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Dallas Stars 2023 Playoffs Thread of Dominance

Longhorn_Fan68

By Longhorn_Fan68
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Next time Robo wins a puck battle will be the first time.

Lindell has been hot garbage tonight.

Wedgewood is terrible.

Let’s score the next goal and make them sweat it a bit.

Lindell has been bad all post season. Lots of opponent goals when he is on the ice it seems. I may be wrong.
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C-Man

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That was just a poor effort by everyone from start to finish.

Awful effort from a team trying to close an opponent out. Cup-winning teams step on the throat tonight. We aren’t quite there yet. I hope we can win Mon.
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Beau Vine

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“That kind of game just can’t happen at this time of year,” Lindell said. “I’m just so disappointed at myself, too. Only thing now is to move on and get prepared for Game 7 and be way, way better in that one. … I think everything went sideways today. I don’t know if I’ve played that bad for a long time. It felt they got the odd-mans, won battles, all the things we’ve been good (at) before went sideways today.”

DeBoer was asked about Lindell-Hakanpää, his evaluation was brief and vague.

“They weren’t worse than anybody else,” DeBoer said.

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C-Man

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“That kind of game just can’t happen at this time of year,” Lindell said. “I’m just so disappointed at myself, too. Only thing now is to move on and get prepared for Game 7 and be way, way better in that one. … I think everything went sideways today. I don’t know if I’ve played that bad for a long time. It felt they got the odd-mans, won battles, all the things we’ve been good (at) before went sideways today.”
DeBoer was asked about Lindell-Hakanpää, his evaluation was brief and vague.
“They weren’t worse than anybody else,” DeBoer said.

He’s not going to throw them under the bus with Game 7 looming Monday night but it will definitely be a point of order moving into the offseason. Let’s hope that’s later than sooner.
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C-Man

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Saad in z the Athletic:

SEATTLE — One of the pivotal moments of the Stars’ first-round triumph over the Minnesota Wild came in Game 4. Entering the game, the Stars trailed the series 2-1 and lost home-ice advantage. In Game 3, the Stars played their worst game in weeks. Joe Pavelski, who had gone out with an injury in Game 1, was not close to returning. The Stars’ roster was exactly the same in Game 4 as it was in the disastrous Game 3. The only hope, it appeared, was to shake up the lineup.


Stars head coach Pete DeBoer did make a change to the lineup, though a bottom-pairing swap of Joel Hanley for Colin Miller would better be characterized as a “tweak” than a “change.” The rest of the lineup remained the same. Every line combination, every other defensive pairing. In the aftermath of the Stars’ 3-2 win in Game 4, multiple players hinted that DeBoer not hitting the panic button as a reaction to the Game 3 performance helped them maintain their calm.

DeBoer’s patience is about to be put to the test on the biggest of stages. With their season on the line Saturday night, the Kraken dominated the Stars to a 6-3 win in Game 6. The series deadlocked at 3-3, now shifts back to Dallas for an all-decisive Game 7 at 7 p.m. Monday at the American Airlines Center.

As is the case with most losses, there’s plenty of blame to go around. The entire team looked utterly lifeless for the first period and into the second period as the Kraken built up a 4-1 lead. It resulted in DeBoer pulling Jake Oettinger, which amounted more to a mercy pull than anything else. Oettinger wasn’t in superstar form as he often is in these moments but aside from the fourth goal, there’s not much he could have done to save the Stars from their own ineptitude.

“We didn’t give him any help,” DeBoer said. “This is a grind. At that point, we’re looking for a spark for the team, looking down the road to make sure Jake’s got energy (and we’ve) got the fresher goalie for Game 7. All of those things come into play.”

As the Kraken poured it on the Stars, Dallas provided very little pushback. Late in the second period, the Kraken had an alarming 15-2 advantage in shots on goal.

“None of the analytics are going to look good,” DeBoer said. “Shots, chances. We weren’t very good. The shot clock is going to reflect that.”

Uninspired play, close misses — particularly early in the third period on a Pavelski shot, the ensuing rebound opportunity for Miro Heiskanen, and then a Jason Robertson shot ringing off the post — and lack of offensive punch all share some blame.

But it’s impossible to ignore the most glaring culprit: Esa Lindell was on the ice for all five non-empty net goals for the Kraken and his longtime defensive partner, Jani Hakanpää accompanied him for four of them. Four of those goals came at even strength, with the fifth coming on the power play.


“That kind of game just can’t happen at this time of year,” Lindell said. “I’m just so disappointed at myself, too. Only thing now is to move on and get prepared for Game 7 and be way, way better in that one. … I think everything went sideways today. I don’t know if I’ve played that bad for a long time. It felt they got the odd-mans, won battles, all the things we’ve been good (at) before went sideways today.”

DeBoer was asked about Lindell-Hakanpää, his evaluation was brief and vague.

“They weren’t worse than anybody else,” DeBoer said.

Asked if the speed of the Kraken is more of a challenge for them to handle, DeBoer doubled down.

“No, I mean, we won Games 4 and 5,” DeBoer said. “Those two guys both dressed and played, and played pretty well. Again, I know what the numbers say but they weren’t any worse than anybody else in our group tonight.”

