouldn’t expect anything different — but the Stars are able to carry over the feelings from this win a bit more easily as opposed to the typical hard reset you get with an extra day between games.

18. This has been quite a year to be the Stars NHL Players association representative for Dickinson.

In the past six months, Dickinson has been part of negotiations to re-start the season, extend the collective bargaining agreement, get NHL players back into the Olympics and figure out a bubbe. He also helped organize a player boycott in the bubble.

It’s a leadership role that Dickinson has taken on in off-ice discussions, and therefore has led to a larger leadership role on the ice with the Stars’ young players.

“He’s taken on a big role this year for our hockey club,” Benn said. “Not only as a player but as our rep. He’s our communication through the NHLPA and seeing him step up and be our voice the other day, I texted him after and told him I was proud of him. It’s not an easy job for those guys and every rep on every team … He’s done a heck of a job communicating with us players what’s going and for him to obviously want to make a difference. We saw him and Seggy kneel during that game against Vegas, and that’s one guy that wants to make a difference in this world.”

19. In a bit of Texas hockey news, El Paso was crowned as the 2020 recipient for Hockeyville, USA.

Votes were counted the past two days and El Paso finished first from a group of finalists that included East Grand Forks, Minnesota, Wichita, Kansas and River Falls, Wisconsin.


The El Paso County Coliseum will be awarded $150,000 in rink upgrades from Kraft Heinz and $10,000 worth of new equipment from the NHLPA Goals & Dreams fund.

In the past, the winner of Hockeyville, USA has also hosted an NHL preseason game. That’s still being considered, but isn’t a certainty given the current COVID-19 pandemic. If El Paso gets a preseason game, I would imagine it would include the Stars and the Arizona Coyotes, but that’s just an educated guess.

20. We’ll end tonight with an important hockey cliche, which probably rings even more true against a team like Colorado:

The fourth win of the series is always the hardest.

 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 55896

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, C-Man said:

I didn't see much of the game as I was doing shit around the house and the 5 PM start completely slipped my mind. Turned it on just in time to watch Colorado score on the 5-on-3 power play near the end of the second period to cut the lead to 3-2. I was cooking dinner and casually watching the third from the kitchen but wonder how Francouz got pulled after Makar's monumental fuckup led to Gurianov's goal. Roope's just before was a thing of beauty. That seemed weird to me.

I guess they pulled him because they wanted to rest him for tomorrow?  

But he probably could have brought out a stool to sit on in the crease with us having a 3-goal lead in the 3rd...

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C-Man

C-Man 27839

Posted
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21 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

I guess they pulled him because they wanted to rest him for tomorrow?  

But he probably could have brought out a stool to sit on in the crease with us having a 3-goal lead in the 3rd...

Saw that in your share -- makes more sense now.

The write-up nails the Miro-Makar comparison. Miro is a complete player and Makar's defense is suspect at this point of his career. The Avs really miss Johnson.

Let's finish this shit up tomorrow. Looks like Vegas is going through in the other semifinal.

  • Hook 'Em 1
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Zepol87

Zepol87 9353

Posted
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3 minutes ago, Jive Turkey said:

We have OT. 

They’re gonna have a live look-in on the Dallas game. WTF does that mean? We starting with no tv?

No idea what it means but wtf how can NBC not have a way to show 2 games at the same time. OT isn't a new thing in the playoffs. WTF

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