EDMONTON — What the hell are you supposed to do?
When you see Connor McDavid do that little giddy-up step he does before leaving a vapor trail behind him in the neutral zone, what the hell are you supposed to do? When Leon Draisaitl goes down on one knee at the right faceoff dot and fires a seeing-eye one-timer through a hole imperceptible to the mortal eye, what the hell are you supposed to do? When the Edmonton Oilers are flying about the way they were in the first period of Game 3 of the Western Conference final, slinging the puck around and firing at will and absolutely toying with their opponents, running them ragged and leaving them gassed and bewildered — when they’re this terrifying — what the hell are you supposed to do?
If you’re the Dallas Stars, you wait. You weather the storm as best you can, you lean on your brilliant goaltender a little harder than usual, and you wait. This, too, shall pass.
Because the Oilers never seem to keep it up. And the Stars never seem to let up.
“We have been in those situations before,” Dallas defenseman Miro Heiskanen said with a shrug following his team’s whiplash-inducing 5-3 victory over the Oilers, which gave the Stars a 2-1 series lead and improved their road record to a remarkable 6-1 in the playoffs. “It’s a long game. It’s not just 20 minutes. It’s a 60-minute game and we know that we still have time. Just don’t panic. That’s the most important thing. Don’t start panicking. Everything is tougher when you’re panicking. Just stay calm.”
Twenty minutes into this game, when it was 2-0 Edmonton and could have been twice as bad if not for Jake Oettinger’s work in the Dallas net, it was impossible not to envision a parade down Jasper Avenue in downtown Edmonton in the midnight sun. Forty minutes later, after Jason Robertson had completed his hat trick and Heiskanen had sealed the victory with a 166-foot empty-netter, it was tough to imagine these Oilers beating these Stars three times in the next four games.
Because this is just what these two teams are. The Oilers, as they have been for years, are this maddening, mercurial bunch, able to play at an offensive level no other team in the NHL can dream of, but never quite consistently enough. They’re capable of achieving the highest of highs, but those moments are so often pockmarked with inexplicable lows, stretches that are unworthy of their talent, and leave them as merely a very good team, not quite a championship team. They’re easily rattled and knocked off their game, an unsettling quality for a team that fancies itself a contender.
“We took our foot off the pedal,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said.
“We let one get away there,” McDavid said.
“Our response just took a little too long,” Darnell Nurse said.
The Stars, meanwhile, are almost infuriatingly unflappable, with a self-belief that borders on arrogance. They’re far from perfect, as that horror show of a first period illustrated. They’ve lost seven consecutive Game 1s. They fell behind 2-0 in the first round against the eighth-seeded Vegas Golden Knights. But no matter what the last shift, the last period, the last game looked like, they never seem to waver in the belief that they’ll be just fine, that they’ll figure it out, that their unrivaled depth and underrated talent will eventually win the day, the game, the series, the Stanley Cup.
They’re almost boring in their steadfastness. You want to see some emotion, some frustration, some signs of humanity. At least McDavid had the basic decency to slam his stick on the ice after he shanked a beautiful chance to make it 3-0 late in the first. But the Stars just keep plugging away. Heiskanen said they talked about winning more battles in the first intermission, about getting the puck out of their zone more quickly. You know, mid-January stuff. Pete DeBoer didn’t peel the paint off the walls with a tirade. The Stars weren’t in each other’s faces. They were calm. They’re always so damn calm.
“We know we’re here for a reason,” Robertson said. “We know we’re a great hockey team. And we know if we do what needs to be done and everyone does their job and we trust the system, it’s gonna be successful. That’s the great thing (about) our team — nobody steps out of it, nobody tries to do too much, force the game, tries to do too much. … Guys keep sticking with it.”
Robertson’s breakout game embodied that attitude.
Earlier in the day, the 24-year-old winger was very quick to chime in with “10 games” when I used a more vague description of his scoring drought. DeBoer said he didn’t care, because Robertson was still producing at nearly a point a game, and “any coach in the league will take a point-a-game guy this time of year.” And Robertson was generally pleased with the chances his line was producing even without No. 1 center Roope Hintz. But let’s just say Robertson was aware. It’s been an ongoing story. In the regular season, Robertson has averaged 0.45 goals per game. In his postseason career, that number had dropped to 0.27 goals per game. But if Robertson was sweating the drought, he sure wasn’t showing it.
“We’re winning, that’s what matters,” he said. “Obviously, I’d love to be scoring, but whatever.”
But whatever. That could be the Stars’ secondary motto after “a little less for a lot more.” Down in a series? Whatever. Getting skated out of the rink by the best players in the world? Whatever. The Stars will be fine. They always seem to be fine.
“A lot of it’s the experience we have,” said Wyatt Johnston, two weeks removed from his 21st birthday. “Guys have played in so many playoff games and seen it all. We just have that confidence. If they’re buzzing, (we) weather that storm. We want to get out of it as quickly as we can, but we have that patience in our game. We know we can find our game at any point and just get back to it.”
What must the Oilers be thinking now? They had the most dominant period of the series, only to have the tables turned on them immediately, with Dallas firing the first 14 shots of the second period. Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner gave up an inexcusable goal to complete Robertson’s hat trick — failing to seal the post with his pad and allowing Robertson to jam the puck through from the side of the net — but then expressed frustration with the play in front of him. Their penalty kill has been perfect and they finally got the power plays they lobbied for after Game 2, yet they still lost and are now down 2-1 in the series.
“I’m not sure where those 10 or 15 minutes (in the second period) come from, but that’s as bad as it’s been throughout the playoffs,” McDavid said. “I thought they went up a couple levels and we went down a few levels, and obviously you See the difference.”
That’s what Dallas does. And with Hintz — maybe the best player in the league no casual fan east of the Mississippi has heard of — back at the top of the lineup, the Stars now boast three dynamite scoring lines and a high-quality fourth line capable of playing tough minutes. The Depth Star is now fully operational. It took Hintz a period to get up to game speed, but he teed up Robertson’s one-timer to cut the deficit to 2-1, fished out a rebound to set up Robertson’s equalizer, killed two penalties, skated on the top power-play unit and was probably the fastest Dallas player on the ice.
Hintz’s return tilts a close matchup a little further in Dallas’ favor. Edmonton, meanwhile, might be dangerously close to being on tilt after squandering such a brilliant start. The Stanley Cup playoffs are a mental war of attrition as much as a physical one, and consistency counts. In a series with a razor-thin margin, that could be the difference for Dallas.
“There’s no big personalities in here,” Robertson said. “Everyone’s buying in, doing the same thing, not deviating from our system. Every line looks the same. No matter what happens, we’re confident in what we do. We know it works.”
Robertson literally shrugged as he said that. The Stars are now six wins from the Stanley Cup.
Whatever.
(Photo: Curtis Comeau / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
