The morning of this matchup, head coach Glen Gulutzan said the key to stopping the best team in the league would be slowing them down. <\/p>\n
And on Friday night, both teams were flying. <\/p>\n
The game had speed reminiscent of a playoff battle, with big hits being laid by each squad and scoring chances continuously appearing up and down the ice. The Stars held their own against the Avalanche, and actually controlled most of the game, until missed empty net goal and some blocked shootout attempts stalled their momentum. The Stars will face Colorado two more times before the regular season ends, eager to wash the bad taste of this game from their mouths. <\/p>\n
Cale Makar kicked off scoring early in the first after Oskar Back went to the box for holding the stick. Two short minutes later, the Stars got their own turn. Jack Drury got called for holding on Nathan Bastian, giving Dallas a chance to punch back. Miro Heiskanen did just that, when he sent a wrist shot through traffic and past Mackenzie Blackwood to even the score.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The quick tempo continued as Dallas peppered Colorado with shots. Wyatt Johnston steered the puck past Zakhar Bardakov and launched it through the defenseman\u2019s legs, in a bar down shot that will certainly make an appearance on Johnston\u2019s highlight reel. It is his 34th of the season.<\/p>\n
Dallas kept rolling. Mavrik Bourque sent a pass in front of the goal past a distracted Blackwood and Devon Toews towards a waiting Justin Hryckowian. The forward sent it into a wide open net to bring the score to 3-1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Colorado got two power play opportunities, and capitalized on one of them. With 13 seconds left, Bourque went to the box for interference, and 12 seconds later, Nathan MacKinnon sent the puck flying past Oettinger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The energy did not fade in the second. Jamie Benn added another goal to Dallas\u2019 tally early, after Hryckowian slid the captain a nicely placed pass that doubled the Stars\u2019 lead. The Avalanche subsequently ended Blackwood\u2019s night early and sent in Scott Wedgewood on the ice to try and staunch the flow of Dallas goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not to be outdone, Martin Necas put the puck past Oettinger six minutes later. The Stars then went on the penalty kill when the officials banished Sam Steel to the box for slashing. Colorado could not score.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While in Dallas\u2019 zone, MacKinnon and Roope Hintz attempted to wrangle each other. Hintz went down clutching his left leg and had to be helped off the ice. He did not return.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gulutzan said postgame that he will not know Hintz\u2019s status for a couple days. <\/p>\n
The Stars began the third on the power play, thanks to Josh Manson\u2019s cross checking penalty, but could not connect with the net. With a tight margin, the Stars tightened up their game as the Avs sped theirs up. Dallas got another man advantage after Hryckowian got high sticked, and even went to five on three play due to Colorado having too many men on the ice, but still could not score.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The crossfire carried on when Nathan Bastian got called for tripping and the Avalanche went on the power play. They peppered Oettinger with shots, pulling him to both sides of the net to make some important stops and ultimately help the Stars kill the penalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As time ticked down, Dallas looked to be in control. Colorado went empty net, and Hryckowian had a chance to put one in, but a last second pass to Benn prevented the Stars from sealing the deal. <\/p>\n
\u201cI gotta rewatch it,\u201d Hryckowian said. \u201cI just wasn\u2019t really thinking too much. Just picked my head up and saw that was kind of a rush and swung it over.\u2029Probably wasn\u2019t the right play, I put him in a tough spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
With 13 seconds left, Valeri Nichushkin snuck one past Oettinger and tied up the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Colorado maintained control for most of overtime, and Oettinger came up with a few big saves to keep his team alive. Neither club could connect with the net and the teams headed to a shootout.\u00a0Jason Robertson and Matt Duchene were both stopped by Wedgewood and Nichushkin and Necas both outdid Oettinger. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re obviously the top team in the league, and I thought we were right there with them, toe-to-toe,\u201d Gulutzan said. \u201cThat was a great hockey game. And I did learn a lot about our group here. We battled, we were resilient. We just didn\u2019t get the outcome we wanted, certainly. But a lot of growth from October until now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Dallas will remain at home for a while and will take on Chicago Sunday night at 5 p.m. CT. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The morning of this matchup, head coach Glen Gulutzan said the key to stopping the best team in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-194790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}