Stars shine in win over Wild

In Dallas the Stars and Minnesota Wild were the only surviving game of the night. The rest of the slate for Monday night was postponed because COVID19 concerns.

The Wild might have anted a cancellation as well, as they dropped a 7-4 decision to the host Stars.

Seven different skaters struck for goals for Dallas.

“Seven goals, seven goal scorers, that’s great to see, that’s good balance,” Dallas head coach Rick Bowness said. “We need it. We talked about it all year. We need that balanced scoring.”

Jake Oettinger made 19 saves in the Dallas win.

Kirill Kaprizov had a goal and three points for the Wild. ,

Kevin Fiala hit for a pair of goals for Minnesota who dropped to 19-9-2.

Joe Pavelski and Esa Lindell to give the Stars a quick 2-0 lead in the game.

Ryan Hartman and Fiala got the game even at 2-2.

“We fought back, right?” Minnesota head coach Dean Evason said. “We were pretty resilient at the start. We caught a couple bad plays at the start, but we battled our butt off to get back to even.”

Tyler Seguin and Roope Hintz restored the two-goal lead.

“I felt good about how we were playing,” Bowness said. “You have to respect the opposition. … The start, going after them. The start of the third, going after them. I like that. That’s our approach.”

Jacob Peterson and Miro Heiskanen gave the Stars a 6-3 lead after Kaprizov had trimmed the lead to 4-3 in the middle frame.

“It’s tough to erase those two goals,” Foligno said. “We’d maybe have a better outcome tonight. We didn’t really get to our game. We turned back some pucks, obviously got a shorthanded goal against, those things hurt. It’s just one of those things where we had our legs, we had our game after that, but you let up two goals, chances of winning are very slim.”

Jamie Benn added a late empty net goal for the 7-4 final.

“We wanted to pay them back for the game we had in Minnesota (a 7-2 loss Nov.18),” Bowness said. “We wanted to come out hard and we did that. … (I) don’t like giving up four goals, but they’re a very good hockey team over there. They’ve got skill, wow.

“Overall, that’s a great win for this team.”