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Stars Stay Undefeated In The Preseason With 5-2 Win Against Minnesota | 'Spits & Suds'

From 'Spits & Suds' (subscribe here): The Stars win again in the preseason after a 5-2 victory over the Minnesota Wild. Host Gavin Spittle goes through some player nuggets and talks about the depth of this Stars team. He goes through three Forwards that could make the roster, between Arttu Hyry, Oskar Bäck and Cole Lind. Gavin says he can’t wait to see regular season Logan Stankoven after the performances he’s had in the preseason, Gavin says just wait until it’s regular season for Stankoven. And he had to talk about the Matt Dumba hit on Devin Shore in the game.

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Broadcast on:: 27 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

And welcome to another Star Wars post game edition of Spits and Sons. Hey, everyone, I'm Gavin Spittle of 1053, the fan, stars moved to three and O in the preseason of five two, when at the American Airline Center, they continue their winning ways. And I have to be honest, maybe a little sluggish in the second period, but this star's team is pretty dominant in these preseason games. Now the caveat being the following, this was not the Minnesota wild, we shall see in the regular season, lot of prospects, lot of young players. In fact, the best indication in the preseason of the team you're playing is when you go to the scoring wrap recap on NHL.com. And there are not pictures of the players, but shadows some a few wild players that scored. It's preseason. So you can only take so much out of this. And I'm not going to go through a whole game recap because, you know, that that's it's preseason, but I am going to take some nuggets out of this and I love finding those little nuggets and delivering them for you on Spits and Sons. First off, stars came out of the gate hot 16 to four, out shooting the wild in the first period. Why is that big? Because whether it's preseason heading into the regular season, this was something that Sean Shapiro and I talked about all last season. Why can't the stars come out and just basically knock a team around or get their legs early rather than having to play catch up or getting that energy in the third period? Well, they did tonight and getting the early lead. We also saw something unique, our first appearance of Miro Hayskin and playing on his strong side. I know a lot of stars fans. I know a lot of us. Me included wanted to see what a Miro strong side would look like and he got a goal. And he was with Matt Dumba. In fact, the second goal of the night, the one that Hayskin and scored, it does show the kind of intrigue that we all have because if he's on his off side, he probably doesn't get that pass. But if he is on his off side, he'd have to stop at first. But being on his strong side, I think he had a lot of momentum making his way toward the net and he could see and went short side past Gustafson for the star's second goal. For those of you that didn't get to watch the game, I would encourage you then to go on Twitter X and just type in Matt Dumba. And you'll see one of the reasons that Jim Nill picked him up in the off season. Now, a lot of us can say that the Pavelski hit is still remembered. I get it. But once again, whether you like it or not, that was a clean hit. You can disagree with me all you want. But there wasn't a penalty on that play and NHL player safety looked at it and said it was a clean hit. In fact, it was such a clean hit. There was no fine levied against Dumba. So all that said, he comes to the stars and now he's wearing your uniform and the Twitter reaction tonight when Matt Dumba hit former star Devin Shor. So Shor is coming out of the wild and doesn't really have his head up. And Matt Dumba with a hard lay out hit that absolutely flattened shore. Wild wanted to go. Dumba does not go. Referee's got in between, stars get a power play out of it. That's the physicality we've kind of long for. I mean, no one wants to see anyone get injured. But hard hits are part of the game. And what it does is something we talk about intangibles and things that don't necessarily show up in analytics. When you have people like Labushkin or let's say Bishall plays with the stars team this year and you have Matt Dumba. When you're a forward and you're coming up against the Dallas stars up ice, you almost need to have your head on a swivel. And if you have slight hesitation, that benefits your stars teammates in getting back into the play. But similar to a football wide receiver going across the middle and kind of head on a swivel and look like he was kind of peeking to see if let's just say a cowboy safety was coming to lay the wood. That's Matt Dumba. So when that happens, it causes disruption. And that's a good thing. So Matt Dumba will see much of that. Now he will miss hits from time to time. But he got all of that. We do need to point out once again, this was a clean hit, no penalty on the play. And it was a legal hit. One of the things you will notice on that play, very smart by Miro Hayskine and Hayskine and smart enough to know that Dumba was moving up to make the hit and Hayskine and had dropped back. So I like the chemistry and I like the coordination on plays like that. So you can see in the first three games that the physicality of this stars team in the makeup is one that is a little bit more physical than in years past. And as I mentioned on the previous post game pod, that's going to help them come the playoffs, ring shrinks, physicality ramps up, you need physical players. And I just felt as though this stars team and heck, if you play the defending Stanley Cup champions in round one and then another Stanley Cup champ in round two, you're going to get worn down. And that's where you need the tougher players. And Matt Dumba and Labushkin, let's see what happens as the stars make