NHL 2022-23 Playoffs RD 1: Dallas (C2) vs. Minnesota (C3) - (Dallas wins series 4-2)

[pilldoc]

Schedule TBD

 

All discussion here.

 

(2) Dallas Stars vs. (3) Minnesota Wild

Game 1: | Monday, April 17, 9:30 p.m. | at DAL | TV: ESPN2
Game 2: | Wednesday, April 19, 9:30 p.m. | at DAL | TV: ESPN2
Game 3: | Friday, April 21, 10 p.m. | at MIN | TV: TBS
Game 4: | Sunday, April 23, 6:30 p.m. | at MIN | TV: TBS
Game 5*: | Tuesday, April 25, TBD | at DAL | TV: TBD
Game 6*: | Friday, April 28, TBD | at MIN | TV: TBD
Game 7*: | Sunday, April 30, TBD | at DAL | TV: TBD

Edited April 30, 2023 by pilldoc

[Buffalo Rick]

Something is  very wrong here.  CBS has Colorado vs Seattle?  So who is correct?  And Dallas vs Minnesota.  So the matchups are incorrect?

[pilldoc]

I goofed and transposed incorrectly…

will fix shortly….

 

sorry for confusion.

 

thank you @Hockey Junkie for bringing to my attention 

[pilldoc]

Thread is now fixed with the correct match-up.  Thanks @Hockey Junkie for letting me know.  

[Samifan]

No clue who wins this round but I know who Chuck Fletcher is cheering for!!! 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

This honestly feels like a 'pick'em' matchup.

Earlier in the year, I would have thought the Wild would be heavy underdogs as the Stars seemed to be cruising through the league.
But, Dallas has shown some weaknesses in their proverbial armor, and while they can score, teams have shown Dallas can be shut down if played with lots of patience and good structure against.
I think the Wild have good structure. I mean, they almost HAVE to, as their offense, outside of Kaprizov and more recently, Boldy, is pretty pedestrian.

The Stars aren't slouches in defense, but I don't think they play the complete 'team gam' from the top liners to the 4th liners, from the top pair defenders, to the 3rd pair defenders, quite as well as Minnesota, who again, do it out of necessity.

I'd give Dallas the edge in goal as I think Jake Oettinger is fantastic, but, Filip Gustavsson for the Wild has proven himself to be quite the capable goalie himself. How will he hold up to the white hot spotlight of the post season? We will find out soon enough!
MAF can be very good....or can be very Swiss cheese-like......hmmm....

That all said, I will vote with my heart here and go Minnesota Wild in 7.
On paper, Dallas seems to be better in just about every category, but Minnesota has played with the kind of intangibles all season that is really hard to quantify and point out, other than, 'they play a good team game', and it has gotten them to this point.....and I think they use that mumbo jumbo to slip past the Stars who will be left wondering what just happened in a series they probably should have won....

[Math]

Goalies: 

Defense: 

Offense: 

Special teams (PP/PK): 

Coaching: 

Mental: 

Experience: 

Robustness: 

Depth: 

 

That's a tough one and I'm really torn. Like both teams for various reasons and this series is like watching my wife and my mistress fighting topless in the mud. I'm gonna lean towards the Stars because of Öttinger, if he shows the same performance as last year. Anyway, it's going to be a fun series.

 

Stars in 6.

Edited April 16, 2023 by Math

[Icechipper]

Swaney has two and Walker 1 as Iowa Baby Wild lead Texas in AHL action tonight. A win gets em in playoffs. Not sure if they'll rejoin parent club for NHL playoffs.

[yave1964]

Oettinger the difference stars in a snoozer, five boring games

[thegx.ca]

Minnesota in 7 for me...Dallas only ruled the Central while Colorado has injured...

[NHL HHOF]

 

 

Dumba's Hit on Pavelski

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

According to dailyfaceoff, the Wild are making a change in net... MAF in, spelling Filip Gustavsson.

I am not very confident with this.
Wild had most things going their way, Gus was locked in....why  make the goalie change??

[Icechipper]

Sundquist also draws in......per Wild official site 

[Brewin Flames]

Hintz hat trick as Stars get even with 7-3 win over Wild

 

 

1:51

 

Hintz notches hat trick against the Wild

Roope Hintz snags a hat trick to give the Stars a four-goal lead in the third period.

---

ByAP

Updated: 3 hours ago

DALLAS -- — Roope Hintz had a goal in each period, getting his first career hat trick by scoring three different ways, as the Dallas Stars stepped up without Joe Pavelski to get even in their first-round series against the Minnesota Wild.

