Stray Observations (Game 63): Familiar result, different process in Dallas 4-3 Chicago win

The theme today: built different.

Sunday afternoon would mark the first game with Michael Bunting and Tyler Myers. Granted, Dallas is still missing key pieces due to injury, with both Roope Hintz and Mikko Rantanen week to week. But the Stars are a cut above a Chicago team that is down a few players from a modest sell after the deadline, with Connor Murphy and Jason Dickinson being the most notable. So naturally, they went back to their roots by making it “close.”

I say close because it was only close on the scoresheet. It was not close at all when looking at expected goals. This is a much better sign, IMO, then whether or not Dallas won. Early in the season, the Stars weren’t just winning close games. The games were competitive, regardless of the opponent. They simply couldn’t control the puck. At all. Somewhere along the way, things changed, and the switch was flipped.

We’ll dig more into the why later this week. But I’m eager to see how this month plays out compared to the previous two. Dallas’ strength of schedule was weak, and to their credit, they took full advantage of it. This month their strength of schedule is very strong, with only one team in March that isn’t in a playoff spot. Am I worried about losses? No. On the contrary. I don’t really care. What I care about is seeing a good process. This is a good process.

It’s the sort of stuff that has eluded Dallas throughout the year. But more than that, we’ve been here before. Think back to 2020, or just last year when the Stars backed into the playoffs on a terrible stretch and quickly straightened up when it was crunch time.

Granted, those are empty calorie narratives. After all, does losing games towards the end of the regular season mean anything statistically for playoff teams? Or is that something that happens naturally because they’re scratching various stars and giving more minutes to depth players to ensure they’re healthy come playoffs? What are not empty calories are some of the performances this team has been getting from depth players showing a lot of depth to their game.

Casey DeSmith

The first period will likely be blamed on DeSmith but I can’t see how. There are rarely anything goalies can do on deflections that go from south to north in lightning quick fashion. The second goal, likewise. I know that Lian Bichsel was concerned for his teammate, but unless the whistle is called, there’s no reason to stop there. All in all, what started out as a scare turned into the usual DeSmith performance, which is to say — strong as a rock. I don’t want to get into the drama of DeSmith vs. Jake Oettinger. I’ll write about that this week because I think not only is the Oettinger discourse misleading, but it is also incomplete. For now, it’s worth celebrating the fact that Dallas has real insurance — a netminder with Igor Shesterkin’s save percentage — in the postseason if anything goes wrong in net.

I was so wrong about Justin Hryckowian

Friends of the Discord are always keen to let me have it when it comes to Hryckowian’s glow up. When he was called up in 2024, my writeup was tepid to say the least (I wouldn’t call it negative either).

I should be embarrassed but I’m not. If I intend to call myself an “analyst” then doing so should mean being able to draw conclusions. Three years ago I went through Corey Sznajder’s tracking data and felt like Dallas was missing an identifiable process. It’s not what a team is, but how they’re about it. They had great players, but they didn’t have a way to connect those great players into cohesive attack. Two years later, and they would finally form an identity as an attacking team: on the rush. This year, Glen Gulutzan has built his own identity wholesale. So you win some, you lose some, right? It’s important to get ahead of stories that unfold over time rather than generically celebrate wins or lament losses.

For that reason, it’s important to identify where I went wrong. While I haven’t done a deep dive — which I intend to do — into Hryckowian’s game, I think a critical piece is trying to recognize when the exception disproves the rule. Hryckowian was draft eligible when he was playing in the USHL. He had 14 points in 17 games for the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders (what a great name) as an 18-year old. In other words, he fits the profile of a player likely to be overlooked: “undersized” at 5’11, on the older side, and with a birthdate that tends to get overlooked as well. Birthdays are important for prospects given the traditional development curve (one of the reasons why Matthew Schaefer was so coveted, beyond just his obvious talent was his September birthdate; just a few more weeks and he would have been eligible for the 2026 NHL Draft, making his performance at his age all the more impressive), not to mention, the statistical significance.

For me it was hard to square Hryckowian’s AHL efficiency with a theoretical NHL surrounding. But the devil is in the details, right? I need to be better at respecting what those details are, and drowning out the noise of my ‘familiar tools.’ Hryckowian has very quickly become a genuine impact player. Young players typically don’t look good on these, but Hryckowian is an exception.

The stuff he’s been doing over the last week has been nothing short of eye-opening to me; especially when it comes to his work on the forecheck.

There’s still some noise in his production, it should be said. He’s shooting 15 percent at even-strength, which is fifth on the team despite taking the 11th fewest shots per 60. However, his game is not about production. It’s about process. And his process has arrived like a wrecking ball. It’ll be interesting to see where he slots once Dallas is fully healthy.

Meandering Strays

• We didn’t get a proper look at Michael Bunting. On a depth line with depth players, he didn’t make an impression nor did he need to.

• Tyler Myers was the complete opposite: the telecast took every breath to remind us that Myers is really tall. I don’t mean to be snide. Just that I think there was a lot going despite his limited minutes on that I wish would have been discussed instead.

• Mavrik Bourque with another great game. It’s crazy to think he actually has more points than Logan Stankoven right now. Not to compare the two! I’ll always have room for both. Nonetheless, he’s not just doing great work. But he’s played with some actual spice in his game, knocking over players twice his size.

• Credit to Neil Graham for keeping the power play humming with key players from the top unit still out. That’s always the silver bullet to knowing a power play unit is well-coached and runs a tight system.