Mailbag recap: Dallas Stars snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against Calgary, and other (lots of other) topics
Dallas crapped the bed last night against Calgary, but last night's loss was about so much else.
The Stack is back! I have I have something like seven drafts of different topics in my dashboard right now (half of them are bad ideas that barely even have to do with hockey, let alone Stars hockey) So the lack of Stack content is not for lack of trying. Plus I need to keep from spreading myself too thin. D Magazine is where you can find me bringing the heat, and the work, but I don’t skip leg day at DBD. Sure it may be “just a blog” to some, but I take it just as seriously as I do all my writing. And I owe DBD a lot. As I owe the readers of DBD a lot.
With that said, you’re not here to read excuses. You’re here to read answers to questions. So let’s go!
I want to start out with my favorite question for the night. For most hockey fans, this will be irrelevant so feel free to skip this one because I’m taking it super serious.
Stars fans will say “Jamie Benn, obviously” because Benn is the only regular who consistently drops the gloves, and typically kicks ass doing it. Granted, he’s declined as a fighter, but in his prime Benn had real chops, throwing with both hands in equal measure and acumen. But when I think about great MMA fighters — Demetrious Johnson, GSP, Fedor Emelianenko, Jon Jones (vomit), Jose Aldo, Kazushi Sakuraba, Frank Shamrock, etc — I think about how they all had strong centers of gravity. For that reason, I favor someone like a Max Domi or Joel Kiviranta. They seem like they have grip strength (good for chokes), their leg kicks would hurt (because like all hockey players I’m assuming they have genetically engineered thighs), and while I don’t know if they can take a punch, nobody in MMA can take a punch. Not with those idiotic gloves.
We know why the Stars are like this: Exhibit A, my friends. We’ll talk more about specific defensemen in a bit, but I think we’re seeing a fundamental contradiction between what DeBoer wants to run — quick breakouts coming out of the zone to hit plays off the rush — and the players in his system who can run it. Except for Heiskanen, nobody has legs to make quality use of the rush attack. Defensemen are felt most in the defensive zone, and the neutral. If the players aren’t there to control those two zones, why should we expect them to control chances against in those two zones?
Dallas is pretty good at keeping shot quality down. They rank 9th in expected goals against per hour at EV. That to me, speaks to good schemes. (For the record, Dallas runs a swarm defense, although it looks like zone coverage at times.)
They are less good at keeping shots attempts down. They rank 16th in shot attempts against per hour at EV. That to me, speaks to the lack of quality players.
I can vibe with this. In a vacuum, games like last night will happen. Jake Oettinger gets his squeaky clean record from the hundreds of saves he’s amassed over 60 games. That five of them happen to go in in one night instead of spread across two games speaks to the limitations of our brains rather than the limitations of the Stars. But that’s about Oettinger. A lot of players have been a problem all year. Just because Jim Nill sent one packing doesn’t mean others didn’t deserve the same fate.
As I mentioned before the game on Twitter, Calgary is legit. Analytically, they grade out as a top 10 team in many categories. They just don’t have a legit goaltender. So I’m fine with Dallas trading punches with a team that is far better than their goaltending has allowed (not to mention erasing a two-goal deficit in the third), but I’m less fine with watching the same problems unfold; which is another way of saying “watching the same problems get unaddressed.”
(This is not directed at you hornycatdad, just to be clear) Last night’s fatal shift was a great example of how the “Eye Test” is such a dumb concept. Your eyes enable one of your many different sensations. It is not your central nervous system. This is obvious to any kid who takes biology, or an A&P course, but not to hockey men, apparently. I bring this up because the play itself was an interesting case study in the Blame Game. Who’s fault was it?
Ty Dellandrea for making such an ill-advised pass/shot to the middle?
Jani Hakanpaa for losing his man?
Esa Lindell for hovering too wide, and not reading the forechecker?
