Why the Stars are Aligned for the Dallas Stars to Reach the Stanley Cup | Craig Ludwig

Why the Stars are Aligned for the Dallas Stars to Reach the Stanley Cup | Craig Ludwig

Craig Lewig, longtime NFL uh NHL defenseman, joins us, twotime Stanley Cup champion. And great to have you. Thank you very much for for being a part of the show. Craig, what is the difference? And can you try to describe the difference between regular season hockey and the Stanley Cup playoffs? Uh you play 82 games to be one of the 16 teams that are left standing and then uh pretty much you start all over again. So, anything that you did during the regular season when it comes to the amount of goals you scored, your plus minus, your penalty minutes, um whether they’re good or bad, you pretty much start all over again. And um you cross your fingers that uh you’ve got everybody healthy, which nobody is really ever healthy at the end of a regular season, but um you want them as healthy as they possibly can. And and for the Dallas Stars, they may catch a break. uh uh they may get one or two of their top players back, one forward, one defenseman back at some point during the playoffs. There’s there’s a chance that Jason Robertson actually plays game one. Uh Mirro Hasten, best defenseman on the team. Um I don’t know if he’s going to be in game one, but we’re expecting to see him sometime in the series. So, uh, I I would say that the biggest thing that you’re hoping for is health and that you can, um, any of the things that you did well during the regular season, you hope that you can carry him into the playoffs. So, Craig, fellow Craig, by the way, it’s always nice to talk to to another Craig. But, uh, there there it is. The other night, uh, they’re down 20. It looks like, uh, the season’s coming to a close, right? And then magic, uh, happens basically. Uh you’ve got the the incredible performance obviously Miko Ransin and just all that came with that. The fireworks. What uh were your impressions, your thoughts, your emotions, all that came with that uh mesmerizing win the other night? Well, I’m saying I had something to do with it. Uh at the end of the second period, I was trying to we were in the studio and it didn’t look very good. Um I I was trying to figure out what what do we do and what do we try to change the luck and everything else. And so I I did the the baseball version of the rally cap and I I I was wearing a jersey that um that I had. It was a gameworn jersey from when we had beaten uh the ABS back in 99 on our way to the playoffs and we had to go game seven with them also. So bottom line is I took the jersey off, I turned it inside out and I t put it on backwards. So, I did everything I possibly could and and I we had to do a little video of it and so all of a sudden, apparently I ran into somebody in the Walgreens store today that said they did the same thing. So, um you know, I I I think it was a storybook kind of a situation. Everybody can kind of remember, maybe not everybody, but Mark Messier back when he was with the Rangers um had made a comment after I don’t know if it was game six or seven, but that he was they were going to win that game. He actually comes out and he gets a hat-tick and they win the game. they go on to win the Stanley Cup for the Rangers. So, um you know, we had talked a lot about Miko Ren and um when he was here now versus playing for Colorado that it would be the hardest and the worst thing probably for the ABS um if he was the guy that they would have to shake hands with going through that line after a game seven after a long series like that. And it’s exactly how it play out. Um it was like and Renon been getting better and better a as he came here to Dallas. He had a slow start obviously um not not playing with you know players that you ever played with. You only play against him getting to know him. I mean, there were some Finnish guys um that he knew, but I I think that he came together at the right moment. And when he took over in the second period and got the team back to a goal down, then he ended up tying the game on a on a crazy kind of goal and then he ultimately got an empty netter. So there there goes that handshake line and and everything and all the people that were there were a lot of people here that that were kind of secondguessing what Jim Nil did with that move and were all kind of like just tap the brakes. He’s a good player. He’s a proven playoff player. Uh probably one of the top three to five players in history as far as playoff points per game in in the playoffs. So he he put the cape on and he came out and so it was the storybook ending for that. Now they step in against a team in Winnipeg that top centerman out of the lineup of the concussions as of right now. Their top defenseman out with a possible shoulder injury right now. So things seem to be lining up for them at least from the standpoint of of an opponent and it’s something they had to go through in this first round without their best one of their best forwards, their best defenseman. And so it might be lining up just right for this team at the right moment. Uh Craig Lewood with us, a longtime NHL defenseman, a part of the Star Stanley Cup in 99, won another Stanley Cup earlier back in his early career in 1986. So you mentioned it’s a difference in the physical whatever. Does anything a team does against another team, for example, Winnipeg won three out of four against Dallas in the regular season. How does that affect, if at all, if anything, a postseason or Stanley Cup playoff series? Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Well, I I think for for speaking for Dallas that they had a hard time with Winnipeg this year. And you know, when you get to the playoffs, you drill down on games during the regular season. I mean, there’s always scouting for for all the teams that you’re playing, but you’re playing I mean, when the seasons are compressed, they were with the the Four Nations Cup and everything else that was going on this year when there’s Olympics, it’s hard to practice. And so, you’re trying to keep your players fresh and as healthy as you possibly can. And you don’t look at a ton of video. You get to see it the day before about, hey, here’s what this team does. Power play, penalty kill, special teams, those kind of things. In the playoffs, you basically dissect everything. Now, what what will happen with Dallas that they’ve already done it. They they’ve gone through everything that the games in the regular season where they gave them problems and now what they’ll do and they’ll have all and they’ve already have all that stuff on file. They know those things. they know that they were the best team in a league, you know, when it comes to the regular season, but now it’s a different drill down and it’s every player, the tendencies, the characteristics, what they do in every certain uh setup they have on the power play, how they kill penalties, what they do through the neutral zone, and what what Winnipeg did this year as a whole, as a team, when they have everybody healthy, they defend really well, and they they had world class goalender. now did he he really hasn’t had the kind of success that he and the team would like over the last four or five years when it comes to playoffs and I think that especially this year uh Connor Halib did not look like he did in the regular season there were holes in him uh it took St. a little seven games to get close to knocking him out. He two minutes to go in the game and he’s sitting on the bench. They’re down by a couple goals. They find a way to win that hockey game. So, I think for him, his mindset right now is probably I owe my teammates and they bailed me out of what would have been a a disastrous situation because, you know, they’re they’re picked to to go to the finals. So, uh, I think that we’re probably going to there’s a good chance we’re going to see the real Connor Halabuk, who gave up only two goals a game, uh, throughout the course of the season, which is a kind of a crazy stat. Uh, he’s going to win a VNA trophy. Obviously, he his name is going to be in the hat for the heart trophy. Um, but right now, all those kind of things go out the window. And again, it’s a different lineup that that they have now compared to what they played in the regular season. But you’re not going to approach the game that way. you’re going to approach the game as if every player is in their lineup. Uh they’ll they’ll have to be aware of my my opinion is what this team does, Winnipeg is they they defend well. Uh the biggest problem that Dallas could have is they’ve been a team that can play east west. They have a lot of skill, a lot of talent. They come across the offensive blue line. They can make the extra pass and they can score goals. They’ve tried to eliminate a little bit of that I think in Colorado. And if they do too much of that against this Winnipeg Jets team and they’re coming back into their own zone, the Jets will pick those passes off and they can turn them in and counterattack. So, I think they have to play a north south kind of game and they have to direct a lot of pucks at the net. And I don’t think it’s going to be any different than than what Winnipeg does. Dallas will have their hands full uh different from the first round. They have a team that’s committed to go to the front of the net and so the defenseman especially for the stars will have to be a a group that can keep people away from and out of the ey line and the eyes sight of their goalender Jake got Craig I know this morning Peter Dbor was out there making some line changes um what are you hope really you saying it was for consistency uh what are you looking for are those shakeups I don’t believe him uh it’s it’s games they play I mean right right now the top line with Granlin and and Hints and Raton. I don’t know if you touch that line. I mean, they were dynamite through through this round and they’re three fins. They know each other well. They