Stars go from regular-season overachievers to a
championship team?
The vibe left behind in their six-game series win
over the Minnesota Wild was that it was their
hockey bar mitzvah: ‘Before today, you were but
playoff boys; now, you are playoff men!
Baruuuuuch atah adonai …”
They needed this scare from a Minnesota Wild
team that was overmatched, even without Tyler
Seguin wearing the Dallas green. They needed to
see their defense and goaltending being good
enough to win a playoff round, albeit one against
a Minnesota team that was 18th in the League in
goals-per-game and was missing Zach Parise.
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But more than anything, they needed to feel that
crashing wave of momentum as a team they
pushed to the brink of the abyss conjured
everything they could muster in their last period
of the season.
You can’t gameplan that, or watch it in practice.
You have to experience it.
Jason Spezza had experienced it a few times in
Ottawa. He was 22 when the Senators beat the
Tampa Bay Lightning 4-1 in Round 1 of the 2006
playoffs. He was 23 when the Senators
eliminated the Pittsburgh Penguins, New Jersey
Devils and Buffalo Sabres – all by a 4-1 count –
en route to their Stanley Cup Final loss to the
Anaheim Ducks in 2007.
Patrick Sharp, Johnny Oduya and Antti Niemi
spring to mind when you talk about playoff
experience, because they all have rings. Spezza
is seeking his first, but he’s seen it all before,
too.
"I think it's good for a young team to see that
and go through it," Spezza said last night, via
Mike Heika. "I know we'll use that going forward.
This will show how hard it is to put teams away,
how much they don't want their season to end.
This is a lesson we will definitely remember."
Spezza finished with a goal and three assists.
"We have to learn to be better in the third, but I
know we have never been pressured like that by
another team,” he said. “They were fighting for
their lives, and we felt it. It was real. They were
throwing five guys at us, everything but the
kitchen sink, and we found a way to survive."
And they’re obviously better for it.
There’s a lot to like with this Dallas Stars team
right now . Jamie Benn has elevated his game, if
that was possible, and is leading the playoffs in
points. And while the Dallas defense isn’t going
to win them games, it managed to not lose them
the series. For example, their EV Corsi rating
with a one-goal third-period lead in the regular
season was 45.6 percent, and a minus-37 count;
through four games in the playoffs in that
situation, it’s 51.5 with a plus-2.
And yet there’s a lot we don’t know about this
Dallas Stars team. Like the health of Seguin.
Like what happens when it’s the Chicago
Blackhawks or St. Louis Blues on the other side
of the ice instead of a flailing Wild team, and
Alex Goligoski and John Klingberg decide to put
down a “WELCOME” mat and call it “defense.”
And, of course, what the hell to think about that
goaltending.
Niemi and his putrid .857 EV save percentage
were kicked to the bench in favor of Kari
Lehtonen for Game 6, who hung in their and won
both his first road playoff game and his first
playoff series. He game up four goals on 29
shots, the second straight game he surrendered
a four-spot; but he has only given up five even-
strength goals on 86 shots for a .942 save
percentage.
"I guess it's 12 years in the league now and this
is the first time I'm on a serious winning team,"
Lehtonen said. "So I enjoyed it a lot, and it
makes me want to get more."
As Tim Cowlishaw writes, the goaltending
situation has been a cause for concern for pretty
much the entire season, and yet the team
finished with 109 points in the regular season,
despite a 2.78 team GAA, the highest for any
playoff team. The goaltending wasn’t good,
frequently, but it was good enough.
Many wondered if all of this was ever going to
be a recipe for playoff success. And yet here are
the Dallas Stars, now eight wins away from the
Stanley Cup Final.
--
Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or
find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE
OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and
wherever books are sold.
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