Hakanpää did not play in the Stars’ Game 4 win. He was a late scratch due to a lower-body injury, resulting in Colin Miller sliding back into the lineup. To the main point, DeBoer takes a psychological approach to his coaching. The postgame press conference began with DeBoer being asked how he saw the start of that one, to which he responded, “Probably the same as you. Not great.” Some things aren’t rocket science. The entire team had an off day but Lindell and Hakanpää certainly were worse than other players on the team. Again, look no further than Lindell’s evaluation of himself.

It was painfully evident that the Kraken’s speed and skill were too much for them to handle. Everybody gets scored on at some point but when your “shutdown” pairing gets three goals scored against them at even strength and then another on the penalty kill, there’s a glaring issue. But DeBoer also knows that he can’t bench both Lindell and Hakanpää for Game 7. There’s no benefit in publicly ripping them when he will need one, and maybe both, in the most important game of the season on Monday with everything on the line.

That brings us to the decision that will put DeBoer’s philosophy to the test. Will DeBoer make a change to that pairing?

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Lindell isn’t in consideration to be pulled from the lineup. The $5.8 million defenseman is a left-handed veteran who plays heavy minutes on the penalty kill as well as five-on-five. The question is, should Miller replace Hakanpää in the lineup?

On the surface, it seems like the same one-defenseman swap decision that DeBoer made in Game 4 against the Wild. It’s not. This one is far more complicated for DeBoer given the way he operates. Lindell and Hakanpää played over 250 minutes more than the next Stars pairing in the regular season. They were a mainstay in the regular season, and that carried into the playoffs as well. Even removing Saturday’s terrible performance, they had the lowest expected goals percentage on the team among pairings that played at least 20 minutes together, according to MoneyPuck. There’s also the fact that the Stars’ best game of the series against the Kraken was Game 4 when Miller was with Lindell in place of Hakanpää.

After the Stars won the series against the Wild, DeBoer was asked about that Game 4 decision to not shake up the lineup.

“It’s a good question. It’s about consistency in your approach,” DeBoer said. “The worst thing you can do is change how you approached things in the season. If you approached things a certain way, and I thought the players allowed us to have patience with line combinations and pairings and special teams because they executed at a high level for most of the year. The worst thing I think we could do is, come playoff time, not have that patience or give them the same benefit of the doubt we did in the regular season.

“Now, if you’ve gone through the regular season and mixed and matched on a regular basis and that’s worked for your team, then you probably can continue to do that. I think players just want consistency. They want to make sure that nothing you’re doing is seen as panicking compared to what you’ve done all year. I think that’s been our approach. We want to continue to do what’s made us good all year.”

There are examples of that patience sprinkled throughout the regular season. The most obvious one is DeBoer sticking with the same power play personnel through the middle of the season despite the units going through a nearly two-month slump. Eventually, the players figured it out and got on track late in the regular season and even rode that power play dominance to a first-round win over the Wild.

There’s an example of that in the playoffs as well, beyond the Game 4 lineup against the Wild. When Pavelski was ready to return to action in Game 1 of the Kraken series, DeBoer put him on the second line with Mason Marchment and Max Domi because Tyler Seguin had been playing well with Robertson and Roope Hintz. But after the Stars went down 2-1 in the series against Seattle, DeBoer was asked about reuniting the original top line in Game 4.

“Bottom line is, Game 2 we played one of our best games of the playoffs,” DeBoer said ahead of Game 4 against the Kraken. “That’s 24 hours ago. We have to remind ourselves of that. We haven’t played two weeks of bad hockey here. Now, in a series, you run out of time quickly. We went through this in the Minnesota series, we didn’t panic and overreact and we worked our way through it. I’m confident we can do the same thing again.”

The next day, DeBoer pulled the plug on the reformed top line and put the original crew back together. It resulted in arguably the Stars’ best game of the postseason. The regular season may afford two months of working through things but in the playoffs, even two games start pushing limits.

The Stars have plenty to correct from Game 6. The offense, or lack thereof, should not be let off the hook. The power play is not blameless. Perhaps some tweaks are necessary in those areas as well. But the sore spot on Saturday was the defense, and more specifically, Lindell-Hakanpää. That pairing has played more minutes together than any other pairing to this point, in what has been a successful season for the Stars thus far. That’s a reality, every bit as much as the fact that the Stars played one of their best games of the postseason in Game 4 of this series when Hakanpää was out, won Game 5 in spite of Hakanpää’s bevy of troublesome turnovers and lost badly in Game 6 in which Hakanpää shared as the headlining cause.

DeBoer’s decision will likely be measured by the result. If he sticks with Lindell-Hakanpää, they play well and the Stars win, DeBoer will be lauded for his patience. If he sticks with them and the Stars lose, he’ll be questioned for being over-patient. If he makes a change and Dallas wins, DeBoer’s urgency will be praised. If he makes the change and the Stars lose, the decision will probably be met with a decent amount of understanding given how Game 6 unfolded, but there could be some second-guessing for DeBoer himself.

There’s a fine line between patience and urgency. Nothing magnifies that more than when staring at elimination, which the Stars are now doing for the first time this postseason.

“You run out of time quickly.”

(Photo of Esa Lindell chasing down a loose puck in Game 6: Stephen Brashear / USA Today)
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