Stars Daily October 7: What went wrong on the Golden Knights game-winning goal?

The Dallas Stars lost their season-opening game to the Vegas Golden Knights 2-1 on Friday.

The Stars were the better team. Marc-Andre Fleury stole the game, the Stars shots against were high because they took eight penalties (which is on them), and James Neal simply took advantage of two mistakes by the Stars.

Kari Lehtonen took the loss after entering the game in relief and is carrying a bit of the blame this morning. Should that be the case?

Let’s take a look at both goals:

On the first goal Lehtonen is properly playing a high shot by Neal from the slot, he’s also fighting through four players screening him.

The shot hits Radek Faksa’s knee and re-directs to the ice where it beats Lehtonen on the ice. There isn’t much Lehtonen can do on the play, if he’s in a butterfly the high shot beats him stick side. It’s bad luck on the bounce.

The second goal happened with 2:44 remaining.

The goal ends with Lehtonen laying on his stomach, but let’s look at the lead up to the goal.

At first the Stars aren’t in ideal, but decent shape. Dan Hamhuis had a decent gap on the play and should be able to limit the pass-shoot options with a smart decision.

Hamhuis makes the wrong decision. He leaves his feet, slides toward the puck carrier and allows a free pass to Neal instead of staying upright and forcing a somewhat sharp angle shot. If a shot beats Lehtonen before the pass, that’s on the goalie.

Lethonen plays the pass well, if Neal takes a shot immediately he’s going to be in the right position while sliding over and it’s a save, one that’s looked at as defining moment.

Neal stumbles while controlling the puck, at the same time Lehtonen’s momentum is carrying him to the ice and this is where you can assign some blame to the goalie. He’s caught in bit of a no man’s land for save selection — it’s the wrong time for paddle down, and he can’t get back into a butterfly. This is a time allowing his momentum to roll into a seldom-used two-pad stack would actually be acceptable and take away more of the net.

The rest of this play is on effort by Neal. He does a great job getting the puck up while sliding to both knees, and going against Lehtonen’s momentum. While in an ideal world Lehtonen has made the slide across in a butterfly, he’s actually done a nice job of taking away the more-likely low shot and Neal simply makes the better play.

Can you nitpick at the goalie play on both goals? Yes. But you can’t put much blame on Lehtonen for either goal.

Housekeeping Note

Stars play today, but I will not be covering the game. At a wedding up in Oklahoma and will probably be giving my speech around the same time as opening face-off. I will try and watch the replay of the game in St. Louis on Sunday morning.