In Dallas, the visiting Calgary Flames trailed the Stars 4-3 headed to the third period on Friday.
In the third period, the Flames posted four unanswered goals to rally for a 7-4 win.
The Flames had trailed 4-2 in the middle frame when Adam Ruzicka scored late in the frame to start the rally, trimming the deficit to 4-3.
“Resilience. We’re down 4-2 again and we found a way to come back and probably play our best period in the third,” Calgary coach Ryan Huska said. “When you see a 7-4 game and the coach says, ‘I liked our defense,’ that probably doesn’t make sense. But I thought our guys on the back end made some plays with composure tonight, and I thought that was a big part of our game that allowed us to have some success off the rush.”
Wyatt Johnston hit for a double for the Stars, give them a 1-0 lead with his first of the night with 73 seconds gone in the game.
Calgary’s A.J. Greer tied it, 1-1, at 8:19.
Dallas reclaimed the lead at 11:27 on a goal from Jason Robertson for a 2-1 advantage headed to the middle frame..
“Every game is important. We didn’t play well enough to win tonight,” Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen said. “We have to be a lot better than that. We played 20, 40 minutes well, but after that we kind of stopped playing. They capitalized on those chances. We have to play a full 60 minutes and try to win the games.”
Dallas dropped to Stars 12-5-2.
“We got what we deserved I think,” Stars coach Peter DeBoer said. “I think the score was probably flattering for us in our favor at different points. You’ve got to win all kinds of different ways. Couldn’t put together 20 minutes to find a way to win a game. We weren’t great, we weren’t perfect by any means, but we had a chance to win that game in the third period. Just couldn’t put it together for 20 minutes, and that’s disappointing.”
Calgary got the game tied, 2-2, on a marker from Yegor Sharangovich with 43 seconds gone in the period.
Johnston hit for his double at 4:44 for a 3-2 lead back to Dallas, and Joe Pavelski made it 4-2 for the Stars at 9:53 off a power play strike.
“Once you’re up two goals, you should be able to close those games out. Not a great start to the third. That’s on us not coming out great,” Johnston said. “A little bit of beating ourselves. When you’re up, teams are going to come out hard, especially start of periods. They’re going to want to get back into the game. We also want to try to close out the game and not give them any life.”
In the third period rally, Blake Coleman scored to tie the game, 4-4 at 1:53 .
“There’s something to be said about just simplifying the game on the road,” Coleman said. “I thought we started to do that as the game went along. Made the [Stars] go back for pucks and just kept wearing them down as it went. It’s a quiet confidence for our group and we’re playing for each other. We’re finding ways to put points on the board, and that’s important right now.”
Elias Lindholm scored 29 seconds later for the 5-4 lead.
“I feel like we weren’t as sharp as we should have been,” Stars defenseman Jani Hakanp
aa said. “They came out hard and we just didn’t match that. Something we need to figure out here as a group going forward. A lot of games are going to be decided in the third, so we need to find a way to be better at them more consistently and find ways to win games.”
Mikael Backlund pushed the lead out to 6-4 at 7:28.
“We came out with some good jump, and we wanted to dictate right away that we wanted to get that next goal,” Backlund said. “I thought everyone chipped in, all lines and pairs were involved in scoring and playing well at both ends. Really big third from the whole group.”
Nazem Kadri completed the rally with an empty-net marker at 18:21 for the 7-4 final.
Jake Oettinger made 20 saves in the loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.