 

Hintz scored short-handed on Dallas' first shot in Game 2, added a even-strength goal in the second period and then finished with a power-play goal in the third period of the Stars' 7-3 win over the Wild on Wednesday night.

 

“He's elite and he’s capable of taking over games like that. And we needed him,” Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. “Our team, with what happened with Pavelski the other night, a little bit rattled, we needed our our best players to step up tonight and make a statement. And they did. Every one of them, not just Roope.”

 

Evgenii Dadonov scored twice for the Stars, while captain Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin both had power-play goals. Miro Heiskanen, their high-scoring defenseman, had four assists, while 100-point scorer Jason Robertson had two. Hintz also had an assist.

 

The Dallas scoring onslaught came against three-time Stanley Cup champion goalie Marc-André Fleury, who got the start even after 24-year-old Filip Gustavsson made his playoff debut with a franchise-record 51 saves in the series opener the Wild won 3-2 in double overtime.

 

"It's what we do, right? We've done it all year," Minnesota coach Dean Evason said of the goalies who have split games most of the season. “Nothing was on Fleury tonight, it was all on us. ... They had a short-handed breakaway and two power-play goals. What would you like Fleury to do?"

 

Game 3 is Friday night in Minnesota.

 

The Stars never trailed after Hintz's breakaway short-hander just 4 1/2 minutes into the game, after Joel Kiviranta's takeaway in the defensive end. Dallas led 2-0 midway through the first period when Seguin, in front of Fleury, redirected a long one-timer by Robertson during an extended power play.

 

“When you lose a player like Joe, it’s a great opportunity for other guys to step up, and I thought we did that as a group here from top to bottom,” Benn said.

 

Seguin started on the top line alongside Robertson and Hintz with Pavelski in concussion protocol after banging his head on the ice following a crushing blow from Matt Dumba in the second period of the series opener. Dumba was booed just about every time he touched the puck Wednesday.

 

Dadonov and Hintz each scored their second goals of the game in a 48-second span late in the second period for a 6-3 lead. That was the last of three pairs of quick-scoring goals in that middle period — two by the Stars that sandwiched an even-quicker scoring duo by the Wild.

 

Benn had his goal and an assist on Dadonov’s first score in an 87-second span that put the Stars up 4-1 and ignite the six-goal middle period.

 

Minnesota’s two goals in quick succession were Marcus Johansson’s short backhander on a power play, 11 seconds before Frederick Gaudreau had a similar shot past Jake Oettinger to get the Wild within one.

 

Oettinger, the 24-year-old who wears No. 29 after growing up a fan of Fleury, stopped 23 shots.

 

The 38-year-old Fleury had 24 saves in his 168th career playoff game. He had been 8-3-1 over his final 12 starts of the regular season.

 

“Embarrassing on my part, you know. Giving up seven goals like that in the playoffs,” Fleury said. "I want to come in and give a chance to my team in the game and win, and that’s not what I did. ... Bottom line, I didn’t make any key saves in the game.”

 

DOUBLE TIME

 

Seguin's power-play goal came 3 1/2 minutes after Jake Middleton got a double minor for a high stick against Max Domi, who got up with blood on his nose. Fleury withstood being peppered by four shots in the first two minutes of that power play, with Hintz getting two of those.

 

ALL DIFFERENT WAYS

 

Hintz, who has four goals in this series, is the first player with a short-handed, power-play and even-strength goal in a playoff game since Tyler Johnson did it for Tampa Bay against the New York Rangers in 2015.

 

EARLY EXITS

 

There were six 10-minute misconduct penalties issues in the game's last 5 1/2 minutes. Domi and Kaprizov got sent off first after their fight. Marcus Foligno, Brandon Duhaime and Ryan Reaves later left the ice early for the Wild, and Benn got a misconduct penalty in the final minute.

“That's playoff hockey, a lot of emotions,” Evason said.

[Brewin Flames]

The Roope Show....

 

 

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

I don't even DARE to watch Minnesota press conferences, because I am willing to bet head coach Dean Evason will be assaulted with questions about why he changed goalies....

Not that the Wild played particularly well in front of Fleury, but I would say, out of the 7 goals given up, 2 for sure should have been stopped....one of them, perhaps.
Does Gustavsson make the stops Fleury didn't? We won't know now of course, but point is, it definitely is a question people will have in the backs of their minds.

Dallas was just all over the Wild in this game.
Even when it looked like the Wild were gonna yank back momentum with their two quick strikes to cut the deficit to 4-3, they still couldn't stop bleeding goals....and, couldn't stop going to the penalty box!

No brainer for Game 3, in St. Paul, MN, HAS to be Filip Gustavsson back in net, and a  humbled Wild squad, after watching video of that wretched performance, coming in with better execution and discipline.

