In a post season that had been bereft of serious rallies, the Dallas Stars put on a late show in Edmonton on Monday night.
The Stars potted two power play goals, one in the third period to force extra time and the second one, the Western Conference Final-winning goal, in a 3-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights.
With 3:36 gone in the extra session, Denis Gurianov sent Dallas to the Stanley Cup Final with a with a wicked shot from the left face circle.
“Unreal feeling, obviously,” Dallas’ John Klingberg said. “All the hard work we’ve been putting down is to be where we’re at, to be where we are right now. We’re one series away from the Stanley Cup. … The ups and downs we’ve been going through. It’s all worth it. We’re here now. One series left and we’re not done yet.”
Joel Kiviranta sent the game to overtime with a power play goal late in the third.
“It’s a feeling you can’t describe,” Stars head coach Rick Bowness said. “… You only get so many cracks at going to the Stanley Cup Final. You’ve got to take advantage of it. … When you’re behind the bench and you see that puck go in and you know you’re going to the Stanley Cup Finals, words just can’t describe the emotion that comes through. … It’s so rare to get to the Finals that you’ve got to enjoy every minute of it.”
Trailing 0-2 in the final frame, the Stars got their rally on with a goal from Jamie Benn to cut the deficit in half, it was Benn’s eighth of the post season.
“Of course it felt good because it was late third and tying goal,” Kiviranta said. “So we got the opportunity to score the winning goal.”
Anton Khudobin made 34 saves to get the win.
“It says a lot about our group,” Benn said. “Sometimes it doesn’t always go your way in the first couple of periods, but we stuck with it. Once again [Khudobin] kept us in it as long as we needed, and we found a way to get it done.”
Chandler Stephenson and Reilly Smith were the Vegas strikers.
“This year is probably the best, most skilled team I’ve played on in my career and to not win the Stanley Cup, that was our one goal,” Smith said. “We didn’t want anything short of that. We definitely feel defeated. … We all feel like this is a wasted opportunity.”
Smith’s goal came on 15-second old fresh ice of the third period.
“It’s that time of year, 1-0, 2-1 games, you have to be able to win them, have to be on the right side of them,” Vegas head coach Peter DeBoer said. “We were right there. It’s a very slim margin. We just couldn’t get a timely goal in order to put us in a position to be on the right side of that ledger.”
Dallas will now wait for the winner of the Eastern Conference Final between the New York Islanders and Tampa Bay Lighting.
[WATCH:Â All Stars vs. Golden Knights highlights]
Robin Lehner made 23 saves in the loss.
“As forwards, we just weren’t able to help our team out in those timely situations,” Smith said. “… it just seemed that no matter what we were doing, it just wasn’t ending up in the back of the net. … They were coming back and scoring a timely goal when we were all over them for long stretches and those lulls killed us.”
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