Jason Dickinson’s biggest obstacle has been Jason Dickinson.
While he’s physically played 25 NHL games in his career, the majority of them have come with an internal struggle. He would overthink things, he’d get caught up reveling over the big name players he’d share the ice with, and throughout the game, he would be overcritical of each play he made.
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“Every game I come into up here I try to tell myself, ‘Stop thinking so much, just play,’” Dickinson told The Athletic. “That’s been a problem ever since junior, that I think too much.”
Dickinson didn’t overthink his game on Thursday against the Tampa Bay Lightning. And while the Stars lost 5-4 in overtime, it was Dickinson’s best game of the season and he picked up his first career NHL assist on Brett Ritchie’s third-period goal.
“Last night I put it together and I just played,” Dickinson said. “I just felt that thought, the thought to try and stop thinking, come into my head before the game and then after the game, I sat there and said, ‘ah, I did it…’ I got out of my own head, I stopped thinking too much about the game and I stopped trying to hard to do all the right things and instead I just played my game. I did what I had been doing in Austin (with the Texas Stars), and I feel like it benefitted me by far. It made me feel more comfortable in the game and I was more impactful.”
Dickinson is going to have more opportunities to make an impact going forward. While he is still eligible to play in the AHL again this season (Remi Elie is the only other Dallas Star eligible for an AHL assignment), Dickinson was told to pack for a longer stay when he was called up to Dallas earlier this week.
Considering Martin Hanzal’s back injury, that makes sense. No one, not even Hanzal (based on past conversations) has any idea how long he’ll be out and how much he’ll be able to play when healthy. That opens up a prolonged role on the fourth-line for Dickinson, and if he continues to play like he did against Tampa Bay he could work his way into a further promotion.
“I don’t think I can read into it too much,” Dickinson said. “It’s easy to get into your own head about that, and maybe get a little complacent with things and just go with the motions. I don’t want to treat it like that at all, I want to take control of my destiny here, and really push the coaches to trust me even more and to believe in me even more.”
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When Dickinson is at his best he’s a two-way center that makes an impact around the net and below the faceoff circles. He’s not going to be a point-per-game player in the NHL, but there are times his first round-round talent will shine through and he knows how to finish in traffic. Dickinson hasn’t earned that role in the NHL yet, but in the AHL he’s been one of the better penalty killers the past two seasons.
Now Dickinson is trying to put the AHL in his rearview mirror, and that started on Thursday where he looked like a force below the faceoff dots, and his combination of a physical play and natural talent setup Ritchie’s goal that helped spark a comeback.
“It just went along with that getting out of my own head,” Dickinson said. “Maybe before down low I was thinking too much about things, like in the D-zone, ‘where is the other guy? Where is the open guy?’ Now I was just thinking just separate the guy from the puck, take the puck and go. I wasn’t thinking as much, it sounds so simple, but that’s the big difference.”
One thing that’s helped Dickinson embrace the simple life is ignoring point totals — and that’s not easy for an NHL player. Points become a measure of a man’s worth – and they can also impact bonuses. While players typically say the right thing and claim they don’t care who gets a secondary assist, actions speak differently when players frequently ask officials to fix a snafu on the scoresheet.
So ignoring point totals becomes a similar exercise for Dickinson. In theory, he really wants to not care about the number of goals or assists, but it’s still a challenge to sometimes ignore the voices in your head.
“It’s so easy to get down on yourself and get frustrated after this season with how many games it took me to get a point. It’s easy to think ‘oh, geez, I’m not doing anything,’” Dickinson said. “So finally I felt like I just had to keep pushing forward and keep doing the little things, I just tried to do that and not get frustrated and got rewarded (on Thursday).”
Speaking of players and point totals, on Thursday Esa Lindell was given a secondary assist on Tyler Seguin’s goal that had given Dallas a 2-1 lead in the second period.
At the time it appeared that Dan Hamhuis should have gotten an assist, he had left the box and was in on the play but made a smart decision to not play the puck and let it go to John Klingberg, who set up Seguin for the one-timer.
After practice on Friday, Klingberg said that Hamhuis should have gotten an assist on the play, while Hamhuis told a couple media members, “If it’s an assist in your books, that’s all that matters.”
Lindell, on the other hand, was happy to take the point. When asked, “Did you steal an assist from Dan?,” Lindell simply smiled and said, “It was the right call.”
With an afternoon game against the St. Louis Blues on Saturday, Friday served as a de facto morning skate for Dallas. Stars coach Ken Hitchcock said Ben Bishop will start in goal against St. Louis, while the lineup will likely look something like this:
- Jamie Benn — Tyler Seguin — Jason Spezza
- Devin Shore — Mattias Janmark — Alexander Radulov
- Antoine Roussel — Radek Faksa — Tyler Pitlick
- Remi Elie — Jason Dickinson — Brett Ritchie
- Esa Lindell — John Klingberg
- Dan Hamhuis — Greg Pateryn
- Marc Methot — Stephen Johns
This won’t impact the game tomorrow but watching Lehtonen and his son, Mikko, put in extra work in a father-and-son goalie session after practice was a nice heartwarming moment on a Friday afternoon.
Kari and Mikko Lehtonen putting in extra work after practice pic.twitter.com/A1fgijHZXk
— Sean Shapiro (@seanshapiro) March 2, 2018