I don’t always get a chance to review the stats after I work a game, but I usually like looking over the Microstat Game Scores to see if anything jumps off the page. Something that did last night was Matt Duchene’s 1.865 against Utah. Not a particularly mindblowing score, but he led all players on both teams by a pretty big margin, in a game that I thought was wide open and very high-event. He also didn’t light up the stat sheet, only recording an assist on Evgenii Dadonov’s power play goal and I was more focused on Utah’s players when I was diving into the weeds of the game.
Duchene was very busy last night, recording three shots on goal, one scoring chance, setting up eight shots, being the primary assist man on five of them and he recorded six controlled zone entries with three of them leading to scoring chances. That’s a highly impactful game despite getting blanked at even strength, which will happen a lot over the course of the season. It’s also a microcosm of Duchene’s career in a way. Zone entries & rush play have always been his forte and he’s been known to be a powderkeg with creating offense. He’s not always the one pulling the trigger, but puck is getting directed towards the net at least once while he’s out there.
This season in Dallas has been another excellent start for him.
Again, the puck is getting to the net when he’s out there even if he’s not the one doing it & the play usually goes through him. What’s changed over his career is he’s had to be a little more crafty with his playmaking and make the most of the rush opportunities he gets per game instead of firing everything at the net. This is why I wanted to highlight his performance in particular last night.
The one empty-calorie play came at the beginning where he took a nothing shot off the rush & a lot of high-skill players will do this in their first couple of shifts. I’m never sure if it’s to probe the defense or something they do to get comfortable, but you’ll see most of the carry-heavy players do this. Anyway, he makes two really subtle plays shortly after, disrupting a Utah breakout attempt which directly sets up a bang-bang play that Stankoven just misses on. After that, he makes a short pass to Heiskanen on the breakout, which gets Dallas by the last Utah forechecker & they get a cross-slot look off the rush out of it. They’re small plays that can lead to high-impact moments with the right execution.
Tracking it live, I thought Utah dominated the first part of this game. The Stars had to weather a storm for the first 10 minutes or so because Utah kept re-grouping and re-entering the zone against them in a wave. The Stars response was their breakout & counter-attack game, which Duchene is always a big part of. Utah had to press in this one, so there were plenty of opportunities for him & Marchment to strike the other way, which they almost did. The two also showed some wonderful chemistry creating off the forecheck last night with Duchene protecting the puck along the wall & finding Marchment open in the middle. This could have been a big night for the duo with some better shooting, but thems the breaks. Still, the duo did their job with keeping Utah’s offense on their heels a little bit. Dallas defended the house well & these two were a threat to put the game out of reach if they got a break.
When you think of a highly impactful game that isn’t super obvious at first glance, it’s usually about a great defensive performance, but sometimes a great offensive game can get overlooked because it’s a lot of small plays that add up. Duchene has made a great habit of this during his two years with the Stars.
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