The playoffs are complicated. Each series is its own story, and each game is its own chapter encompassing a dozen moments and plot points. But the playoffs can also be simple. Each of those moments, those plot points, falls into one of two buckets: the things we observe and the emotions they inspire within us. That’s what we’re here to talk about.
What We Saw
Heading into Sunday, Dallas hadn’t demonstrated the ability to sift through Minnesota’s chaotic attack with any consistency. In Game 4, a 3-2 win that evened the series, the Stars finally proved they could by returning to their identity.
Admittedly, I’m not big on that word. A discussion about their offensive identity is effectively one about the top line, a small handful of other contributors notwithstanding. To talk about their defensive identity is to talk about Miro Heiskanen, an even smaller handful of other contributors notwithstanding. That makes the Stars a loose coalition of offensive and defensive impulses, and if that sounds like a critique, well, it is. But for one game, at least, it was a strength, too. All hands were on deck when it came to gaining territory and playing with pace, and that loose coalition was left to focus on being efficient, first and foremost. Sure, Dallas doesn’t have an impact player on the blueline beyond Heiskanen, but they don’t have many weak links, either. And you’d like to see secondary scoring you can count on consistently, but timeliness trumped dependability when Evgenii Dadonov gave Dallas crucial breathing room to start the final stanza.
It wasn’t a perfect night, granted. Once again, the offense didn’t show up until Marcus Foligno’s over-exuberant physicality cost Minnesota a penalty, making special teams Dallas’ prime mover when it came to changing momentum. But to be fair to the Stars, special teams are 20 percent of any given game. If they’re going to consistently capitalize on that 20 percent, they’ll always have that proverbial house money.
In an even series, it’s typically easy to identify the overarching trend. Not so much for this one, although the Stars have finally revealed their blueprint for success: capitalize on the power play, stay patient at even strength, let Jake Oettinger corral the chaos. Now that they have, I go back to last year’s contest between Calgary and Dallas, when the favorite started turning the tide once the savagery calmed down and the games again looked like hockey more than rollerball. The Stars’ imperfections are showing, but so is their resolve. Add in home-ice advantage, and I suspect that’ll be enough to potentially close out the series when it returns to Minnesota. —David Castillo
What It Felt Like
In a roundabout way, the final score told the story.
The order of events didn’t: the Stars held two-goal advantages on two separate occasions before good fortune (the bounce that set up old pal John Klingberg’s wrister) and strength in numbers (a 6-on-4 power play) tugged the Wild back into the game for brief spurts. Once the goals began flowing late in the second period, this felt like Dallas’ game through and through.
But in the end, the Stars won by the slimmest margin possible. That was about right given how, for long stretches of game time, one man’s excellence was all that stood between Dallas and an imminent first-round exit.
Among the quirks in Oettinger’s blossoming career is one epitaph has already been written. His best playoff series will almost certainly be his first, because there will be no topping 272 saves on 285 shots, either in dramatics or proficiency. He cannot possibly be asked to do more than he did a year ago against Calgary, nor could he realistically deliver more despite that burden. The byproduct is a night like Sunday feels like an echo as much as its own moment in time. Dallas did not need him to stop 64 shots as it did in last year’s Game 7; it only required half as many. But leave it to Tyler Seguin, he of the two power-play goals, to distill this year’s Game 4 down to eight words that say everything about the 24-year-old’s playoff form, past and present: “Tonight, you begin and end with Jake Oettinger.”
This is literally correct. Oettinger stonewalled ex-Star Mats Zuccarello’s snap shot for the first save of the game. He sprawled across the crease to deny Marcus Johansson’s slapper for the last one. Both were spectacular, as were so many moments in between, from the double save on Johansson to swatting away Kirill Kaprizov’s wrister on a breakaway to holding tough in scrums at net over the final three minutes as Minnesota, the most aggressive team in the game playing 6 on 5, pulled Filip Gustavsson and unleashed hell with the extra skater.
It was everything the Stars had to have and, the goals notwithstanding, just about everything Oettinger could have dreamed of for his long-awaited moment in the Xcel Energy Center. And it is the only thing we have come to expect from Oettinger in net when the pressure is at its most oppressive. —Mike Piellucci
Authors
David Castillo
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