they seem to come together. They had Raton playing with Wyatt Johnston and uh Jamie Ben. It didn’t seem the right fit on that line. He you know, Pete Pete’s been using different combinations, so he knows what he can go to. The other change they have right now is if Jason Robertson does come back and play in game one tomorrow night, they’ve got him on a line with Jamie Ben Wyatt and Wyatt Johnston and he’s playing the right wing, which he’s never played the right wing. So, and if you’re coming off of an injury, uh, and you and he’s not he’s not a again he’s a goal scorer. I mean, it’s great to get a 40 goal scorer back for sure. Is he going to be the same Jason Robertson? No, it’s going to take him some time to get into the the playoff role and he’s just coming back from a knee injury. So, um, but but he’s never played the right wing. So, and he’s not the strongest of guys when it comes to getting pucks out of the zone when he’s on his left wing, his natural side. So, I really don’t see him playing a lot on the right side. And, you know, we see those things happen against Colorado. They had their captain who came back after three years. They had him playing in Dallas in game game two. I guess he was going he took the warm-up and never played. So, and I don’t even know if if that’s really makes a big difference. you kind of plan for all different kind of situations. So, uh, but I do think that Robo, it sounds like he’s going to be back tomorrow night and and if that’s the case, good. And maybe what they do is they they get him a little bit of ice on on a different line and probably they got Jamie Ben moved up to the second line, which makes sense to me because that’s with Duchain on one side or in the middle of the ice and then Tyler Sean on the other side. But there’s there’s a couple guys that are are bulls in this series and it’s Lowry from the Jets and it’s Jamie Ben and and so to get Jamie up on that second line, Lowry is generally second line kind of guy and they can get those guys to go headtohead. Um I think you kind of neutralize each other one, you know, because one one guy’s going to be looking out for his teammates, the other guy be looking out for his teammates. So maybe they maybe that’s what they’re thinking right now. But again, this everything’s going to change. It’ll change from game to game, period to period, and possibly shift to shift. So, that’s the adjustments. That’s the thing is the teams that get to the end of the line, they were able to make adjustments in game and in between games, and more importantly in games when they can see a matchup happening or a line that’s not clicking at that particular moment. So, all these line combinations that we see, we did the same thing. I mean, you you would say, you know, these three guys going to play together, and they’d even go in warm-ups together uh before the game, and then they wouldn’t play together in the game. So they get the other coaches writing down changes and who we’re going to match up against. So at the end of the day, whoever executes the best is going to win these hockey games. You mentioned the defenseman earlier and what they’ve been able to do and step up in Miro’s absence has been really impressive. But I was reading I was reading earlier today and it said Thomas Harley has skated almost 29 miles in seven games and he’s still playing at a high level. How can you put in words how difficult that is? Yeah. You know what the the good the good news I’d say for Harley is he doesn’t necessarily play a physical kind of game. I mean he’s a big kid. Um he skates great. He’s got great skating ability. So it makes it easier for the guys that can skate. So and the difference between him and Hasten is Hastenan gets himself out of the defensive zone with his legs. He skates a lot of pucks out. He’s got he’s a great skater, one of the best in the game um as a defenseman. But what Harley does is he makes the proper passes. When Thomas Harley got onto the power play, when Mero went out, the power play got better. And that’s only because he shoots the puck and and Mirror was more a distributor and and easier to kill penalties when you got the puck just kind of moving. The top guy is moving the puck left to right versus Thomas Harley. He walks and he finds lanes and he plays a little bit more direct and then and then everybody else on the ice knows that pucks are going to the net. They start crashing the net. Then they’re they’re in the areas where rebounds are. So, but I would say for Harley, I mean, he’s only 24, 25 years old. He’s in great shape. He’s a young kid. And like I said, his ability is to be able to skate and he skates effortlessly and he really doesn’t get into a lot of tug, you know, tugof-war. And so, it’s not that he won’t play physical, but he doesn’t have to bang around in the corners as much because usually those kind of guys, they have this the puck is on their stick and so they’re skating a lot. They don’t have to defend a lot when they got the