Pete DeBoer for having the fourth line and its slowest defensemen out there to begin with?
If you were merely using your eyes to analyze this play, you’d probably just focus on Hakanpaa. And yes, Hakanpaa is definitely guilty. But he was enabled by a lot of bad decisions, which makes him less guilty. The added layer to this is DeBoer’s explanation afterward, saying he wanted to save Heiskanen for a potential OT shift. I’m not a big fan of this logic. Heiskanen would have had a break between periods, which is the less important argument against. The real argument against is why not preserve Heiskanen for the final shifts instead of sending him out there on the power play in the first place? One could counter back “well why not try putting away the game on the power play?”
I agree. But that’s what time management is for, and the time management has been questionable. As my colleague Robert(o) Tiffin pointed out.
Just saying. Besides: chances are your eyes suck just like mine. There’s a reason good eyesight is overrepresented in professional athletes, and it’s because they’re the minority.
Here’s a thought experiment. (Apologies Bret: I’m gonna ignore your question in favor of answering a different one but I appreciate your observation which is why I’m leaving it here) If you stuck two puck moving defensemen together, wouldn’t fans get pissed? Wouldn’t they feel like it was a mistake? Thus, my question.
Why don’t fans feel the same way about sticking two defensive defensemen next to each other?
The thing about being good in the defensive zone is that it’s just one zone. There are two other zones that influence how you manage the dynamic between the chances you create versus the chances you allow. So unsurprisingly, Lindell-Hakanpaa rate poorly in a lot of defensive categories. Among seven pairs with at least 100 minutes together, they rate:
4th in goals against per 60
6th in shots on net against per 60
6th in shot attempts against per 60
They are a -5 as a duo in terms of even strength shot attempt differential. The only duo that’s worse is the Suter-Hakanpaa pair at -7. Their play together is not insignificant, but it’s not gonna change either. They are “reliable” after all.
This is why it pays to be on my Discord server. Sean Shapiro shared with us some extra fancy stats on Oettinger’s current struggles. PS: For those who don’t know, Erin is one of the OGs, and it’s great to see her here. I knew nothing about systems until I read her stuff at DBD.
Great question. That was my argument against the deadline: if the West is so wide open, why not secure it? Because the more they slip, the more confidence other teams will have when it’s crunch time. We can laugh at Edmonton’s goaltending all we want, but Connor McDavid might be good enough to overcome it. A healthy Colorado? While those are the only two teams I think can beat Dallas, this playing down to their competition reminds me too much of Toronto; a team that so brazenly does this each season, you have to wonder how much of has been a smoke signal this whole time for their eventual playoff outcomes.
Lundkvist is an interesting player precisely because he doesn’t play like your typical PMD. He doesn’t like to pass or carry the puck out of the zone, which hurts Dallas’ transition game since that’s supposed to be what separates him from everyone else, but in the offensive zone we’ve seen his game come alive at times. For Nils, I think part of his development will come with time. We’ve seen flashes where his comfort translates into slick plays in the offensive zone, so my hope is that as he becomes more comfortable in the offensive zone, the rest will follow. He still is, after all, just a rookie. But I also think there are some inherent limitations to his game.
What fans need to remember is that we had just lost Klingberg. Can anyone imagine the uproar if Nill had gone into this season with Hanley as a regular? So I don’t think Dallas overpaid, per se. If Lundkvist turns into a quality bottom pair defensemen, to me it’s still worth it. For every Wyatt Johnston or Mavrik Bourque, we’ve also got Riley Tufte and Jason Dickinson. There’s hardly a guarantee the first round pick used on Lundkvist would have become what Lundkvist already is.
The way Dallas copes with the thin defense is how they’ve always done it: pretend like it’s not thin to begin with, and wait until things get REALLY bad (see the goaltending in 2014, or the offense in 2021).
