Dallas Stars players Antoine Roussel (21), Cody Eakin (20) and Alex Goligoski (33) congratulate Dallas Stars left wing Ryan Garbutt (16) after his first period goal during the first period agains the Vancouver Canucks Tuesday, October 21, 2014 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. G.J. McCarthy/The Dallas Morning News)
Daryl Reaugh delves into the science of goaltending in his video vlog thingee right here. Enjoy.
There are things in the world that can be explained.
Like quantum physics.
(I didn’t say they were easy to explain, just that they could be).
There are things in the world that cannot.
Like ghosts and stuff.
Hockey is a lot the same way.
There are times when you know exactly why something is happening, and you can both quantify and control that something. Then, there are times when you witness something that goes beyond the boundaries of logic and stretches belief to the breaking point. That’s when you simply have to sit back in astonishment and realize the game is played in many different dimensions.
Like Tuesday night.
In taking a 6-3 win over the Vancouver Canucks at American Airlines Center, the Stars sent coaches and mathematicians to their computers to try to crunch numbers like: How do you win 57 percent of the faceoffs and still get outshot 46-28? In the meantime, players like Canucks goalie Ryan Miller were left scrambling for reasons the puck seemingly bent the laws of physics and found a way to land in the net.
Afterward, Stars coach Lindy Ruff chuckled and said, “That’s a tough one to assess.”
And yet, that’s exactly what Dallas must do. The Stars must analyze why they were able to strike with such offensive ferocity and convert five of their first 13 shots into goals. And then they must assess why they couldn’t control any aspect of the game after that hot start.
In between, they have to realize both sides of the formula are important, as the team learns about itself and tries to better regulate the analytics of performance.
To start with offensively, the Stars can obviously score goals. Ruff assembled a super top line with Jamie Benn, Jason Spezza and Tyler Seguin two games ago, and that line has scored five goals and been on the ice for seven in that span (two Trevor Daley power play markers to boot). That is nothing short of dynamic. In addition, Erik Cole has contributed three goals in the last two games, and the offense as a whole has found ways to convert with incredible efficiency.
“I’m just happy we can send anybody over the bench and count on them for scoring,” Cole said. “It’s always nice to be contributing and taking pressure off our top guys who have to be there every night. It’s just two games, so we have a long way to go.”
You watch Benn, Spezza and Seguin, and you realize each has 100-point potential. Seguin leads the league in scoring this morning with 10 points (5 goals, 5 assists) in six games. Benn and Spezza each have 8 points. You watch Cole and realize he still has a beautiful shot. You look at Shawn Horcoff and realize the guy who scored six points in six playoff games can still find the offensive touch that made him a top six player. You look at the chemistry between Ryan Garbutt and Cody Eakin, and know that the “Pitbull line” has the ability to snap the twine on any given shift.
‘”That’s a huge positive. That’s going to help us win games,” said defenseman Trevor Daley, who has three goals and three assists on the young season.
Which is completely quantifiable.
Yet Miller was cursing his luck in goal for the Canucks as he faced the dynamic force of nature that is the Stars offense. One puck went off teammate Alex Burrows and into the net. One goal was scored when teammate Chris Tanev ran him over and left the net wide open. One goal defied the laws of physics when it went off his blocker and then was tipped in by his stick as he turned to react to the save.
“It hit my blocker and then hit my knob,” Miller said. “I couldn’t do that again if I tried on 999,999 of a million pucks. I don’t even know what to say.”
And yet Canucks coach Willie Desjardins had a pretty good explanation when asked about the Stars’ luck.
“They didn’t get lucky goals,” Desjardins said matter-of-factly. “They went to the net and they got chances.”
And that’s something the Stars can do over and over again. They have speed, they have skill, they have some guys with great hands who can absolutely rip shots. And they have an ability to put a defense on guard. There are absolute analytics as to why this team could be among the most offensively dangerous in the league.
Then there is the other side of math _ the bad numbers.
The Stars have all sorts of holes in their game. They find themselves too easily hemmed into the defensive zone, they get impatient in the offensive zone. When the top line starts galloping, they all want to run. It sets a frenetic pace that’s not good for a team that has some inexperienced players who need more structure than that.
The Stars are allowing 34.3 shots on goal per game (25th in the league) and a shot differential of minus-6.7 (also 25th). That’s probably not a sustainable system for winning hockey, no matter how much you believe in friendly ice apparitions.
“Sooner or later, that catches up to you unless you correct it.” Ruff said.
Legendary colorman Daryl Reaugh was pontificating on a series of plays late in the first period when Kari Lehtonen stopped Jannik Hansen on a shorthanded breakaway, and then Cole came back a minute later and scored a power play goal. It turned what could have been a tie game into a 2-0 Stars lead, one Dallas would quickly make 3-0 because of the momentum.
Reaugh said that was the kind of thing analytics couldn’t measure, that mathematics couldn’t capture the emotion and momentum created by humans there.
And he’s right. There are many aspects of hockey that are difficult to quantify. Here’s one for you: Stars owner Tom Gaglardi once tried to buy the Canucks and had a very public falling out with the current team owners that landed in court. It created what might be one of the most intense ownership rivalries in the NHL. In the past five head-to-head matches, the Stars have gone 5-0-0 and outscored Vancouver 23-7. Is that because the players know Gaglardi values these wins? Is that because the hockey gods are smiling on him?
It’s something that’s tough to assess.
But, as it is with life, there are also large sections of hockey existence that have to follow a very regimented path. If A, then B.
The Stars found that out last year. When they became a puck possession team, when they learned to control play, when they corralled the offensive molecules and contained the chaos in tiny boxes, that’s when they were at their best. And for all of the “luck” they seem to be enjoying right now, they know the quantum physics of their sport say that hockey atoms move in certain directions for certain reasons with a pretty good degree of certainty.
And they expect to get a pretty good lecture on that subject in the next two days of practice.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do on our defending,” Ruff said with professorial determination. “We’ve got to play better.”
That seems to be a simple theorem they can all accept.