Stars push Avalanche to the brink with commanding Game 5 win: Takeaways

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This entire era of Dallas hockey has been built on their depth, but that doesn’t mean the Stars aren’t loaded with, well, stars, too. But you wouldn’t know it based on the first four games of the series. Wyatt Johnston hadn’t scored yet. Neither had Mikko Rantanen. Or Matt Duchene. Or Mikael Granlund. Meanwhile Jamie Benn, Roope Hintz and Thomas Harley had just one goal each.

And yet Dallas was still even in its first-round series with the high-octane Colorado Avalanche through four games.

“You know what, I don’t think any of our big guys have delivered yet in this series,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said before Game 5 when asked about Rantanen (one assist) in particular. ”He’s not the only one on this list. But the beauty of this, it’s time now. This is money time. I actually like the fact we haven’t yet because I think these guys are all due.”

Well, nine seconds into money time, Johnston finally cashed in. After beating Nathan MacKinnon on the opening faceoff of the game, Johnston beat MacKinnon to a puck retrieval after a dump-in by Evgenii Dadonov. Johnston flung the puck on net from just below the goal line and somehow squeezed it past a stunned Mackenzie Blackwood, giving Dallas an almost immediate 1-0 lead.

Johnston added a power-play goal in the second period, with Duchene picking up the primary assist for his first point of the series. Rantanen finally got on the board and Hintz added an empty-netter as Dallas took a 3-2 series lead with a 6-2 Game 5 victory Monday night at American Airlines Center.

“It feels good,” Johnston told ESPN’s Leah Hextall at the first intermission. “You want to pitch in, in whatever way you can, whether that’s goals, assists, or getting a puck out, winning a draw, whatever it is. But whenever you help pitch in with a goal, it helps with that confidence.”

Rantanen finally got himself on the board early in the second period, starting a breakout and finishing off a give-and-go with Roope Hintz to give Dallas a 3-0 lead. Rantanen has been around the net all series, but that was the first time he found the back of the net against his old team.

Malinski momentum-killer

The game turned late in the second period on a Sam Malinski elbow of Dallas’ Sam Steele (it just as easily could have been called interference). Colorado had scored two goals in 2:27 — Artturi Lehkonen chipping in a Marty Necas shot and MacKinnon overpowering Duchene before firing a wrist shot past Jake Oettinger — to cut Dallas’ lead to 3-2 shortly after killing off a penalty and dodging a Hintz breakaway opportunity. The Avalanche had all the momentum and the equalizer seemed inevitable.

Then Malinski knocked Steele to the ice long after the puck had passed him by and everything changed. On the ensuing power play, Duchene one-touched a Rantanen pass for a beautiful cross-crease feed to Johnston, who one-timed it past Blackwood for a 4-2 lead. Just 1:44 after that, Alex Petrovic’s shot was tipped in by Marchment to restore the three-goal Stars lead. A blowout had become a nail-biter, then turned right back into a blowout thanks to one foolish hit.

Blackwood comes down to Earth

Blackwood had been, statistically speaking, the best goalie in the postseason through four games, with a sparkling .938 save percentage and 7.11 goals-saved above expected (per Evolving Hockey), both leading the league’s 16 playoff teams.

But Blackwood regressed hard to the mean in Game 5. Johnston’s opening-minute goal caught Blackwood by surprise, but it came from an inexcusable angle. And Blackwood lost sight of Harley’s goal in the final minute of the first, as it hit his shoulder, and fluttered up and over.

Blackwood gave up just seven goals on 114 shots through the first four games. He gave up five goals on 18 shots in Game 5 before being replaced by Scott Wedgewood to start the third period. His counterpart Jake Oettinger, meanwhile, was mostly excellent on Monday, making big stops on Necas (darting across the crease and getting his right toe on a one-timer) and Makar (a big glove save on a shot from the slot in the second period), among others.

