– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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DALLAS — The sports adage that has been taken as truth over the past number of years is that a postseason series doesn’t really get interesting until the home team loses a game. In many respects, that couldn’t be more apropos for what has occurred with the Dallas Stars and Vegas Golden Knights over the past week. In some respects, however, that aphorism was turned on its head on Wednesday evening, as the Stars, the team with the best record in the Western Conference in the regular season, finally made their latest series interesting … by actually winning a home game.
Jason Robertson scored the game-winning goal on the power play late in the second period as the Stars, after losing Games 1 and 2 at home, defeated the Golden Knights 3-1 inside American Airlines Center to push themselves ahead 3-2 in the Western Conference first-round series. Jake Oettinger made 25 saves for Dallas, including an acrobatic save as he did the splits to stop Chandler Stephenson on a breakaway with less than three minutes remaining in the contest.
After four consecutive victories by the road team, the Stars became the first to hold serve at home in the series and will have a chance to eliminate the defending Stanley Cup champions in Vegas on Friday night.
“A credit to our group. You know, there wasn’t a lot of believers at that point,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “We went on the road into a tough environment, and kind of rolled up our sleeves and went to work. And you look up and six days later you’ve got a 3-2 lead and a chance to close out the the Stanley Cup champions.”
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Wednesday evening’s contest, with photos taken by ALOST staff 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 26 pictures in total.
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