– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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DALLAS — The Dallas Stars were less than two minutes away from being booed off the ice after the first 20 minutes of play on Wednesday. Two hours later, a rousing standing ovation greeted the team after another comeback victory, though the issues about the team’s questionable starts to games this season still remains.
Tyler Seguin scored twice as the Stars scored the final four goals of the game in Dallas’ 4-2 victory over the Arizona Coyotes at American Airlines Center. Roope Hintz and Miro Heiskanen also tallied for Dallas, who had lost six of seven going into Monday’s contest.
“It’s a huge win. We wanted a good start, and we didn’t get that, but it was good that we found a way to battle back and get the win,” Heiskanen said. “It was important for us.”
Barrett Hayton’s even-strength goal and Clayton Keller’s power-play tally midway through the first period gave the Coyotes a 2-0 lead, a familiar position Dallas found itself in two nights ago when it allowed three first-period goals to Vancouver in what was a 5-4 defeat at the hands of the Canucks. Right before the end of the first, however, Hintz pounced on a loose puck near the left circle and fired a wrist shot over Coyotes goalkeeper Connor Ingram with 1:17 remaining in the first period, a goal that proved to be the start of Dallas’ latest comeback on home ice.
The momentum from that goal carried into the second period, where the Stars found themselves on the power play just 11 seconds into the period after Hayton committed an interference penalty. From there, it was the second power play unit that converted the extra man opportunity, as Seguin’s one-timer off a pass from newly-acquired forward Evgenii Dadonov tied the game 1:50 into the second.
The game stayed tied until the third period, where Heiskanen’s point shot deflected off a couple of bodies on its way to beating Ingram for the Stars’ first lead at the 4:38 mark of the third. Seguin then tallied his second goal of the game, this time short-handed, after Radek Faksa’s shot deflected off Ingram and squirted toward the edge of the goal line before Seguin shoved the puck into the net shuffleboard style.
“[Tyler] needed it. Big guys had to make a difference. We’ve been talking about starts, and we didn’t get the start we wanted again, but it was an important win to climb out of that hole and dig in,” Stars head coach Pete DeBoer said. “The other night I thought we were real good after we got through the first 10-15 minutes, but we have to solve the issue.”
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Tuesday evening’s game, with all photos taken by Dallas-area photographer Ross James. After clicking on the first photo to enlarge the picture, make sure to press the left and right arrow buttons to scroll through the rest of the pictures. There are 20 pictures in total.
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