In Dallas, Roope Hintz waited until the last possible minute, really the last eight seconds of extra time, to finish a hat trick on Friday and give the Stars a 5-4 win over the visiting Chicago Blackhawks. 
“We don’t want to give the puck to them so easy, and don’t want to force plays if it’s not there,” Hintz said. “It’s good to have the possession in [overtime]. You get more chances by that.”
Scott Wedgewood made 25 saves in the win.
Dallas improved to 21-9-4.
The Stars had to rally back from an early 2-0 deficit in the game.
“We have shown we can come back from leads when we’re down in games,” Dallas’ Wyatt Johnston said. “That’s one thing we’re happy with, we know we’re never out of the game. At the same time, we want to be playing with the lead a little bit more. I think for us it’s just staying patient with our game, sticking with what we know works. I think at the end of the day, it’s shown throughout the year that when we do those things, it’ll work out for us.”
Dallas had rallied all the way back to take a 4-3 lead in the third before Chicago’s Tyler Johnson tied with his second strike of the game for a 4-4 tie, forcing the extra session.
“I know they brought 3-on-3 [overtime play] to try to be exciting and everything, [but] through all the history I have of playing 3-on-3, it is possession,” Johnson said. “The more you can wear a team down, catch guys tired, that’s when you get your odd-man opportunities.
“You really shouldn’t just take shots to take shots. I think 3-on-3 hockey, what everyone wants it to be, if you want to win it, you can’t really play that way. They did what they needed to do to win.”
Johnson’s first of the game came in the opening stanza when he staked Chicago to a 1-0 lead at 7:56 in the first period,
The Blackhawks pushed the lead to 2-0 when Cole Guttman scored midway through the first.
“We have the lead, but instead of — not necessarily sitting back and protecting it, because I don’t think that’s ever good — I think just making those right decisions of not doing those hope plays,” Johnson said. “Not doing those plays that you know what, it might work, might not.
“When you have the lead, you have to make the for-sure play, the simple play. Sometimes it’s not sexy, it’s not going to create anything, but at least you’re not going to have something go against you.”
Chicago dropped to 11-22-2.
“I thought we started out really well,” Chicago coach Luke Richardson said. “They pushed back, had a really nice power-play goal, but we killed off the next [power play]. The second period, we just had too much [defensive] zone time. I think we just backed off for some reason, just played a little bit more defensive, meaning not attacking them even in the [defensive] zone. It’s a big team that can skate, so that’s not a good recipe for us.”
Hintz hit for his first of the game at 11:49 of the first, off the power play, to trim the deficit to 2-1.
Joe Pavelski tied the game, 2-2, at 9:03 of the middle frame.
“I liked our energy early,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said. “I’m looking at the clock, it’s 2-0 them, and I thought we easily could have two or three goals at that point too. They got a couple of huge saves early, we had a couple go in, and you’re behind. It wasn’t like at that point we were being outplayed or out-chanced or outworked, just one of those nights. I thought we showed some good resiliency and some composure. You don’t like to be in that hole, but we dug ourselves out.”
Dallas too a 3-2 lead on Hintz’s double just 20 seconds after the Pavelski goal.
“He’s doing what he does,” Dallas’ Jason Robertson said of Hintz. “Skating in the middle of the ice, using his speed, driving the middle of the lanes, getting rewarded. I thought we were a lot more connected today than it has been the last couple of weeks, months. We’re trying to rekindle that chemistry, moving the puck around quickly, and we did that tonight.”
Jamie Benn then scored at 2:10 of the third period to give the Stars a 4-2 lead, before the Blackhawks rallied to tie it.
Jason Dickinson trimmed the deficit to 4-3 at 8:58 of the third.
“I thought we showed a lot of good push, we never quit,” Dickinson said. “They score that goal in the third and we could have packed it in and said, ‘Oh, we’ll come back and get them Sunday.’ But we kept the line, we kept pushing, we kept trying.”
Petr Mrazek made 30 saves in the loss.
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