In Dallas, the Stars returned to the game on Thursday night, after a 16-day COVID-19 driven break, and defeated the Florida Panthers, 6-5, on skills.
“That [16-day] break, we didn’t have it last year,” Dallas head coach Rick Bowness said. “That’s a tough thing, it really is. We just got to keep trying to find solutions. We found a way to win that game tonight. … Listen, we’re absolutely thrilled we got the two points against an elite hockey club after the break.
“Was it going to be a Picasso tonight? No, but we’re thrilled with the two points.”
Braden Holtby made 37 saves in the Stars win.
“It wasn’t our prettiest, but we got the result we wanted,” Dallas’ Jamie Benn (goal) said. “We’re going to try to keep building. First game in 17 days, it’s never easy, but we got it done.”
Dallas improved to 16-12-2.
Denis Gurianov hit for a goal and three points for Dallas.
Florida had two goals from Aleksander Barkov, once off the power play and once off a shorthanded strike.
“Obviously, we want to score goals, but we don’t want to let them score as many as they did,” Barkov said. “[We’ve] got to be a little better defensively than we were in this game. … They’re a good team, so got to give them a little credit on that. They put a lot of pucks to the net, and they have great skill up front.”.
Patric Hornqvist and Jonathan Huberdeau hit for a goal each and two points in the loss.
Florida dropped to 22-7-5.
“I thought we played a 50-50 hockey game on the road,” Florida head coach Andrew Brunette said. “I thought we had stretches where we played well and stretches where we didn’t. Kind of wasn’t our A-game, but we found a way.”
Michael Raffl, Jason Robertson,and Tyler Seguin, also scored for the Stars.
Huberdeau hit for the game-tying goal with 28 seconds left in the third period to force extra time and the eventual skills portion of the game.
Robertson was credited with the deciding goal in the skills competition.
Sergei Bobrovsky made 31 saves in the Panthers loss.
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