In Dallas, the Stars won their eighth straight on Wednesday night in a 5-0rout of the visiting Edmonton Oilers.
Jake Oettinger made 35 saves in his second straight shutout,
“It feels good. They’re a great team and we’ve been playing real well, so I just wanted to keep that going,” Oettinger said. “Guys did a great job defensively. Obviously, we know what they have over there. We were smart with the puck all over the ice and didn’t let those guys do what they wanted. Great all-around effort.”
The Stars hit for four goals in the middle frame, in a span of less than six minutes.
Dallas improved to 48-19-9, and are five points clear of the Colorado Avalanche for the top spot in the Central Division.
“It starts with our goalie. I thought he was our best player. He was fantastic, and he was fantastic early in that game when we were, I thought, tentative in the first 10 minutes,” Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. “Couple of huge saves, momentum-shifting saves in the middle of the game there where it could have got a lot closer. He was our best player. And then just a really good team effort. I thought we worked away from the puck to take away time and space and not give them much.”
The Stars took a 1-0 lead in the opening stanza on a strike by Radek Faksa at 2:08 , scoring off an odd man rush.
“First shift, first goal. You play with more confidence then,” Faksa said. “If you score first shift, you feel good about yourself the rest of the game. The forwards were forechecking really hard, defense was blocking shots, [Oettinger] made some huge saves. It was just everything together was really good working for us.”
Edmonton dropped to 45-24-5 off their second straight loss.
“A lot of credit to the Dallas Stars. They’re playing really good hockey and they’re a really good team. You see why they’re leading the Western Conference right now,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “For us to come in here, it was a challenge for us and we came up short. We thought it was a good test to see how good we were, and we still have some work to do to catch up to them.”
In the middle frame, the Stars scored their four goals in the back half of the period.
Tyler Seguin got the outburst going at 13:16, scoring off the power play for a 2-0 lead to Dallas. He hit off a shot from the left circle.
“You get down a couple, it’s about sticking with it. We’ve done a great job of that at times this year,” the Oilers’ Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. “Whether we’re down a goal, two goals, it’s having the belief that we’re going to get the job done at the end of the day. And if we come up short, we’re going to come up short playing the right way, and tonight that wasn’t the case. We know we’re better than that.”
Wyatt Johnston pushed the lead out to 3-0 at 16:27, scoring after his penalty expired, and finishing off 4-on-1 rush up ice.
“You never want to take a penalty, so when you’re able to get out and get a chance right away, it feels good,” Johnston said. “They had a great kill leading up to that, and [Harley] made a great play to me. When you’re in the box, you want that kill and if there’s a chance to go, it feels good when you can do that. It was already a 2-on-1, so I just tried to hop in and join them.”
Jamie Benn padded the lead with a marker at 18:42 to make it 4-0, scoring off a deflection at the left side of the crease.
“It happened so quick. If the goals were spread out, it’s a different story. They just kept coming,” Edmonton’s Mattias Ekholm said. “We really got to do a better job of managing, and shifts after goals have to be a lot better where you just play simple and get in on the forecheck. We weren’t able to do that tonight.”
Sam Steel ballooned the advantage to 5-0 when he hit at 19:04, scoring after collecting an errant puck.
Calvin Pickard made 27 saves in the loss.
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