The Stars began their playoff journey Saturday afternoon against the Wild, and like they have in nine of their last 11 first round game ones, they lost. <\/p>\n
Tonight proved to be no exception. The Wild opened up a four-goal lead in the first two periods allowing Minnesota to pull off a decisive 6-1 win against the Stars at home, who struggled with defense and five-on-five play. The Stars and the Wild will meet again Monday night, where they will try to recalibrate and put a stop to Minnesota. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re not winning anything, you\u2019re not winning races, you\u2019re not winning your fifty-fifties, you put yourself at risk for what happened\u2026 You\u2019re in vulnerable spots because you\u2019re not winning battles,\u201d Gulutzan said. \u201cThat\u2019s where it all starts for us. And like I said, to a man, I think we can all be better in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Stars began the first period with the game\u2019s first shots on goal, but the offensive tilt stopped there. Dallas was quickly out-maneuvered by Joel Erkisson Ek, who connected with the net on a power play caused by Tyler Myers, who elbowed Mats Zuccarello.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dallas spent more time defending Minnesota than the team might have liked, but got a chance to bounce back when Marcus Johansson went to the box for slashing Esa Lindell. The Stars\u2019 first unit stayed out for the entire two minutes, but could not connect with the net and fell to the Minnesota penalty kill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As expected, players were not shy about laying hits out on their opponents, and the physicality only increased as the game went on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dallas survived another Minnesota power play near the end of the first and seemed primed for a bounceback in the second, but the Wild had other ideas. In the first 56 seconds, Kirill Kaprizov doubled Minnesota\u2019s lead and put a puck past Oettinger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, Minnesota tacked on another goal. Brock Faber took a shot and Ryan Hartman deflected it behind Oettinger, bringing the score to 3-0. Mikko Rantanen took a penalty for tripping right after, and though Dallas killed the power play, Matt Boldy scored for Minnesota right after the two-minute advantage ended.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t deserve to win,\u201d Rantanen said. \u201c\u2026 Sometimes you lose a game, and you can\u2019t feel like you\u2019re done. That\u2019s the mentality you need to have. You got to reset and learn from mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Matt Duchene got tripped up by Danila Yurov, Dallas had a big opportunity to bounce back. Jason Robertson put up the only goal of the night for the Stars when he fielded a pass from Wyatt Johnston and put it up over Jesper Wallstedt\u2019s shoulder. <\/p>\n
Wallstedt, who made his Stanley Cup Playoff debut tonight, put up a strong performance for the Wild and made all the right moves to keep Dallas\u2019 pucks out of the net. <\/p>\n
The Stars continued to struggle to create offense and Minnesota continued to push. Eriksson Ek scored on another power play, pausing any momentum Dallas may have gotten from Robertson\u2019s goal. <\/p>\n
Just to add insult to injury, Boldy scored an empty net goal during a six-on-four Dallas power play and solidified the win for the Wild. As the game wound down, the Stars scuffled with Minnesota, but the damage was done. <\/p>\n
Dallas will head into Monday night\u2019s 8:30 C.T. game with something to prove to a Minnesota team who put on a dominant performance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Stars began their playoff journey Saturday afternoon against the Wild, and like they have in nine of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-256568","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\/256568","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=256568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}