[Brewin Flames]

And Dallas moves on to round # 2

 

Stars oust Wild in 6 games, advance to West semifinals

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Roope Hintz got Dallas going early, Jake Oettinger stonewalled his home-state team again and the Stars eliminated the Minnesota Wild with a 4-1 win in Game 6 of their first-round NHL playoff series on Friday night.

Wyatt Johnston and Mason Marchment scored in the second period when a burst by the Stars -- smelling the Western Conference semifinals and swooping in for the finish -- outshot the Wild 18-5. Max Domi closed it out with an empty-netter in the final minute.

 

Oettinger made 22 saves for the Stars, who advanced to face the Colorado-Seattle winner. The Avalanche beat the Kraken on Friday to force Game 7.

Oettinger was bidding for his second shutout of the series before Freddy Gaudreau scored for the Wild with 7:07 left.

 

"He's our brick wall back there, and we trust him. Anytime we make mistakes, he's there for us," Marchment said. "We wouldn't be here without him."

 

Filip Gustavsson, starting a fourth consecutive game for the first time in his first season with Minnesota, stopped 23 shots in two periods. Marc-Andre Fleury, who was in net for a 7-3 loss at Dallas in Game 2, took over in the third.

The Wild fell to 5-14 on home ice in the playoffs since the last time they advanced, a first-round win over St. Louis in 2015. They are 4-13 in franchise history in postseason series.

 

The Stars lost in seven games in the first round to Calgary last year.

 

With a raucous assist from Minnesota Vikings tight end T.J. Hockenson on the "Let's Play Hockey!" call, the crowd was buzzing along with the Wild during their strong start. But the fans -- not to mention the frustrated home team -- just never got rewarded.

 

Ryan Hartman had an open net for a rebound that rolled just out of reach for a clean shot, and Oettinger and defenseman Ryan Suter immediately covered up the crease to prevent another try. Just seconds later, Hintz went the other way to deke defenseman John Klingberg and deliver a top-shelf shot that sailed over Gustavsson's glove.

 

"They're so good around the net. That was a focal point for us in the series, and I thought tonight was our best defensive game of the whole series," Oettinger said.

 

Hintz has five goals and leads the NHL playoffs with 12 points. The fifth-year forward helped the top line continue to thrive without center Joe Pavelski, who has returned to practice but was held out again after a concussion in Game 1.

 

The Wild finally stayed out of the penalty box, rendering a Stars power play that was 9 for 22 over the first five games a nonfactor. But the Wild might as well have declined the penalties called on the Stars, because their power play -- 0-for-2 in the game and 4-for-22 in the series -- was again a momentum-killer instead of a momentum-builder. The crowd booed toward the end of their first 5-on-4 dud.

 

 

The Wild consistently created good looks at the net, but their passing and shooting touch was just off the mark all series. This time they weren't able to generate the breakaways they did in the 3-2 loss here in Game 4, and they started to run out of steam midway through the game.

 

The Stars spoke about the lesson they learned from letting the Wild feed off the crowd in their 5-1 win in Game 3, and they sure responded well. The team that scored first won all six games in the series.

 

Evgenii Dadonov flipped a no-look pass from behind the net into the slot, where an uncontested Johnston swooped in to score his first goal of the series.

 

Soon after Mats Zuccarello's open shot sailed over the crossbar, the Stars delivered a big blow when Marchment scored with just 0.5 seconds left before the second intermission.

 

The Wild took a 2-1 lead on St. Louis in the playoffs last year before dropping three straight games, too.

 

"For the most of the games, I thought we were the better team and we still ended up losing. That's probably the most frustrating," Zuccarello said. "Maybe last year I think you have a feeling you lost to a better team."

 

Kirill Kaprizov was their heartbeat of that series against the Blues, but the superstar left wing struggled to get going this year after a goal in Game 1. Suter, his former teammate, and fellow blue-liner Miro Heiskanen made Kaprizov work for every inch of ice and frequently met him with punishing checks.

[OccamsRazor]

Maybe the Wild need to trade Kaprizov now to help with a retool they need badly.

 

They can't score to save their lives.

[JR Ewing]

@OccamsRazorIf the Wild trade Kiril Kaprizov, there would be a mutiny by the fans. He's quite likely going to be the best player in Wild history, was injured at the end of the season and wasn't close to 100% for the playoffs.  In just about any trade which would involve him, he'd be the best player in the deal, and I side with Sam Pollock on such thing: the team that wins the trade is the one that got the best player.

 

Not going to happen and shouldn't happen.