their way into the post season. One of the other aspects, we talk about worn down and we talk about how injuries can cost this team that Jim Nill did a good job in the off season as far as providing more depth, some really, really good signings in the off season, two of which I'm about to talk about. So last podcast, I mentioned the depth defensively with the stars, whereas if a defenseman goes down, let's say Nill's one quizzes your seventh defenseman, he moves into the top six. And then you have petrovic that's ready to go. You have others, you have Bischl, which will obviously be the first call up because he'll be playing a lot of minutes in Texas. So you have these guys that can come up and really fit in nicely defensively. You can almost say the same thing about the 13th forward after watching the first three games. The battle for the 13th forward position is fascinating because I could give it to all three candidates that I'm about to mention. All three have played really well in this preseason and all three play well tonight. Oscar Bach had a really good season in Texas last year. Tonight, a 56% win rate in the face off circle. He hadn't assessed a plus two on the ice. And you can see that he's a solid two player. He's got really, really nice size, wins puck battles. And as I mentioned, solid year in Texas last year. So he has that AHL experience. I could see him getting that 13th forward spot. Candidate number two, kind of an under the radar, Jim nil, signing no longer in our two who really impressive in the face off circle tonight. Nine out of 12, a 75% dominant win rate. Also a plus two hit a post continues to be active when he's on the ice. We've heard about Huru and young guy and all over the ice in these preseason games. I could see them going with Huru as the 13th forward. And then candidate number three after an impressive AHL year in Coachella Valley. Cole Lind with an assist tonight. 40% win rate in the circle. That's not the greatest. But he has a nice scoring touch. And I think he could fit in any of the lines. So Huru and Lind, I think are Swiss army knives because of their scoring ability. And they could fit in nicely. If you had to move like a Sam steel up on lines, you know, they could play fourth line minutes. They could play third line minutes. To me right now, I think Bach would be a nice fourth line candidate to fill in and kind of alternate with one of the guys. If guys not playing well, in could come Oscar Bach. But most importantly is three players are not losing this battle. Three players are impressing this stars coaching staff are impressing a lot of people. So two of them are likely to go down to start the season. And they're going to get a lot of minutes in Texas valuable experience. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, because there's a lot of depth this year between the Dallas stars and the Texas stars. So if you lose players, while it's not great, you never want to lose a ban or a douche in there or say good, I'm just named three. But at the same time, it just seems as though the players that you're going to call into action are better than what you've had in the past. It's really apparent to me about two lines, the Sagan Marchman to Shane line. That's a fixture. You got to go with that. They just look so good together. And this was the first time we had three on the ice. And that to me is apparent. Also Logan stank over in Jamie Ben were clicking tonight. Maverick Bork not in the lineup. It just really we're seeing a story of Logan stank over and taking that next step in his development. And the best comparison is his teammate Wyatt Johnston, because we saw that step up from the surprise elevation from junior hockey to making this stars team and then having an impact on this stars team to a second year where come January 1st, 2024, he was one of the top players in the NHL. We're seeing Logan stank over and evolve even more in this NHL preseason. I cannot wait for regular season Logan stank over and specifically if Peter Boren is coaching staff, decide to go with stank over and Bork, the natural chemistry and then have that vet Jamie Ben by his side. Why do I like Jamie Ben by their side? Jamie doesn't drop the mitts like he used to, but you still don't want to mess it with him. He's a physical presence. He's a grinder in front of the net. And if he's grinding in front of the net and he's taking up space, that's going to open up space for smaller guys like stank over and Bork size creates space. Remember that? It's a simple thing. If Matt Dumba is paired with Miro Hayskin and Dumba's not the biggest defenseman, but physicality also opens up space. I remember when the Winnipeg Jets had this defensive pairing of Dustin Bufflin, who was this massive presence on the ice where if he hit you very similar to Ryan Ryan Reeves, it was like, Oh my goodness, this guy's a linebacker on skates. And he was paired with one of the smaller defenseman I've ever seen in Tobias Denstrom, good skill player, but only about five foot eight. Nobody went near Tobias Enstrom because they knew Big Buff was lurking. And to a smaller degree, I liken that to a few years back when Miro Hayskin was paired with Jamie Alexiak, I really felt then that Jamie Alexiak was a good protector of a young Miro Hayskin in. Not that Miro needs that, but Miro is not going to be one of those physical defenseman, but having a physical defenseman paired with, I like that. So it'll be interesting if they go that route and drop Harley down to a second pair. If they experiment during the regular season and then come up with the pairings, if they interchange, and if they're struggling offensively on the night, if they switch the lines because they could do this, and now all of a sudden Harley and Hayskin and are paired together, or they might just do what they did last year and just have Hayskin and Harley on that regular first pairing. One thing we do