Dallas Stars blast Sabres 10 absurdities from a 10-goal explosion

Publish date: 2024-06-17

In a 10-goal avalanche, it can be hard to pinpoint a single defining moment. But in the Stars’ 10-4 win over the Sabres on Thursday night, such a moment existed, but it didn’t come during game action.

The game clock stopped at 7:45 in the third period, after Roope Hintz scored the Stars’ ninth goal. Hintz, who arguably has one of the smoothest celebrations in the league, in which he throws up both arms and glides away like an airplane, did no such thing. Hintz simply parked himself along the boards, gave a quick fist bump and head nod to Joe Pavelski, and offered some words of validation to Jason Robertson, who set the goal up with his brilliant defense-to-offense playmaking.

While this happened on the ice, the Bally Sports cameras included a shot of two women — apparently Sabres fans — sitting in the front row behind the glass. One throws back a beverage, destroying it almost as bad as the Stars were destroying the Sabres. Her companion, drink in hand, seems to expresses confusion over something, to which the first woman responds with a shrug. That vibe was a depiction of what the Sabres’ defense looked like all night.

Given the score, it only feels fitting to examine the game with 10 absurdities that came from the game.

1. Nobody scored a hat trick…

When you run through the Stars’ lineup and think about the pure goal-scorers that Dallas puts out on the ice, there are a handful of names that come to mind right away. Robertson, Hintz and Pavelski are obvious ones. Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin have re-entered the chat. Max Domi deserves to be mentioned and Wyatt Johnston is second in the NHL among rookies in goals scored.

In a 10-goal game, not only did none of those players record a hat trick, but they didn’t even have a multi-goal game. Chalk that up to a textbook example of depth scoring.

2. …but the player who came closest was Radek Faksa

Speaking of depth scoring, only one player had a multi-goal goal game and it was Radek Faksa. To add to the hilarity of this stat, Faksa didn’t even score his first goal until there were only 10 minutes left in the game and the Stars had a 6-3 lead. He then scored two goals in two minutes to turn a blowout into a laugher.

3. Robertson did not score a goal

Nine different Stars scored a goal but the team’s leading goal-scorer and the NHL’s No. 8 goal-scorer didn’t find the back of the net. Robertson had to settle for three assists, another category in which he leads the Stars, including this beauty that began with his defense and ended with his passing.

WE CAN BARELY KEEP UP!

📺 @ballysportssw | #TexasHockey pic.twitter.com/G3oupHUBPA

— Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) March 10, 2023

4. Everybody except Esa Lindell got on the score sheet…

We’re disqualifying Tyler Seguin from this conversation because he left the game after 11 minutes. The scoring distribution chart will show it below, but Lindell was the only skater of the 17 who qualified who didn’t register a point.

5. …and Lindell somehow ended up a minus-2

Not only did Lindell not score, he was the only player on the team who finished with a minus-2. Yes, plus-minus is a dumb stat to lean on for analysis but that’s not what we’re doing after a 10-4 win. And Lindell, by the way, is having a great season in his own right and is flying under the radar. But he got left out of the party on Thursday.

6. They were real goals

Yes, all goals are real goals but against the Sabres, the Stars racked up goals the honest way. This wasn’t a situation in which half of the offense came on the power play. Quite the contrary, in fact, as the Stars only scored one power-play goal. This also wasn’t about a penalty kill, which has been aggressive and opportunistic this season, catching fire. And perhaps most notably, this wasn’t scoreboard-padding at the end with a few empty-net goals.

The Stars scored nine goals at even strength, which is more amusing when you realize that the Stars had to jumble their lines a bit after Seguin, a top-six forward, left the game in the first period. Additionally, 10 minutes of the game was played on special teams — three power plays for the Stars, two for the Sabres – so the Stars had to squeeze it all in within 50 minutes to earn that distinction. They did it with time to spare.

7. Only one defenseman scored a goal: Ryan Suter

Perhaps it was a sign of things to come when the Stars’ first goal came courtesy of Jani Hakanpää. Johnston got credit for that goal but it a point shot from Hakanpää, whose role is to be a big, physical, penalty-killing defenseman, made it happen. As rare as the Hakanpää offensive impact is, at just after the midway point of the game, the Stars experienced something even rarer.