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

5 hours ago, OccamsRazor said:

Maybe the Wild need to trade Kaprizov now to help with a retool they need badly.

 

They can't score to save their lives.

 

I think they can still make good playoff runs with Kaprizov on the team, but they DEFINITELY need to get guys to compliment him better.
And with the looming cap penalties the team will be dealing with the next three seasons or so, simply signing big name players isn't the way to go.

But, all isn't lost.
Wild can still get it done with many of the grinders they have, but they MUST make smart decisions on which vets to keep, and be very, very savvy on players they can get on value contracts that have upside no one else sees.

Tricky for sure, and any mistakes could blow up in their faces, but not like they have much choice other than do a complete rebuild.....but I don't think a complete teardown is in the works at the moment.

I would say another scoring winger, a top six center, and a genuine puck moving, offensive defenseman is needed on this team.
Either by development (someone taking big strides), or gotten through the 'value contract' method as I described.

Certain vets like Reaves, Zuccarello, Merrill need to not be there any longer.
Goligoski and Klingberg?
Goligoski is getting way too old, and Klingberg really looks like he's lost everything that made him a threat eons ago with the Stars.
Both those guys may need to be either non tendered or moved out as well.

[Math]

It's bit sad about Klingberg, he's been terribly advised but he was in the driver's seat. He was offered a 8-yr/$7M-ish AAV contract he turned down because he was on a previous bargain deal and the comparables were the awful Nurse and Jones contracts. He lost the gamble to redeem himself in Anaheim and retrospectively I'm happy he didn't sign the extension with the Stars.

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

6 hours ago, Math said:

It's bit sad about Klingberg, he's been terribly advised but he was in the driver's seat. He was offered a 8-yr/$7M-ish AAV contract he turned down because he was on a previous bargain deal and the comparables were the awful Nurse and Jones contracts. He lost the gamble to redeem himself in Anaheim and retrospectively I'm happy he didn't sign the extension with the Stars.

 

I remember not that long ago, Klingberg was a darling for fantasy hockey players.
Then his offense started to disappear, and many, myself included, thought it was the suffocating defensive style Dallas played at the time (under Bowness of course!), but even after moving on, he has proven he has lost.....something.

Whether it is nagging injuries (his history is dotted with that stuff, as you know), confidence, failing to make adjustments to the league that the league has made to him, or a combination of all that, he clearly isn't the 'fast puck moving offensive threat' he once was, and I don't know if he will ever be that again.

If he can somehow re-invent himself and be more of a standard, responsible, don't-give-up-much type defender, maybe paired with a more offensive oriented partner, he could still be a serviceable NHL D-man.
He has to embrace that kind of change....sorta be a Jan Rutta or a Jonas Brodin type. Guys who don't light up the scoresheet, but are good defenders, smart, and don't hurt their teams with silliness.

But if he still thinks he is Cale Makar, then he might have trouble fitting into the league again!

[Tomdog]

Klingberg changing into a Brodin type defenseman is a pretty big ask for someone with his defensive liabilities. 
It would be easier for him to really study his game and figure out where it went south. 
Or he can go with the flow, bounce around the league for a few more years making less money and playing on fringe teams until he retires. 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Just now, Tomdog said:

Klingberg changing into a Brodin type defenseman is a pretty big ask for someone with his defensive liabilities. 
It would be easier for him to really study his game and figure out where it went south. 
Or he can go with the flow, bounce around the league for a few more years making less money and playing on fringe teams until he retires. 

yea, I know.
By their very nature a guy like Brodin and Klingberg are VERY different player types....and of course, Jonas didn't just "become" what he is. It has been a lifetime of work and growth within his chosen profession of hockey.

But my point was, if Klingberg can at least embrace the idea of simply BEING a defenseman, and all that goes with that job description, rather than worry about offense, putting up points, showing up on the highlight reels, etc, that he may yet find himself a useful niche in the league, even if he never does reach Brodin-esque excellence in defensive play.

The other guy I mentioned, Jan Rutta, was a guy who was always looked at as a fringe NHL'er, but he made conscious decisions to just play the best brand of defense he could, not worry about numbers (even though it kept him from really big money contracts), and just did his part to not hurt his team, and then suddenly, found teams like Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh who wanted his services because they had specific roles for him.

He made a conscious effort to transform himself from being an almost NHL'er, to a serviceable NHL'er, and still serves a purpose in the league.
Can Klingberg do something similar? Who knows. But it starts between the ears I would think.
He just has to accept the fact he is no longer that player he was when he started in Dallas....and the more he tries to "find" that, the longer he is going to take to fit in with a team, with a purpose, if he ever does.