In Dallas, the Minnesota Wild were rescued by Jason Zucker‘s third period goal to defeat the Stars, 5-4.
The Wild had built a 4-0 lead in the first period before taking their foot off the gas and thinking they could coast for the rest of the game.
“Yeah, that shows the resiliency we have as a group,” Zucker said. “Obviously, we don’t want to let in four goals at any point, but we still feel that we have the confidence to win those games. I think we showed that tonight.”
Resiliency or luck, in either case they managed to grab the two points and get out of Dallas thankful for not having had a complete melt down.
With less than nine minutes left in regulation, the Stars had completed their comeback when John Klingberg scored to tie it, 4-4.
“Obviously four goals in the first period is not acceptable,” Klingberg said. “It’s kind of tough. Obviously we showed a lot of heart … but it’s tough and we’ve got to learn from this. This is a tough league coming from behind.”
WATCH: All Wild vs. Stars highlights
Antoine Roussel, Jiri Hudler and Tyler Seguin also scored for Dallas.
Eric Staal, Mikko Koivu , Matt Dumba made the score 3-0 in the fist period with all three coming on Antti Niemi who was then pulled after failing to make a save.
Chris Stewart then welcomed Niemi’s replacement, Kari Lehtonen, with a goal to finish the Wild scoring in the first.
Darcy Kuemper got the win for Minnesota.
“The guys put us in the position to win. At that point you are just worried about making the saves you need to make,” Kuemper said.
For Dallas, it is becoming a bad habit of burying themselves in poor first period efforts.
“If you look at the last two first periods, our focus hasn’t been good enough. We fell asleep on the faceoff. We gave up a 2-on-1 on a giveaway in the neutral zone. We dove in the neutral zone and gave Staal his 2-on-1. Once we got through the first 15 minutes we found our game again. But it’s tough when you get down the way we got down,” Dallas head coach Lindy Ruff said after the game.
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