Colin Blackwell demonstrated to Dallas on Monday how important team depth is by delivering a strong hit to Yakov Trenin during Game 2.
He went right through the middle and executed it perfectly; it was a clean play. It was a classic playoff check.
Dallas is behind in this series, 0-1, after suffering a tough 6-1 defeat at home on Saturday.
Glen Gulutzan doesn’t want his main scorers playing that way; he needs them to be more productive.
Relying on a fourth-line player like Blackwell, who makes $775,000, to set the physical tone is the kind of contribution that can really motivate a playoff team.
Blackwell, who is 33, has played for 13 different teams in his NHL career. It may seem that way anyway.
The Dallas Stars are looking for a boost after their 6-1 loss in Game 1 at home.
Dallas finished the regular season strong with 50 wins, 112 points, and a goal difference of plus-52. They were on a five-game winning streak going into the playoffs. Then Minnesota came to Texas and scored six goals against them.
That defeat is a responsibility that falls on Gulutzan. Game 2 needed to feel different from the start.
Blackwell’s hit alone won’t secure a victory. The four goals he scored in the 70 regular-season games show us what his role is on the team.
However, a team doesn’t need to just rely on the scoring line to lift the spirits of the players on the bench.
Minnesota’s Quinn Hughes and their top players have been using their speed and puck movement to create opportunities.
The Stars need to make sure every Minnesota forward hesitates the next time they have the puck in open ice during Game 2.
That’s what Blackwell just did. The message doesn’t need translation.
Jim Nill built this Dallas team to have four functional lines, and a hit like that is the payoff for keeping veterans at the bottom of the roster instead of running rookies out there in April.
The rest of the game still has to be played. Minnesota is a real team and they won Game 1 convincingly.
But the Stars needed somebody, anybody, to step up and throw the first real counterpunch.
Blackwell threw it. Whether the rest of the Dallas lineup follows him into the fight is the only question that actually matters
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