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The Dallas Stars dominated for two periods, then took a little break, then dominated again, then took a longer break in a very ugly 6-5 overtime loss against the Vancouver Canucks at American Airlines Center on Tuesday.
What just happened?
Seriously, though. What happened?
The Stars allowed Vancouver to have its push, with the Canucks scoring two quick power-play goals to begin the third period. That made it 3-2, and everyone who had watched this team was sweating profusely at this point. For good reason.
Dallas bent but didn’t break for the next 10 minutes before deciding to push back, resulting in Mavrik Bourque making it 4-2 and Mikael Granlund scoring into an empty net to supposedly put the game away. Instead, the Canucks became the first team in NHL history — that’s right — NHL HISTORY… to overcome a three-goal deficit in the final minute and win the game.
Do you know how hard it is to truly make NHL history? Alex Ovechkin basically scored 40 goals for 20 years to do it. That is crazy.
Dallas took their foot off the gas pedal, didn’t execute, left players wide open in front of Casey DeSmith, and pretty much every other negative you can think of. Turning pucks over in bad spots, taking a ton of penalties — many unnecessary and in the offensive zone — I could go on and on.
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“Yeah, I do,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said when asked if he thought the performance was unacceptable. “Thankfully, it’s not a playoff game. Hopefully, we learn from it. It’s unfortunate because it’s going to cloud some of the really good things we did tonight for big portions of that game. But you’ve got to play for 60 minutes, and we didn’t.”
I truly could not believe that happened. I still can’t.
The next two points here are for the first 40 minutes of the game… before everything went to hell.
Power play, power play, power play
I got to post this GIF three times tonight, which is excellent.. because really, if I am not posting GIFs, why am I even here?
The Stars have had some issues lately, that’s not a secret. But the power play has consistently been elite since Christmas, and that continued tonight.
Dallas scored three power-play goals, two of which came in the first period. And not only did they convert, each of the extra-man goals was pretty.
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This is equally impressive puck movement and horrible penalty killing.
But Stars fans love to see Mikko Rantanen hammer a power-play one-timer and hope to see a lot more of that moving forward.
Jamie Bnn with the “fake out” backhand fools Drew O’Connor, and the Canucks opt to leave Mason Marchment wide open. Stars make them pay.
During this power play, I leaned over to Robert Tiffin and said: “Jamie Benn is really engaged and shooting the puck tonight.” Benn took three shots on this power play, and when he got the puck right in front of Thatcher Demko, I figured he would try another. Instead, he fired a backhand pass to a wide-open Matt Duchene for the dunk on the backside.
When the Stars are feeling good, they can do some wonderful things with the puck. The hope is that they feel this way more often than not in the postseason.
Oh, and Vancouver scored two power-play goals to begin the third period. But who cares about that?
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How good was Casey DeSmith through 40 minutes?
This feels like we are beating our laundry by the river… that’s a saying, right?
Dallas goaltending has been good lately. Like, really, really good.
Heading into tonight, Casey DeSmith had save percentages of .957, .947, .958, .972, and a .893 when he was left hung out to dry against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Tonight against Vancouver, he was DIALED. Exploding out to challenge shooters, controlling his rebounds, tracking the puck well, and adding some rough stuff that I love to see…
Unfortunately, amidst the unraveling, DeSmith went from a shutout to finishing with 26 saves on 32 shots (.813). He looked to be on his way to his 15th win in 25 starts. Didn’t happen.
Tonight aside, DeSmith has been the perfect backup to Jake Oettinger… and then some.
If I was Pete DeBoer, I would give DeSmith two starts in the final four games, including Saturday against Utah and the season finale in Nashville. That would give Oettinger four full days of rest before Game 1 of the playoffs — likely Saturday, April 19.
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Quotable
Stars captain Jamie Benn:
“Unacceptable…. unacceptable from this group, especially this time of year.”
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