In Dallas, the Stars scored twice in the third period on Thursday night to pull away from the Seattle Kraken in a 5-2 win in Game 5 of their second round series.
Dallas leads the series 3-2 headed to Seattle for Game 6 on Saturday.
Roope Hint scored his second of the game in the third period to give the Stars a 4-2 lead.
The goal was not called by the officials on the ice, but the red light did come on. After video review the goal was called good.
“He’s been just an absolute monster for us this playoff, and at the most important times,” Stars coach Peter DeBoer said. “This is obviously a critical game for our group, and he comes out in the first 10 minutes and basically lets everyone in the building know that he’s here to play and dragging our group around. He’s done that the entire playoff.”
Radek Faksa scored into an empty net with less than two minutes to go on the game clock for the 5-2 final.
Jake Oettinger made 29 saves in the win.
“We’re hopefully going to be [leading] a lot, and that’s what you’ve got to do to win it this time of year,” Oettinger said. “They’re a great team. They’re going to throw everything they have at you, especially when you get a lead late. Those are the moments that guys step up, whether it’s blocking shots, moving pucks out. It’s all the little plays you talk about all year, that’s when they pay off.”
Wyatt Johnson and Hintz scored in the first period for a 2-0 advantage headed to the middle frame.
“We found ourselves in a 2-0 hole. … Overall [it was] the difference of the hockey game,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “… We’ve got to be a little bit more patient so that we’re not giving up a couple of the transition plays that we did, and we’re going to have to be a little harder to generate more at the other end of the rink. They did a really good job tonight of making it hard to get inside and hard to get to their net.”
Joe Pavelski scored in the second to balloon the lead to 3-0 for Dallas.
Pavelski scored on 35 seconds of fresh ice in the second.
“I mean, you want to play aggressive, you want to play on your toes, you want to skate. That’s the way we want to play,” Seattle forward Jordan Eberle said. “We want to be a quick team, but we have to be smart about it, too. We can’t be diving in everywhere and giving them odd-man rushes and opportunities to score. It’s just having the smarts and the veteran presence to know when to do that and when not to do it. I think even if you’re 98 percent sure and two percent off, the two percent are the ones that end up in the back of your net. We have to find a way to just continue to play that way but limit the chances they get.”
Adam Lowry and Jared McCann scored for Seattle in the second period to trim the deficit down to 3-2.
“I think it was important to keep our poise,” Robertson said. “[Oettinger] made some big saves, he had some big blocks. Everyone had to dig in a little extra. Those are types of playoff games you want to be on the ice for. You want to play, you want to battle, you want to compete. [You want to] be out there, battle for your teammates, your goalie, your fans, everything. Those are fun ones. I’m just glad we didn’t sit back. We wanted to attack and try to get the next one. When we do that, we kind of try to shut the game down.”
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Philipp Grubauer made 16 saves in the Seattle loss.
“I mean, they’re skilled, fast, big, whatever you want to call it,” Larsson said. “I mean, I think we’ve been playing pretty good hockey. … I’m confident we can come back in this series. It’s far from over. So just kind of regroup here, keep pushing forward.”
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