It’s hardly a criticism of the National Hockey League, the lack of fans in the arenas is now becoming a little more evident as a detraction.
The NHL has pulled off a remarkable job of putting on the best show possible.
Without the natural noise of a home crowd, any crowd, there is little to energize the game.
Saturday night was another example of the deficit. After falling behind by an early second period goal to the Vegas Golden Knights, the Dallas Stars posted two straight to end the period with a 2-1 lead.
And that was basically the end of the game, the third period featured all the thrills of a scrimmage. Certainly not advocating for a reversal on fan attendance, but the lack of building energy is now coming through.
Anton Khudobin made 32 saves for the Stars to get the win in Game to give Dallas a 3-1 series lead.
Alec Martinez staked the Knights to the 1-0 lead with a goal.
“It was just a good face-off win. I think it might have been [Paul Stastny],” Martinez said. “There might have been some help with the other forwards and I’m just trying to shoot the puck and fortunately it went in. Just trying to get shots on the power play and kind of how I mentioned, we’ve just got to keep peppering [Khudobin].”
Joe Pavelski scored to tie the game up off a rebound in the slot.
“We understand where we are at and we haven’t done anything yet,” Pavelski said. “We’re in position. We’re one step closer, but nothing’s been accomplished yet so we’ll just stay focused, try to play our best game of the series (in Game 5).”
Jamie Benn put the game-winner away with a power play with under a minute left in the middle frame.
“We’re staying in the moment here as a group and taking it one game at a time,” Benn said. “It wasn’t pretty tonight, but we found a way to get it done.”
Game 5 is set for Monday night.
“We needed something to get us going, that Pavelski goal got us going,” Dallas head coach Rick Bowness said. “Gave us a big lift and gave us some energy. Very happy with how we gutted it out in the third period. … When the game is on the line like that and your players respond like we did tonight, from a coaching perspective, we’re pretty happy with that. They gutted that out.”
[WATCH:Â Watch Golden Knights vs. Stars highlights]
Robin Lehner made 18 saves in the loss.
“I thought we created some really good looks,” Vegas head coach Peter DeBoer said. “I think we hit two or three posts. Obviously with one goal, we’ve got to find other ways to make it tougher on [Khudobin], but the effort is there to do that. We had enough looks tonight to extend the lead at different points. We’ve just got to stick with it.”
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