The context is important because at this juncture, it was very much a game. The Sabres had just scored to cut the Stars’ lead to 4-2 and Sabres fans were starting to get into it. Mason Marchment worked his way close to the net and put a shot into traffic. Ryan Suter was in the hard area and managed to kick the puck back into chaos instead of it leaking out of harm’s way. From there, Dylan Cozens’ stick got on the puck to put it in the net and Suter got his second goal of the season.

8. The scoring total wasn’t terribly shocking

I don’t mean to sound disingenuous because, obviously, you never expect a team to put up 10 goals in a game and it’s always going to be pretty shocking when it actually happens. There have been more than 2,000 games played so far in the NHL season and this was the first time a team cracked double digits. It’s also just the second time in Dallas Stars history that the Stars scored 10 goals in a game, matching their 10-2 win over the Rangers in 2009. That game was at home while this was on the road. So, yes, this was pretty shocking.

But also consider this: The Stars are less than a week removed from putting seven goals up on the defending champion Colorado Avalanche. They also got a couple of their top-six guys, Marchment and Pavelski, to snap out of their droughts in that game, and both scored against the Sabres. If the Stars can put up a touchdown up against a top-10 team this season in goals allowed per game, what’s an extra field goal against a team that’s bottom-10 in goals allowed per game?

The Stars were also facing Eric Comrie in net. Comrie was solid in his last outing, helping the Sabres top the Lightning with a .917 save percentage. But he had a sub-.900 save percentage in three of the four games before that. Overall, he was sub-.900 in 10 of his 16 games coming into Thursday. Again, that’s not all on him, because the defense in front of his has been awful, but his .796 save percentage against the Stars wasn’t even his worst of the season.

9. Quick strikes

The scoring flurries were relentless in Buffalo, with both the Stars and Sabres contributing. Of the 14 goals scored in the game, 11 came in bunches that added up to just 4:51 in game time.

The first flurry came at the end of the first period, when Pavelski and Benn, respectively, scored 18 seconds apart to give the Stars a 3-0 lead. Jordan Greenway got the Sabres on the board 10 seconds after Benn’s goal, for three goals in 28 seconds in the game.

The second period had only three goals but they all came in the middle of the frame. Joel Kiviranta scored on a nifty assist from Robertson. Kyle Okposo responded for the Sabres to bring Buffalo back to within two before Suter added to the Stars lead. That was three goals in 2:01.

On the front end of the halfway point of the third period, Evgenii Dadonov completed the touchdown goal to give the Stars a 6-3 lead. Twenty-nine seconds later, Faksa converted the extra point to make the lead 7-3.

On the other end of the halfway point of the third period, Faksa scored his second goal, Hintz notched his tally and Victor Olofsson got one back for the Sabres. That all happened in less than two minutes, 1:53 to be exact.

10. There could have been more

It sounds greedy but it’s true. The Stars should have scored more than they did. Multiple chances come to mind, specifically Domi flying to the net in open ice in the first period and then Hintz having a point-blank look at Comrie later in the game. After scoring 10 goals in a game, those misses don’t loom as large.

Tyler Seguin update

One dark cloud that hovers over the Stars’ big win is the status of Seguin. He left midway through the first period after an unfortunate accident. Seguin’s left leg got sliced by Greenway’s skate. According to The Athletic’s Sabres reporter Matthew Fairburn, Seguin was on crutches after the game and had his left leg wrapped.

“We’ll evaluate it,” Stars head coach Pete DeBoer said. “He got stitched up and we’ll see how he is tomorrow… Tyler goes out tonight and maybe for a few more games on this trip and all of a sudden, you’re plugging guys in that can fill that space and still create offense and have you not skip a beat. That’s the importance of depth at this time of year.”

Scoring distribution

Robertson (3 assists) — Hintz (1 goal) — Pavelski (1 goal, 1 assist)
Marchment (1 goal, 2 assists) — Domi (1 assist) — Seguin
Benn (1 goal, 2 assists) — Johnston (1 goal) — Dadonov (1 goal, 1 assist)
Kiviranta (1 goal, 1 assist) — Faksa (2 goals) — Dellandrea (1 assist)

Heiskanen (2 assists) — Miller (1 assist)
Lindell — Hakanpää (2 assists)
Suter (1 goal, 1 assist) — Hanley (1 assist)

Oettinger (.862 save percentage)

(Photo: Timothy T. Ludwig / USA Today)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k2twbWxga3xzfJFsZmlrX2Z9cLDApaOaq12owaK%2B0maqmpqimsBus86ao6xn

ZestBlog