FILM STUDY: Why the Dallas Stars Penalty Kill Is Dominating This Season

FILM STUDY: Why the Dallas Stars Penalty Kill Is Dominating This Season

You know, Mo takes the shot, but the the whole it’s the passing thing that you just go, how does he know where people are? The Dallas Stars penalty kill because at the beginning of the year, they were uncharacteristically bad, especially at home where they’re operating this season at under 70%. I think it’s 68, which for a team that was for most of last year number one in the league, that’s really poor. Mostly the same personnel. You add Radic Foxa back in the lineup, his penalty killing is very strong. Ela Nazerdine didn’t go anywhere even though Pete Dbor moved on. So your penalty kill coach is still there and you’re wondering why first 15 games of the year overall this year home and road 70% the last nine they are 89.7 including five for five against the Kraken. Well, I think there’s little things and after our show the other night and we we talked about it, but it was 3:00 in the morning. So, when you guys asked what the difference was and I tried to explain it as much as we could at 2 in the morning and so I thought I’d just show you a couple examples. A couple turned into about 23. Let’s do it. But, but this you can there’s some sim similarities here what happened in the the stats that you’re talking about early on. Look at where the Stars players are. And yes, there’s you’re going to see four players in the frame a lot, but it’s about the space and and this one here. And we’ve talked about Wyatt before. Wyatt likes to come out hard on that guy at the top. And ultimately, there’s a long chase back, but it’s that it’s the everything that’s in front of Jake. And there’s just a lot of space out here. And and then this particular play and this goal from Calgary, it created a lot of that space and time. And so, and here here again, chasing out to the point and it takes you a little bit of time. I was just showing this one. When the puck comes to the front of the net, instead of Essa going to the net to the puck area, he would start to drift away from him. But here’s that little square and there’s just way too much white ice and you shouldn’t see that when you’re killing a penalty and you got to be packed into the middle of the ice there. So that that was happening against the the uh the Calgary Flames and again got pictures of Wyatt chasing back. But you know, then it becomes a little bit better when you start end up getting more guys and and some of the same things showed up in the Vancouver game. But this one here, they end up getting on the outside. And here, this is Radatic, who I think has done a hell of a job killing penalties, but he’s late when he’s chasing back to the net. Now, you got two of the players, and it’s your top guys chasing back into that dangerous area. But look at the again, Jake has got to make a save with somebody right in front of him. You got two defenseman that aren’t really doing a lot right here. or now there it’s a twoon two, but both of those forwards from Calgary have have the good ice and everybody the three of these guys are all chasing back the net and then they ultimately get there a little bit late and there’s a scramble in front and what you’ll see you know you can see it from this angle and you see it from the next one but there’s three of the guys in the white cheddar and the sweaters that are on the wrong side of the puck and there’s three guys that are in front of those white sweaters and that’s what Jake is looking at is that scramble that’s going on in front of him and so it ultimately ends up being a lot of the same things that we’ve been talking about back and forth. Now, if we can get to what happened in the last game against Seattle, you will see a bit of a change here where they’re starting to get all to the same area of the ice. Like again, now you got numbers. When pucks go around the wall, you got to be aggressive and they are. And so, they’re starting to be, but now you’re starting to look at where they are. Doesn’t look a lot different, but you’re not seeing anybody in the in those areas between these four guys. And so, this is the other thing. sticks on the ice. There’s so many players, especially young penalty killers, their sticks are up in the air. You never know when a puck is going to come flying through a a good area and it’ll hit your stick. Sometimes it’s going to go in net. I’m I I relate to that a lot. But but again, you can just see where where people are now starting to get where where the opponent has to go through you. Sticks are in passing lanes and guys are starting to be covered. You got three guys down low. What’s happening in front of the net? It’s a one-on-one in front. The other three guys make sure there’s nothing in the middle of the ice. Jake sees the