In Edmonton, the Dallas Stars should have renamed the Shooting Stars.
After falling behind 0-3 in the first period, Dallas struck for seven straight goals, including five in the middle frame, for a 7-3 win over the Calgary Flames on Thursday night.
The win ended the series with a 4-2 decision in favor of Dallas.
Denis Gurianov scored four goals for the Stars.
“Boys just said, ‘Shoot the puck,'” Gurianov said. “I’m glad I got a hat trick and I’m glad we won. It’s the most important thing, moving forward and getting ready for the second round.”
Anton Khudobin made 38 saves to get the win in Game 6.
“We talked in the first period,” Gurianov said. “We came in the locker room and just forgot about the first period and just moved on and just started to play to our game.”
Miro Heiskanen scored and had four points on the night, and Joe Pavelski added three points with a goal.
“It just feels good to win,” Pavelski said. “It feels good to end it tonight, earn an extra day or two and start preparing for the next round, because there’s always another team waiting and another big challenge ahead of us. We’ll enjoy it for a bit and understand where our game’s at and go from there.”
The Flames scored three straight to open the game and then just disappeared.
“This is an unbelievable group of guys,” Calgary’s Mark Giordano said. “We all care about each other, so it’s really tough. A lot of teams say that, that they have a great group, but we really bonded this year and we really were enjoying the [hub city] as a group. It’s a tough one right now because you go back game by game in the series and we had a lot of opportunity and we couldn’t get it done, so tough to swallow right now.”
Johnny Gaudreau, Andrew Mangiapane and Rasmus Anderssongave the Flames the early lead.
“It’s tough. An empty feeling,” Calgary’s Mikael Backlund said. “It’s still just happened. Personally, I just feel empty. You wonder what happened, things just turned so quickly. We just couldn’t stop the bleeding. And it happened so quick. It’s hard right now.”
Radek Faksa also scored for Dallas.
“Fortunately, we have good leadership on this team,” Stars head coach Bowness said. “They could all see what we could see. It was just a mess to start. There comes a point where, ‘OK, that’s enough. We need the next goal. We get the next goal and we’re back in the game.’
“That’s what happened. It takes a special player like Miro to step up. ‘We need a goal? I’m going to step up here and show up.'”
[WATCH:Â All Stars vs. Flames highlights]
Cam Talbot got the start for the Flames and made 11 saves and was relieved after yielding four goals.
“We just couldn’t stop the bleeding in the second, put ourselves in a tough spot going to the third,” Backlund said. “But yeah, very good first period, for sure our best first period this playoffs. It came at the right time. It’s too bad we can’t manage to follow it up. It’s tough.”
David Rittich made six saves and surrendered three goals in a mop up effort.
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