*Photo from the San Diego Union Tribune*
It's the season of the comeback in the NHL. Craig Smith scored the tying goal, Jani Hakanpaa scored the winning goal, and the Dallas Stars rallied to defeat the Nashville Predators with a 3-2 victory on Saturday in Nashville.
The Stars now have wins in 3 straight games and are 5-0-1 in their last 6 games, having done so without Jake Oettinger for the last 5 games. Previously trailing 2-0, the Stars scored 3 times in the 3rd and twice in the final 15 seconds of play to come out on top.
Dallas head coach Pete Deboer said that "We talked at the end of the second period and we felt that there were still points to be had here tonight if we could play a good 20 minutes. Give the Predators credit; they defended hard. They blocked a ton of shots. Their goalie was great. We had some frustration creeping in the second period. We kind of reset and came out in the third and gave ourselves a chance."
After a scoreless first period, the Predators got on the board first. Just 23 seconds into the second period, Michael McCarron made it 1-0 on his 5th goal of the season. At the 6:33 mark of the period and the Predators having a power play, Colton Sissons doubled the lead to 2-0 on his 11th goal of the season, assisted by Ryan O'Reilly and Gustav Nyquist.
Evgenii Dadonov scored 8:22 into the 3rd period for the Stars, cutting the deficit to 2-1 on his 8th goal of the season. With 15 seconds left in regulation, Smith scored his 3rd goal of the season, tying the game 2-2. With just 4 seconds left to play, Hakanpaa scored his first goal of the season to play hero for the Stars.
Stars forward Matt Duchene said after the game that "We didn't have our best tonight for the first 40 minutes, but we found a way to get it done. I thought in the third period we were the better team. We kind of turned the game. Saros is such a good goalie, you need some decent bounces to get it. Luckily we got one there to tie it up, and then Hakanpaa with a slap shot."
Getting the start for the 4th straight game for the Stars was Scott Wedgewood, who played well enough to earn the win. Wedgewood stopped 19 of the 21 shots he saw from the Predators, good for a .905 save percentage to improve to 9-1-2.
The starter for the Predators was Juuse Saros, who couldn't hold off the Stars in the 3rd period and fell to 15-12-0 in 27 starts with the loss. Saros turned aside 31 out of the 34 shots on goal the Stars had, recording a .912 save percentage.
Sissons said of the loss that "We definitely wanted to play more in the zone. It's kind of easy for teams that are down and really pushing to play a little bit riskier and really aggressive. They kind of took it to us that way a little bit. There's definitely some lessons to learn. We've been in a lot of tight games on the other side of things. We'll take our medicine here and move on."
Both teams return to play on Wednesday after the NHL's brief Christmas break. Saros is the likely starter for the Predators against the Carolina Hurricanes, while Wedgewood projects to start for Dallas against the St. Louis Blues.
Comments
Post a Comment