DALLAS – The handshake line at the end of a Stanley Cup Playoff series is one of the greatest traditions in hockey – a display of empathy and decency in a sport that can be savage. If only the rest of humanity was so willing to make peace.
But rarely has a receiving line of opposing National Hockey League players been as poignant, both brilliant and sad, as it was Saturday night when the Winnipeg Jets lined up to shake hands with the Dallas Stars after losing 2-1 in overtime.
It wasn’t the end of their season that was so powerful – although that, too, is devastating for a Jets team that won the Presidents’ Trophy and had legitimate aspirations of advancing to the Western Conference Final and then the Stanley Cup – but the start of the mourning.
Mark Scheifele, the longest-tenured Jet, played Game 6 despite learning Saturday morning that his father, Brad, had passed away back home in Ontario.
Scheifele scored Winnipeg’s only goal on Saturday, but was in the penalty box in overtime when Dallas defenceman Thomas Harley ripped a slapshot past goalie Connor Hellebuyck at 1:33 to send the Stars to their third straight conference final.
When Scheifele emerged from the penalty box, despondent and distraught, the competitive shield against grief removed, he was gathered in by Jets teammates who took turns hugging him. And then, in that beautiful receiving line, so did the Stars.
And the first and longest embrace was with Dallas captain Jamie Benn, who had punched Scheifele in the face near the end of Winnipeg’s 4-0 win in Game 5 on Thursday, knocking him to the ice and earning a $5,000 fine from the NHL.
“I just told him that I respected him as a competitor, and as a hockey player,” Benn told us later. “You can grow to not like guys throughout a playoff series. But when it’s all over, I told him I respect him as a player. I wanted to let him know that it took a lot of courage for him to play today in a tough situation. I’m not sure too many guys would have done that in his situation. So, I respected it. I know every guy in our room respected it, and our whole organization respected it.
“I wanted to tell him I cared about him.”
Benn was Scheifele’s chief enemy on the ice. So, imagine how the Jets teammates felt about him.
“Heartbreaking,” Winnipeg captain Adam Lowry said. “You know, we felt like we had a great regular season. We felt like we had a team that could go on a run and for it to end the way it did, and everything else that was surrounding the day, it’s just a lot of emotion.
“It’s tough to put into words what Mark went through today. (He scores) a huge goal for us, plays a heck of a game, and it ends the way it does. Just emotional, heavy. Just really proud of the group we had, the commitment, the no quit. We ran into a great Dallas team, but we couldn’t find that extra one tonight, and that was the difference.”
Later, after stopping briefly to fight back tears, Lowry said: “Just an awful day for him. You want to give him the strength, you want to get that kill so bad. We just couldn’t do it.”
Scheifele’s tripping penalty with 15 seconds remaining in regulation time was the only penalty of the game. His shot had been blocked inside the Dallas blueline by Sam Steel, who was turning it into a breakaway the other way when Scheifele lunged and clipped him.
In a series when most of the Stars’ top forwards were quiet, Steel had tied the game off a big rebound at 11:12 of the middle period, less than six minutes after Scheifele had opened scoring by sliding the puck through Jake Oettinger’s pads after the Dallas goalie stopped Kyle Connor from the slot.
Besides his team’s lone goal, Scheifele registered nine hits in 18:51 of ice time.
“You know, for him to play tonight and play the way he did is flat out one of the most courageous things I’ve ever seen,” Winnipeg defenceman Neal Pionk said. “So all the credit to him.”
“I can’t stress enough how proud I am of our group,” Jets coach Scott Arniel, who spent the day with Scheifele at the team’s hotel, told reporters. “When things are hard and things are tough, you know, especially this year, we haven’t cowered away from it. We faced it, you know.
“I’m just so proud of them and how close we are. Some things have happened over the last couple of years, and just us being a tight-knit group, being family, I really saw it on display today. We see it at different points over the course of the season; might be injuries and it might be personal stuff that happens. But everybody – everybody – wanted to win for Mark tonight. Just the heartbreak at the end of it, how it ended, it’s a tough one.”
Arniel said before the game that the Jets were rallying around Scheifele, determined to win for their teammate and his dad and force a Game 7 Monday in Manitoba.
Their chances of doing so were hurt considerably when No. 1 defenceman Josh Morrissey suffered a significant knee injury late in the second period as he pulled down Stars forward Mikko Rantanen.
Still, after getting outplayed in the first period, the Jets outshot the Stars 19-11 in the final 40 minutes of regulation time but could get only one puck past Oettinger, who made a lunging, desperation save on Nikolaj Ehlers halfway through the third period.
And the Jets couldn’t kill Scheifele’s penalty against a Stars power play that was a major factor in the series.
“Just before I take questions, I want to acknowledge a couple things,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said at the start of his press conference. “Condolences to Mark Scheifele and his family. I consider myself a Kitchener guy (DeBoer coached the OHL Rangers in Scheifele’s hometown); his family’s from Kitchener. Just courageous, what he did tonight. I’m sure his dad would have been really proud of him and what he did. Tough night for him and anybody in the hockey world that has been in a situation like that. So, hats off to him. Courageous young man.
“The second thing I want to acknowledge is the Winnipeg Jets. I can’t imagine there’s a better-coached team in the league. I’m a little biased because we work in the West, but (they) won the Presidents’ Trophy. They give you nothing, they play hard, they play as a team, great leadership. I think (Arniel) should win the Jack Adams running away, in my opinion, with the job they did this year. So, hats off to those guys too.”
One of the last Dallas players to put his arm around Scheifele in the handshake line was Mason Marchment, who ran over Scheifele on Saturday night and was a menace to the Jets all series. Marchment lost his own father, former NHLer Bryan, three years ago.
“You know, we battle out there,” Marchment explained. “I’m going to keep it between us (what was said) but I thought it was necessary to kind of share what I went through, and what helped me get over it. Well, not over, but get through it. I wish nothing but the best for him.”
Hockey. This game. Our game.
