DALLAS — This time there was no pushback.
No semblance of a rally.
The liveliest response all night from a Dallas Star came after the game when one of the local columnists asked Pete DeBoer if he felt his club was ‘lifeless’ while trying in vain to fight back in a 3-1, Game 5 loss.
“You can sit here and question our character if you want,” shot back the typically unflappable Stars coach, pointing out the questioner hadn’t been around all season
“I’m not going to do it.
“You go ahead and write whatever the (expletive) you want.”
Write the Stars obituary at your peril, as the NHL’s second-best club has long relished in rebounding, going 25-10-2 after a loss.
But in a series previously marked by wild momentum swings and stirring comebacks, the Edmonton Oilers have put a 3-2 stranglehold on a west conference final series Dallas appeared in control of just 48 hours earlier.
Who could have guessed Ryan McLeod’s first playoff goal midway through Game 4 would not only cut the Stars’ early lead in half, but would be the first of eight unanswered goals by the Oilers as they breezed to two straight wins.
It isn’t easy being green right now, as the Oilers have dominated play 100 of the last 120 minutes.
Outside of a goal with six minutes remaining by Wyatt Johnston that rewarded the Stars’ only effective line of the night, this one was all Oilers.
Matt Duchene said he felt his club was disjointed all night, which speaks to getting just four shots on net in a first period in which Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored his club’s first two power-play goals of the series.
Only six Stars shots found their way to the net in the second, as the Oilers clamped down with a textbook road effort that forced Stuart Skinner to make just three or four big saves in the third when a late, desperate response fell woefully short.
In a series this unpredictable, none of this is to suggest the series is a foregone conclusion, sure to be wrapped up Sunday in Edmonton.
Armed with the NHL’s best road record and a quiet confidence that borders on cockiness, the Stars insist they’ll embrace the challenge.
“We’re a team that responds,” said Tyler Seguin, in the quietest of dressing rooms.
“We’re a resilient group, we have been all year. We’re a good road team.
“Put a smile on, move on from this game in 30 minutes, and play some cards on the plane tomorrow.”
Pausing ever so perfectly as he left the scrum, Seguin added with a grin, “Not gambling though. Go Fish. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Again, the ability to chuckle at a time like this speaks to the Stars’ resoluteness.
But they’re in trouble alright.
Not just because they are in a do-or-die situation, but because of the way they got there.
“You have to give them credit,” said DeBoer of the clinical way in which the Oilers wrestled this series away from the Stars, who led the series 2-1.
“If you’re going to draw up a road game, that’s pretty much what you want to do. Come out, get two power play goals early in the game, get the lead and defend well all night. It’s tough to crack through when you’re down two or three goals.
“I know I say that, and there have been big swings in this series, but as the games get deeper I think those leads are tougher to overcome.”
“I can tell you our guys are emptying the tank in that room.”
The only good news for the Stars came half an hour before puck drop when Chris Tanev tested his injured right foot in warmup and was deemed good to go despite leaving Game 4 early from a blocked shot.
High praise followed the game for the 34-year-old for gritting it out for over 19 minutes, and blocking four shots in the process, to re-take the shot-blocking lead from Jacob Trouba.
He wasn’t available after the game, as he was receiving treatment.
How the Stars treat the pressure associated with Sunday’s task shouldn’t be questioned, as Jamie Benn’s bunch has the experience, youthful exuberance, depth, goaltending and road moxie to suggest they can stave off Edmonton’s first trip to the Stanley Cup final since 2006.
But one wonders if it’s almost out of their hands, as the Oilers seem to have found ways to be significantly better two games in a row.
Asked if that was a concern, Matt Duchene answered affirmatively.
“Yep,” said the veteran, whose club had its back to the wall several times in their seven-game series with Vegas.
“We haven’t had our best other than probably Game 3 in this series, it looks like we were just on our heels a little too much. I think sometimes when you want something so bad you want to be too perfect and I think we’ve got to trust our game.
“The nice thing is we’re still in this series and we’ve just got to win one at a time here.
“We’re never out of it. We have a great hockey team and a lot of character and there will be no quit.”