puck. Uh Craig, if appreciate your time as always and the experience in Dallas. So you won uh two Stanley Cups with Montreal, then 99 with Dallas. It’s the greatest postgame ceremony in all of sports in my opinion. And I never played the game, but I’ve always just been in love with the the way that that occurs. What is that like? Well, it’s it’s really good when you’re on the right end of it. No. Well, yeah, absolutely. I you know I I’ve won a couple college championships uh a couple Stanley Cups and I’ve never got to shake a hand at home. It’s always been on the road. And I am here to say that it’s probably nicer. It feels better to be on the road and and shake hands when you’re on the winning side of it, especially, you know, if you you’ve won the championship. Um but but but I I would say it’s it’s the ability to let everything go that happened and things man things go to a different level in in the in the playoffs and if you if you have any friends uh you don’t talk to them usually and you’re not afraid and you’re not beyond running them through the boards too because it it’s a we know what’s on the line and you’ll I mean you’ll see the laundry list of players like you’ll you know, for St. Louis, for instance, there’s going to be a laundry list of players that that are going to come out with the list of their injuries that they’ve had and you’ll go, “How the hell did they play seven games just, you know, through the playoffs?” So, I just think that, you know, it’s the hardest in our opinion, it’s the hardest trophy to to win and what you have to go through in order to get those 16 wins. And, um, it’s the war of attrition. And you know, I I talk a lot about the defenseman as a group and you’re, you know, you start you start the game and you start the series and things like that with six defenseman uh in the game. You’re not going to finish with six defenseman at the end of the year if you’re going to go all the way. You’re going to go through, you know, seven, eight, nine defenseman because there’s going to be injuries. Same things happen up front. And it’s about the guys that can step in for those if whether it’s one game or three games and and step in and play. For for me in the first round, probably the most consistent best line for the Stars has been their fourth line. And it’s because they play in straight lines. There was not east west in them. They caused the most havoc. They had a lot of things that happened around the net. Uh Blackwell uh on the forward line scored an overtime goal. So, you know, usually it’s the bluecollar guys at the end of it. Um you’re going to win Stanley Cups and championships because of your best players, but you won’t win them without the rest. Last thing, uh, in that game that won the cup against the Sabres with, uh, uh, obviously the Bret Hole goal, Sergey Zubof played 54 minutes. It went triple overtime. Hatcher, Leinan, and and Matt Pachchuk all played 40 plus and then even Daryl Sedor 39. You were on the ice, a goalie, of course, Ed Bell for 114 plus minutes. Where were you when scored and is what’s the longest game you’ve ever played? Um I think I think I played a four uh overtime but it was in the playoffs so four overtime one but but this is obviously the the longest one that I played in the playoffs and I had a you know what I remember I had just come off the ice I think and I couldn’t breathe so my my head was down between my legs and I just heard the I just heard everybody yelling and screaming. So, uh, I could barely get out there. But, yeah, it’s again, it makes everything worthwhile when you win. I mean, you can imagine. And there were players on on Buffalo’s team that played the same amount of minutes, and I could promise you that all of their bumps, bumps, and bruises hurt a lot more than than ours did when it’s all over with because that’s it’s it’s, you know, I hate to say it, it’s such a such a painful thing to to play that that whole two and a half months or whatever it is and and come up a goal short. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Great to see you, Greg. Enjoy it. Still involved with doing a lot of things with hockey. A part of two two Stanley Cup championships, 86 and 99 that last year he played. He won it with the stars.

Craig Ludwig, Former Stars Defenseman joins 365 Sports to discuss his thoughts on the difference between regular-season hockey and the NFL Playoffs, his thoughts on the health of the Dallas Stars and their road to the Stanley Cup, his thoughts on the matchup against the Jets and more.

Visit our friends at Can Am, canam.sjv.io/e1Kq2Q. Can-Am for all your off-road living needs.

Visit our friends at Flag & Anthem, https://flaganthem.pxf.io/JKKd97 . High-quality, stylish clothing at an affordable price. 
USE PROMO CODE 365SPORTS for 20% OFF

Click the link below to follow us on all socials
https://linktr.ee/365SportsYT

Looking for unique perspective on all sports? 365 Sports will quickly become your favorite sports channel to subscribe to!