San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Return from break pushed to Tuesday
The NHL pushed back its return from an already extended holiday break an extra day by postponing its entire 14-game Monday schedule for COVID-19 testing reasons.
The league said Friday it now plans to resume play Tuesday in a decision that increases the total of postponed games to 64 this season.
Teams are still scheduled to resume practicing Sunday, but won’t be allowed to take the ice until players, coaches and traveling officials are cleared following a round of COVID-19 tests.
The decision to delay the resumption of play will allow what the NHL called “an adequate opportunity to analyze league-wide testing results and to assess clubs’ readiness to play.”
The NHL said it will provide further updates on its return to play plans Sunday.
The move comes after the
NHL opened its annual holiday break on Wednesday, two days earlier than scheduled, because of a significant jump in players landing in the league’s COVID-19 protocols, and with 10 teams’ schedules paused.
The sudden rash of postponed games also led the NHL to exercise its right to withdraw from participating in the Winter Olympics in February.
The league will instead use its previously scheduled Olympic break, which runs from Feb. 6-22, to make up its postponed games in order to complete an 82-game season.
Toronto forward William Nylander entered the NHL’s COVID-19 protocols Friday, giving the Maple Leafs 13 players on the list. Maple Leafs captain John Tavares, defenseman Morgan Rielly and goaltender Jack Campbell also are in the protocols along with coach Sheldon Keefe, two assistants and four other members of the organization.
The Dallas Stars placed defenseman Jani Hakanpaa back into the NHL’s COVID-19 protocols on Friday as.
Hakanpaa remains the only Stars player to have been in the protocol all season. He entered the protocol the first time in October due to a false positive. Roope Hintz also had a false positive Nov. 18, but he was cleared with two negative tests.
The Stars entered the break coming off two straight wins, which helped ease the sting of the five-game losing streak in the previous week. Dallas is in sixth place in the Central Division, and is four points back of Edmonton for the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
The shutdown is the third this calendar year for the Stars, who were previously shut down in January due to a COVID-19 outbreak during preseason training
camp and in February because of the winter storm in Dallas.
Stars’ defensemen engine for offense
Dallas Stars coach Rick Bowness asks a lot of his defensemen.
He did so when he was the assistant coach handling the defense, and he’s done so as the head coach since he took over two years ago.
Bowness tasks his defensemen with handling the defensive zone assignments that have formed Dallas’ identity for the last few seasons. They are responsible for breaking the puck out to get into transition. In the offensive zone, Bowness asks his defensemen to be the engine.
They are given the green light to join the rush as the fourth man. They are asked to keep
possession in the offensive zone by pinching down the walls. The Stars funnel the puck from low to high in order to produce point shots from the blue line with traffic at the net-front.
With defensemen such as
Miro Heiskanen and John Klingberg patrolling the blue line for 80 percent of games (plus capable complements in Esa Lindell and Ryan Suter), it’s a smart strategy to accentuate a strength on the roster.
The only problem this season had been that the production from defensemen was lacking. But in the last two games — both wins — Klingberg and Lindell each scored their first goals of the season while Heiskanen snapped a 15-game goal drought.
Still, Dallas is lagging behind in defensemen scoring, particularly at 5 on 5.
The Stars have just two goals at 5 on 5 from defensemen, which is tied for the secondfewest in the league. Ryan Suter scored against Detroit on Nov. 16, and Heiskanen scored against Minnesota on Monday. That’s it. Every other goal from a defenseman has come short-handed, on the power play, or in overtime.
Of course, that doesn’t count the many shots that Stars defensemen have had tipped or deflected in for goals. Through the season’s first 28 games, nine goals have been scored via deflection or tip on a shot from a Stars defenseman, and eight of them have come at 5 on 5.
So that explains it, right? The Stars defensemen would be scoring if their forwards weren’t doing so themselves. Not quite.
At 5 on 5, the Stars defensemen rank 20th in shot attempts and 25th in shots on goal, which suggests they haven’t shot the puck nearly enough. But, surely, they have sacrificed shot quantity for shot quality, getting more interior for their attempts? A bit, as Dallas defensemen are ninth in high-danger chances, 14th in scoring chances and 21st in expected goals, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Those numbers seem like they shouldn’t belong to a team that relies so heavily on its defensemen to produce offense.
The good news is that the
Stars have had an uptick in productivity from the back end. In addition to goals from Klingberg, Lindell and Heiskanen in the last week, Stars defensemen are firing away more than ever recently.
In the last five games, the
Stars have 112 shot attempts from their defensemen, the most in a five-game span all season. The 3.11 expected goals (according to Natural Stat Trick) are the most as well. The 50 shots in the last five games are close to a season high (51 shots from Nov. 18-27).
The drawback is that most of that production has come during special teams and not at 5 on 5.