Mrazek, Canes blank Stars

In Raleigh, Petr Mrazek returned the Carolina Hurricanes’ crease on Sunday and made 28 saves in a 1-0 win over the Dallas Stars.

“It felt good to be back. It’s been a long journey,” Mrazek said. “I think the first period, I was looking for myself there. I was all over the place there in the crease. In the second period, I established myself and I didn’t give up many rebounds after that.”

Dallas head coach Rick Bowness did not stand the bench for the game, he was placed on COVID19 protocol.

“Rick has been vaccinated,” Dallas general manager Jim Nill said afterward. “We think this is a similar situation — I know the [Dallas] Mavericks had the same situation with (coach) Rick Carlisle, and there are numerous other people this has happened to — we think it’s a false positive, but protocol, once it is flagged, there are different levels. With the PRC testing … there are different levels of the infection rate or whatever. He was a very low grade, but it’s still positive, and so out of safety concerns, he was pulled. But yes, he has been vaccinated. His first vaccination was back sometime in January. He’s had both vaccinations.”

Jordan Martinook scored the game’s lone goal in the second period.

“I feel like I’ve been close and kind of fighting it, and a little frustrated, I guess,” Martinook said. “I’ve actually got to give a little credit to my dad. He just said, ‘Quit gripping your stick so tight and have fun.'”

The Canes improved to 25-9-3.

“He (Mrazek) didn’t have a lot of work for two [periods], and then when we needed him to make some saves there in the last five minutes, he made three or four kind of spectacular [saves],” Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “There were some weird ones that he couldn’t see. They weren’t Grade A’s necessarily, but they were coming in at angles and screens and he fought through it.”

Dallas dropped to 13-13-10.

“We gave it all until the end, I’m proud of the boys,” Dallas’ John Klingberg said. “We battled through it. It’s a grind, it’s a tough schedule right now, but it’s the same for everyone. Obviously we didn’t get the results we wanted, but at the end of the night we battled 100 percent. That’s all we can do.”

Jake Oettinger made 37saves in the loss.

“I just didn’t think we played our best game tonight,” said assistant John Stevens, who coached the Stars in the third period. “I thought the effort was really good. I just thought we got off our structure a little bit. I didn’t think we forechecked very well, especially in the second period. We allowed them to come at us with too much speed, and the byproduct of that is spending too much time in your zone.”