have to mention, and we have to give them time like we talked about, a lot of Twitter reactions tonight to Victory Plus. They did have some buffering issues. If you look on social media, there was chatter about it. I think it's really good that stars fans are saying, hopefully this doesn't happen during the regular season. It was tough for me. I go through my Roku. I'm really hoping they get those Samsung and Apple TVs going pretty soon. So I went through my Roku, and it was really tough to go back and forth. In fact, there was some jumping at times where I couldn't get it perfect. So I'm hoping that those issues can be fixed. But I will say, and this is what gives me positive vibes. They are working on these issues. Perfect example, if you go to Victory Plus right now, you can rewatch tonight's Stars game. And that's been the case probably for the last 30 to 45 minutes. That wasn't the case after game one, where they couldn't get that game online. And I had to, many of us, I went to ESPN Plus, but it didn't really come on until the next, I think late morning, to watch the game again. So that's a really good sign that they're working on the issues. And I think we do have to give them some leeway. Remember, this is innovative. This is one of a kind. Other clubs are watching them. Any mistake that you see, I guarantee that they're watching it. Also, if you get a chance, go to NHL.com. Earlier this year, we did a Spits and Suds interview. It's one of my favorites since being the host of this program with Al Montoya. And he's the VP of cultural growth and strategy. Terrific goaltender has awesome stories about his time goal tending. A lot of time spent in Texas with the San Antonio rampage. And we had great conversations about his opponents, the Texas stars and the Houston arrows, bad timing from Montoya as far as was going to be. He was a high draft pick with the New York Rangers. And then all of a sudden, some guy that just happened to get into the Hall of Fame named King Henrik Lundquist entered the scene at the same time. So it didn't work out perfect. But that was the first Cuban American to play in the NHL. And Al has some terrific stories growing up in Chicago. And now is the VP of cultural growth and strategy. He's doing some really cool things with the stars in the community. And you know, if you look at the census, the cultural makeup of Dallas Fort Worth, the Metroplex continues to expand. And Hispanics are a massive part of that, minorities are a massive part of that too. So to have a high ranking person in the stars organization and someone that played the game for a long time, and someone of Al Montoya's personality to be out in the community, and basically welcoming people into hockey. And I told Al the story of we had a Hispanic listener, and I don't want to use his name, but he reached out to me during the season and said, Hey, Gavin, I don't have anyone to talk to. I'm a Hispanic male, and I'd love to learn this game. None of my friends watch this game. Can you help? And through a step-by-step process and direct messages, it was so cool to see because I would watch his Twitter timeline, and you'd see it become more busy as the games went along with his star's thoughts. And I was almost like a cheerleader cheering him on. I think we all have to do that, not just with minority stars fans, but with every fan, because we have to remember this is not a traditional hockey city. So go to nhl.com. Albert Perez has the article. We are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, which began on September 15 and goes to October 15. So a terrific article, also a little hidden gem in there that Al says that the stars want to be the first team to play in Mexico. There's a lot of logistics involved, but you know, Brad Alberts and you know, Brad Alberts, whether it's Victory Plus, or playing in Finland against the defending Stanley Cup champions, or bringing the draft to Dallas, or bringing the winter classic for the first time south and just having this mega success in the Cotton Bowl. Brad Alberts just continues to be innovative. So don't be surprised if the stars play south of the border and become the team leading the charge on that. So really, really cool article. If you get a chance, go support our friend of Spits and Suds Al Montoya. So stars with another win tonight. They'll be back at it on Friday night. And that means we'll be back at it on Friday night. We have some more interesting Spits and Suds coming to you as we kind of ramp up and and bring you towards the regular season. And I got to tell you watching these preseason games. I'm excited. I'm excited about some of the kids within the organization that we're getting to see. I'm excited that we get to watch these kids. I forgot to mention, with Victory Plus, like the other night, they did kind of like a stars cast, Texas cast, where Brian Ray and Sevi had guests on, and they were taking the stadium feed. If you take a step back, I just want you to realize under the old layer of Bally sports, how many preseason games did you get to watch? It was either zero or one. But usually it was one. Now you're getting all six. So we have to remember that all six preseason games. And that is a great thing because we get to see players that we ordinarily wouldn't get to see. And what's so cool about Victory Plus is, is that it's throughout Texas. So if I'm watching in the Austin area, I'm kind of excited about this year's Texas stars. I'm like, wow, you're telling me that I have a chance to get Lee and Vishal. And I look at my defensive core and I'm getting Helberg as a goalie. That's pretty exciting. So I think it's a great way to expand the game throughout Texas. So that's going to do it for me, Gavin Spittel. We will talk to you soon on another episode of Spits and Suds. Truly appreciate your support as we make our way to the regular season right here on 105 through the fan. Have a great day,