shot and then the defenseman is available in order to just get that puck and just clear it down and he basically pushes somebody out of the way. Here’s another clear. I think it was by Miro, but you can see now where the white sweaters are on the interior versus everybody in the dark sweaters in this particular one. The other thing is cutting the ice in half. So now before there’s not that space, you don’t see a lot of space here. And so what that does a lot of times it spreads the power play out because they see nothing in the middle. They spread themselves out. And like I always say, the biggest enemy is up there where it says Seattle power play a minute one and you’re fighting with the clock if you’re on the power play. So bottom line is they’re starting to get into the areas that they’re supposed to be in and they’re making it more difficult for passing lanes and they’re really making it they’re taking a lot of space away from the middle. What keeps them on the outside and it’s a little bit easier for Jake and I I just like the way that they’re starting to get into lanes and they’re starting to get in the right areas of the ice as far as defenseman and they’re on the right side of the the other the opponent. Let’s start where we always do, but usually not in the first minute of the hockey game. 57 seconds in, the Stars are behind and it was ugly early. Yeah. Well, speaking of the guy that screwed you tonight, Logan Culie, um, you know, the couple things happened on this one here. Felt bad for Lean Bishell here. He took a step. He was actually backing out of the zone here. Puck bobbles a little bit. I think he thinks he can keep this puck in the zone. It doesn’t. And if you get a good look at it, the puck actually bounces over a stick. But unfortunately, there’s a lot of people going north and he was going south. So then it turns into in the neutral zone, it turns into a twoon-one on his partner Petravic. Well, then what happens here? Both of these guys from Utah are on their off sides. They’re both dangerous. And on the pass that goes across from Pro’s left to his right, once that first puck goes across, it can’t come back. Now you can look at Jake. Jake has kind of moved over. He’s going to come over here. He knows he’s got somebody else over on their off side. Better shooting angle. Jake spots him. He’s set up clean, but then Pro turns his body and allows it to come back to your buddy Kulie who screwed you again on that shot. And he just taps one in an empty net. So not much easier than that one, right? No. You know, and again, if Petro would have I don’t know why Pro turns to face him because, you know, it’s a twoon-one. Maybe he thinks that back checker is going to get back into the play, which he wasn’t even close. But you just got to kind of you just have to make sure the puck doesn’t come back. Is he in scramble mode after the pass gets across the first time? No, you shouldn’t like like almost like a panic thing like uh oh, I got because but and where the puck got across was above the tops of the circle. So your goalender has plenty of time to adjust to that. Now when it starts to get below the tops of the circles, he can’t adjust again generally. But and that’s where when Pro turned his body again, if he’d have just stayed in the middle of the ice and just let him stay over there, I think then now again, everybody, nobody understands that a twoon-one is actually a twoon two. The goalender counts and so Jake gets over. Yeah, they’re not doing a twoon-one on an empty net. No. No. So anyway, okay, Luds, we’re in the second period now. Jamie Jamie Ben scores and celebrates like we don’t usually see from the guys. Big smile on him, huh? What was so big about that goal? 401 402. Why is that 401? Why is that such a big goal? because he got high sticked in the face so he wanted to get him back. Yeah, maybe bled a little bit. So that one here here’s this is actually you had to see it. We talked about forche. Here’s here’s some Dallas. What did Gully won in the preseason? A little what? 1% 1% more physicality. Well, here’s a little bit of that physicality. And so what the Foxa does here on the fore. But what’s important down there. Okay, what I have circled there, it’s the next frame. And we’re on a timer here. That one right there. You can nobody can tell me what that is because you can barely see it. Well, that was Simichev’s skate blade. It comes off his skate. Then what happens and everybody’s wondering how does Jamie Ben get so wide open? Well, here’s what happened here and you’ve got Well, so first off, Sland here goes to pick this puck up and he takes off and it bounces over his stick and that defenseman that’s way over there to the right of the goal. Oh, yeah. Right there. I drew an arrow on that guy. He’s only got one blade on his skate. On two skates, he’s only got one blade, so he can’t even get up. Jamie takes his time. Little crooked arrow. Jamie takes his time and he goes underneath the goalender. So, and I just drew this one here. And I did try to say yay on here, but I spelled it y ah and Ryan said I can’t leave that up there. That would be Yeah, I know. But same thing. 