Leading the charge

Considering the Stars had led for all of 62 seconds through the first four games, most of this game (aside from the brief tightening late in the second) felt like a luxury for Dallas, which led for 59 minutes, 51 seconds. When Thomas Harley’s shot in the final minute of the first period hit Blackwood and somehow fluttered over Blackwood for a goal, it gave the Stars their first breathing room of a breathless series — a whopping 2-0 lead.

These teams know each other so well, so there are no surprises in the game plans. But you can only stick to that game plan if you have the lead. Nothing pulls apart a team’s structure and disrupts the script quite like chasing a lead — something Dallas learned frequently in the first four games, and Colorado learned in Game 5. For the first time this series, the Avalanche were scrambling, loosening up offensively, which invariably loosened things up defensively.

“It’s execution,” DeBoer said. “We both have a game plan and a formula that will work to win on a given night. It’s which team gets to that game quickest and stays in that game for the longest.”

Nine seconds? Pretty quick.

It’s been two blowouts in a row now, but both teams are feeling the weight of not just every game, but every shift. It’s been flat-out difficult to score for both sides. MacKinnon has five goals and looks every bit the MVP candidate he is, but there are plenty of Colorado stars who haven’t been pulling their weight, either. Cale Makar, Necas, Brock Nelson and Jonathan Drouin are among the Avalanche players who have yet to score in the mostly suffocating series.

“It’s been an intense series from the start,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “Both teams know what’s at stake, they know it’s a very difficult round against very difficult opponents. So that passion and intensity has to be there as early and often as it can possibly be there. But you can see the desperation in teams. The checking side of it is also at a high level. It’s difficult to create chances, difficult to score. Every power play, every penalty kill, has a heightened sense of purpose, emotion, all of it.”

Last gasp lost

Colorado had one last shot to get back in the game midway through the third period when Lian Bichsel — who’s been a menacing physical presence lately — took it too far and hit MacKinnon with a double-tap cross-check. After a post-whistle skirmish early in the ensuing power play, Dallas was down two of its top penalty killers in Esa Lindell and Bischel. Compounding matters, Cody Ceci lost his skate blade while pinned in the defensive zone. But Colorado couldn’t capitalize, as Oettinger made a few big stops, including one on Makar, then pounced on a loose puck to freeze it.

Dallas’ penalty-kill was perfect on three opportunities.

Harley rebounds

No Dallas player covered himself in glory in Colorado’s 4-0 rout in Game 4, but Harley had a particularly tough night. The Avalanche caved him in, out-attempting the Stars 31-17 and out-chancing them 15-7 (including a 7-2 edge in high-danger chances) with Harley on the ice at five-on-five.

Harley has been Dallas’ default No. 1 defenseman with Miro Heiskanen still working his way back from knee surgery. But DeBoer wasn’t concerned about Harley. He never is.

“He had a rough game (but) our whole team had a rough game,” DeBoer said of Game 4. “You can’t hang that on him. The one thing about Thomas Harley, and the reason he was able to do what he did at the 4 Nations — come off vacation mode and step into a U.S.-Canada game in Montreal on a Saturday night — is because he has an unflappability and a confidence to his own game. He’s harder on himself than we can be — there’s never a time you walk up to him with a computer or a clip and he doesn’t already know what happened or what he could have done better. That’s what is going to make him a great player.”

How unflappable is Harley? He barely broke a smile when he scored that huge goal in the final minute of the first period.

He’ll need to keep shouldering that burden, too. Heiskanen continues to practice with the Stars, and there’s an extra day off before Thursday’s Game 6 in Denver, but time is running out for him to return this series. DeBoer sounded neither optimistic nor pessimistic that he could be back, but didn’t rule out — after being asked directly — going with seven defensemen if and when he does, in order to ease him back in.

“Everything like that’s on the table,” DeBoer said. “We’re not in a Miro come-back-in situation yet so I don’t want to get into hypotheticals, but if we do get into that spot, all those options are on the table.”

(Photo: Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)

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