{"id":351361,"date":"2025-12-16T08:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/351361\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T08:56:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:56:07","slug":"rantanen-has-goal-assist-leads-stars-past-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/351361\/","title":{"rendered":"Rantanen has goal, assist, leads Stars past Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anton Forsberg<\/a> took over in net for the rest of the night, allowing three goals on 20 shots for Los Angeles, which has lost three straight (0-1-2).<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we played a good 40 minutes,\u201d Kings defenseman Drew Doughty<\/a> said. \u201cThird period, just gave up a little too much, obviously. Got to put a 60-minute game together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back gave the Stars a 2-1 lead at 6:12 of the third period by redirecting Radek Faksa<\/a>\u2019s shot from the blue line. The goal was Back’s first since his season debut on Oct. 26 (23 games).<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat to see \u2018Backer\u2019 get one, too,\u201d Duchene said. \u201cI mean, that\u2019s a guy that works so hard every night. Huge on the kill. That whole line chips in with the game-winner, that\u2019s huge for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rantanen made it 3-1 at 16:11 with a snap shot from the slot off a rush before Johnston scored an empty-net goal at 19:28 for the 4-1 final.<\/p>\n

Andrei Kuzmenko put the Kings ahead 1-0 during a 5-on-3 power play at 11:03 of the second period. DeSmith hesitated playing the puck after it came back to him off the face-off, allowing Kuzmenko to race in and score from close range.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s just been so rock-solid all year, and those things happen,\u201d Dallas coach Glen Gulutzan said of DeSmith. \u201cHe just rebounds right away. I love his mental toughness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duchene tied it 1-1 at 15:42, charging the crease and getting behind Los Angeles forward Alex Turcotte<\/a> and Doughty to put in a pass from Rantanen.<\/p>\n

It was Duchene\u2019s first point in five games after missing 24 because of a concussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could see his timing is getting back, and he created some offense,\u201d Gulutzan said. \u201cThat\u2019s what \u2018Dutchie\u2019 is going to bring for us when he gets his motor up and running completely, is just against these teams who play man-on-man, he can hold on to pucks. He\u2019s a heavy body, and he can twist and turn and buy time and make little plays in tight spaces, so it\u2019s going to help increase our O-zone time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anton Forsberg took over in net for the rest of the night, allowing three goals on 20 shots…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-351361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}