Tyler Seguin’s first career shorthanded goal was the highlight of the night, but I wanted to dive into a different goal after the Dallas Stars 4-3 win against the New Jersey Devils on Thursday.
Mattias Janmark’s tally 9 minutes, 43 seconds into the third period turned out to be the game-winning goal and with a couple key elements the Stars hope become a key part of their arsenal in the second half of the season.
The goal starts with a blocked shot by Alexander Radulov at the point, a painful play that cost him a couple shifts, and the puck starts a two-on-one from the opposite blue line in for Martin Hanzal and Janmark.
Now Hanzal has had a disappointing season, there is no disputing that. He’s had five different injuries dating back to training camp and I actually had a conversation with him after the game last night about how the most common question he’s heard this season is, “How are you feeling?”
He was feeling well enough on this goal.
Coming in on the left side, Hanzal starts to fake a shot and both Devils goalie Cory Schneider and defenseman Will Butcher bite on the play. In this situation, from a Devils perspective, Butcher is supposed to take away the pass and force a shot.
Hanzal still has an option to pass or shoot, and in theory could have intentionally taken a hard shot at the pad to try and create a rebound. But with Schneider and Butcher biting, he waits a moment and Janmark has done a nice job going to the open space and keeping his stick on the ice.
It pays off. Schneider is down already when the pass is made.
It’s one of the easier goals of the season for Janmark, who may start playing with Hanzal more often going forward.
After the game Stars coach Ken Hitchcock talked about how he needs to elevate Hanzal in the lineup and get him up to 16 or 17 minutes per night. If that’s the case, I believe it’ll come at the expense of Jason Spezza since the Stars shouldn’t be splitting up the Antoine Rousel — Radek Faksa — Tyler Pitlick third line.
So that line that was on the ice in the third period, starting with the Radulov blocked shot, could be the second line against the Oilers on Saturday — Hanzal centering Janmark and Radulov.
We’ll see what happens at practice today (no morning skate before Saturday’s game with a 2 p.m. start), but that means Dallas could have a lineup that looks something like this:
Jamie Benn — Tyler Seguin — Brett Ritchie
Mattias Janmark — Martin Hanzal — Alexander Radulov
Antoine Roussel — Radek Faksa — Tyler Pitlick
Jason Dickinson/Gemel Smith — Jason Spezza — Devin Shore
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