In Dallas, the script is pretty basic.
The Stars yacked up a 3-0 lead in Game 1 of the second round series with the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday night, and lost, 4-3, in extra time.
Dallas had a 3-0 lead after the first 20 minutes of play on Tuesday, seemed to be in control and lost all momentum.
The game winner in OT was fete accompli after Nathan MacKinnon scored with 39 seconds gone in the third period to rally the Avs to a 3-3 tie.
After that, the game was more when, not if, the Avalanche would pot the winner.
Miles Wood took a breakout pass from Andrew Cogliano in the extra session and raced down the left boards, gained position, and cut right putting a back hand home for the winner.
“[Cogliano] made a great play. He chipped it through the neutral zone and skated on it,” Wood said. “I’m happy the puck crossed the goal line. The best part was celebrating with the teammates. That’s what it’s all about.”
After the rough opening stanza, Alexandar Georgiev settled down and made 19 saves in the win.
“It took us a little while to get to our game tonight,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “They capitalized on their chances in the first period, and we capitalized on some opportunities in the second and third. They came out again in overtime and put it on us, but I thought [Georgiev] made some great saves throughout the course of the game. We limited some scoring chances through the middle portion of the game, but the couple of chances we did give up were some good ones.”
In the first period, the tilt to the Dallas end was evident.
Ryan Suter scored at 7:26 to stake the Stars to a 1-0 lead, scoring off a shot from the point that went through a screen.
Wyatt Johnston hit midway through the period to push the advantage to 2-0, scoring off a quick pass from Joe Pavelski to score from the left side of the cage.
Jamie hit off a two-skater power play at 16:56, scoring off a deflection of a shot by Jason Robertson.
“It would have been easy to fold after that first period, but we felt like we were playing better than the score showed. We wanted to see it through, and definitely happy to get the comeback,” MacKinnon said. “Guys were upbeat, positive after the first. We didn’t know if we could come back or not, but we wanted to at least try. You never know what can happen in playoff hockey. Sometimes it’s hard to hold leads. We’ve been there, too.”
Benn just missed a second power play with nine seconds left in the first.
“Hockey is a funny game. A bounce here or there, you can be up another goal or down,” Benn said. “We’re going to keep sticking with it here. We thought we had some good looks to win that game and it just didn’t go our way.”
Game 2 is set for Dallas on Thursday.
The Avs rallied with a pair of power play goals in the middle frame to close the gap to 3-2, headed to the third.
The Avs’ first power play strike was from Valeri Nichushkin who cut the deficit to 3-2-1 at 5:31 of the middle frame, scoring off an errant puck at the left of the crease.
“You can’t take a breath with these guys. They’re a great team, they come at you,” Benn said. “I think they took over that second period and found a way to get one early in the third.”
Cale Makar potted the second power play goal at 9:08 to close the gap to 3-2, he scored off a shot from the way about above the near the blueline.
“It’s not an ideal spot when we are playing down from three goals, but it was a closer game at that point than the score indicated. A couple of goals went off of us, and one went off my stick,” Makar said. “At the end of the day, it’s playoff hockey, and there is just no quit. If you are going to look at this game, I feel like, as a group, we just stuck with it and grinded it out and found a way to win it.”
Jake Oettinger made 22 saves in the loss.
“There’s lots of positives,” Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. “Listen, you’re not going to play your best game every time. I knew there would be some fatigue and a little bit of an emotional letdown coming off Game 7 (a 2-1 win against the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday). I was actually surprised at how sharp we were to start, but it did hit us in the middle part of that game. You also knew that they might be a little rusty at the start, but as they got comfortable, they’d get better because they had been off for a week. I think that’s probably what you saw.
“I was actually surprised how well and how hard we pushed in overtime. I thought we had the better looks at that point.”
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