Let’s say Dallas decides to bring back Domi. At $4.5 million the Stars can do this (credit to JK for coming up with this scenario on Discord) as long as they buy out Suter. At that point Dallas will have what they need going into next season: more offensive help to compliment Logan Stankoven, and Thomas Harley where he should have belonged all year - wearing victory green.
However, this is the problem with expectations: once you meet them, you have to wear them. If Dallas goes deep, where does that leave Harley? They’ve already been dragged kicking and screaming into letting Lundkvist play. By all accounts, Stankoven’s age seemed to play a factor beyond the Gaglardi-Kamloops-stuff, as Dallas didn’t like the idea of having too many young forwards on the roster all at once. In that scenario, knowing they need a better blueline, they’re probably willing to lose Domi and Dadonov, and maybe look at some of the free agents like Dimitri Orlov (who I think is awesome and would have made sense this year), and maybe even Matt Dumba. Dumba won’t be a popular name to Stars fans, and analytically he hasn’t been good over the last several years, but I think he’s better than what he’s shown. Kind of like the defensive version of Domi; the talent’s there, and so is the intensity (something Dallas could use on the blueline).
If you had left it up to me, I would have moved heaven and hell to get Chychrun. Yes, in this case heaven and hell mean Harley and Stankoven (although not both, obviously).
I would say pretty good. When you look at Suter’s contract, it’s a good buyout, “injecting” nearly $3 million into the cap next year. While it’s not happening nearly as fast as it should, Suter’s icetime has dipped a bit.
Beyond that, do they really expect Harley to wait another year? I just don’t see a universe where the Stars are comfortable with Suter, whose decline is obvious to anyone with a pair of Eye Testers, is blocking Harley AND hurting the team.
I don’t think they view it as elite, so much as “enough.” No team is perfect. They all have weaknesses, even the great ones. For Dallas, it’s a question of degree. Granted, I don’t think Dallas has a cup winning D core. But Nill likes to honor his contracts (well, veteran contracts at least), so nothing’s gonna change unless something dramatic happens.
(Chuck means Glendening) The fourth line should be Kiviranta-Faksa-Dellandrea. No offense to Glendening, but 4 points in 56 games is not NHL quality. Even NHL forwards who aren’t expected to score aren’t that anemic. Not only has he been awful offensively all year, but everyone on the fourth line already provides what he does defensively. Beyond that, the concept of player roles just doesn’t interest me. Just because someone gets PK minutes doesn’t mean they give you quality PK minutes, and he doesn’t mean they’re “good defensively” just because. I didn’t mean to lean into Glendening like this, but he’s been terrible all year. Dallas has to stop being satisfied with role players playing towards roles over meaningful interlinking skills each player has with their neighbor.
Mavrik Bourque is the biggest one precisely because he’s the playmaker Dallas will once again lack of they don’t bring back one of Dadonov or Domi. But most Stars fans are familiar with them. One name that deserves special attention who Stars fans don’t talk about enough is Ayrton Martino. If you follow prospect talk in general, all the hype is surrounding Maple Leafs prospect Matthew Knies, yet Martino is only one point behind him. He’s a small forward, but he’s got excellent instincts and pace. Plus left wing will be a position of need in one or two years. Dallas has Stankoven, Bourque, and Dellandrea to fill the position of right wingers, but once Benn hits a wall, who’s left after Robertson?
Jason Terry used to sleep in the opposing team’s jersey the night before. Worked out well for Boston.
I watched a few episodes here and there, but I don’t have an educated opinion about it. Although I do have a confession to make: for some bizarre reason I found Houseguest to be absurdly hilarious as a kid (I have to imagine this opinion has changed but I’m not willing to find out). In the 90s, the only shows I watched were the X-Files, and the Adventures of Brisco County Junior. I’ll let people in the comments or on Twitter answer this one.
Thanks for the insightful answers. I always feel like I know so much more after reading your articles.
Houseguest is still good, and Brisco County is the absolute best. Awesome article.