– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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DALLAS — Dallas Stars fans may not be able to take too many of the cliffhangers that their team has treated them with over the last two home games. As long as the results of those games remains the same going forward, the Stars won’t mind.
Roope Hintz completed his hat trick with an overtime goal with 7.9 seconds remaining, lifting the Stars to a 5-4 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks inside American Airlines Center on Friday evening. Joe Pavelski and Jamie Benn each had a goal and an assist, and Jason Robertson second of his two assists on the night was the pass down low that led to Hintz’s tap-in that beat goalkeeper Petr Mrazek to end the game in the extra session.
Hintz, Pavelski and Robertson were, arguably, the best line combination in the National Hockey League last season, and their reemergence has led the Stars to go 6-1-1 in their last eight games.
“That was some of the good stuff. Their line looked like they were back to last year,” Stars head coach Pete DeBoer said about the trio. “They were moving and working off each other and attacking.”
Each of the Stars’ last five victories have come by a one-goal margin, with the last three home wins coming on overtime game-winning goals. In their last home game, Matt Duchene scored with 9.2 seconds left in overtime to defeat the Vancouver Canucks on December 21.
“You have to deal with all kinds of things in a long season and learn to win all kind of different ways to put points in the bank,” DeBoer said. “It wasn’t a perfect game, there was some good and some ugly, but we found a way.”
Like a lot of their wins lately, the Stars had to come back from a deficit, with Tyler Johnson and Cole Guttman scoring for the Blackhawks in the first to give Chicago a 2-0 lead midway through the period. Hintz scored on the power play just 53 seconds after Guttman’s goal to halve the Blackhawks’ lead.
Hintz’s goal was the first of four unanswered goals for Dallas, with Pavelski’s tally and Hintz’s second of the game coming just 20 seconds apart midway through the second to give the Stars their first lead. Benn’s goal came just 2:03 into the third to double Dallas’ lead at 4-2.
Chicago then mounted a comeback of its own, with Jason Dickinson’s goal halfway through the third cutting Dallas’ lead to one. Johnson’s second goal, on the power play, came 2:36 remaining to tie the score.
Mrazek made 30 saves for the Blackhawks, who have lost 10 straight road games (0-9-1).
“We got a point out of it tonight. If we could play like we did in the third period and the start of the first, you’re looking at two points in this league a lot of the time,” Blackhawks head coach Luke Richardson said. “We’ve got to spell that out and make sure that it sinks it and you learn your little lessons along the way in each one of these games.”
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Friday evening’s contest, with 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 22 pictures in total.
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