62 seconds later, the Dallas Stars have their first lead of the night. Jason Robertson. Robo. Yeah. Well, shocker. Robo gets it now. But on the same thing, it’s another fortune. Oh, look at look at this. You see who this is right here? That’s Coco Cabana right there. That’s a defenseman. That’s a right-handed defenseman right there. And there goes here. Watch. Yeah, I know. Good writing on this thing. Good. I spelled it right too and everything. Well, Koko’s not taking his foot off the gaff down creates a little bit of a problem behind the net. But what’s important when this puck comes out and he does spot Robo coming here. Now, if we go back a frame, I don’t think we’d see it. Maybe it’s not on there. Robo came off the bench. He jumps off the bench on this one on the rush up the ice. Anyways, Robo grabs this puck. And what I love about Robo, he does not expect his first shot to go in. No, he stays with it. He stays with it all the time. He follows a shot. Kids listening at 10:42. Probably not kids anymore, but And you’re probably a lot of kids stay up pretty late now. Yeah. Well, they’re watching YouTube, aren’t they? Here. Here’s another one. whether whether this is the right one telepathic kind of stuff or not, but you know, Mo takes the shot, but the the whole it’s the passing thing that you just go, how does he know where people are? So, Randon’s got the puck and Wyatt’s on the other side of the net. Okay, so Randon can’t get it to him. So, as he starts to come to the net, Wyatt again knows exactly what’s where he should be. He comes across the front of the net and you can’t see Ranton. He’s looking behind the net looking for somebody to pass to. But as I say that, he passes the puck out on his backhand right onto the tape and and Allark, I believe, thinks he’s going behind the net cuz he starts to pull off the post. I don’t know if Wyatt actually got this where he wanted to. I’m thinking he probably wanted to get it upstairs. He doesn’t. It gets down by the glove hand of Allmark. Ultimately, it goes in the goal. But this is the spot that I believe I found where Renan actually finds Wyatt. It’s when he first touches this puck, he’s got his head down, but I think his peripheral vision and I don’t think he sees the stick, but I think he sees the socks. So, he knows that he’s got somebody that’s got interior. I mean, he takes another couple steps and he probably knows that it’s Wyatt somehow and that he’s a righty, not a lefty. And he puts it right on his tape. And who’s the first guy to point at him is Wyatt. And Wyatt is going, “Dude, I can’t believe you saw me.” got through our breakdown up to the end of the second period with one exception and it was the Lean Bishell injury where he went feet first into the boards. Lud showed me a couple of steel shots that he took that looked pretty bad as far as an ankle thing. What I think happened is when he was going into the wall and we’re seeing it here, Sam, he steps on the skate of who is that? So he steps on the skate and when his foot comes off of his skate, it slides down and when it hits the ice, his skate, it’s going to be the next shot right here. This is sliding over the top of his skate. And then when what happens is his ankle, his skate blade’s going to go underneath his body as it comes off the top of the skate. And here’s where he starts to roll his ankle. I And I did something like this playing football. And and then I thought maybe when he went into the board, something else happened, but I think this is it right here cuz he rolls it. He goes into the boards. His skate has that that left foot isn’t backwards or anything scary like that. And I believe what he did. And again, I would It’s not a good thing, but I’m thinking best case scenario, it’s a a sprain. Hopefully not a high ankle sprain because that’s where and Yuri Leton had that before. Those when I’ve heard that the high ankle sprains at sometimes are better that you break it because that high ankle one can linger on for a long time. But I think that’s what he did. I think he just rolled it when he came down because his heel caught and his toe and it just kind of sent his blade and his ankle turn it over to his left

Craig Ludwig digs into the Dallas Stars’ penalty kill and explains what made it click against the Kraken. He breaks down the biggest plays of the week, highlights what the Stars did right, and takes a closer look at the Lian Bichsel injury and what it means moving forward. A fast, insightful look at the moments shaping the Stars’ week