Tuesday 17 November 2015

NHL - Minnesota Wild @ Dallas Stars 2-3 OT - Saturday, November 14, 2015


John Klingberg scored at 3:18 of overtime to lift the Dallas Stars to a 3-2 victory against the Minnesota Wild at American Airlines Center. Jason Spezza and Benn also scored, and Kari Lehtonen made 22 saves for Dallas, which won its second straight and ended Minnesota's winning streak at three. Klingberg and Benn each had two assists.
The Stars are 2-0 in overtime; they defeated the Vancouver Canucks 4-3 on Oct. 29, with Benn scoring the winner. Nino Niederreiter and Marco Scandella scored for Minnesota who are 1-3 in overtime.
Minnesota nearly took the lead at 9:01 of the second, but a slap shot by defenseman Matt Dumba from the left point hit the far post.
Lehtonen turned Niederreiter away at the near post with 1:05 remaining to help get the game to overtime. Dubnyk made 33 saves.
Scandella missed the previous two games due to a family issue and hadn't played since Nov. 7 at the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Stars are 2-1-0 against the Central Division. They won eight games against divisional foes all of last season.
Prior to the game, there was a moment of silence to honor the victims of the attacks in Paris on Friday.


Goals
* Jason Spezza redirected a Klingberg wrist shot from the high slot at 7:41 of the first period, one second after a high-sticking penalty on Wild forward Chris Porter expired, to put Dallas ahead 1-0.
* Nino Niederreiter tied it at 5:15 of the second period by deflecting in a Jared Spurgeon wrist shot from the left point. The goal was upheld by video review when it was determined Niederreiter did not interfere with Lehtonen before the puck crossed the goal line.

* Jamie Benn scored 2:26 into the third period with Dallas on the power play. He redirected a Klingberg wrist shot from near the blue line to put the Stars up 2-1. It was Benn's 12th goal, tying him for the NHL lead with the Chicago Blackhawks' Patrick Kane, who also scored Saturday.
* The Wild tied it a second time at 7:05 of the third when Scandella scored with a wrist shot from the high slot that deflected off the right skate of Jordie Benn before beating Lehtonen to the near post.
* John Klingberg beat Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk top shelf off the rush after a pass from Tyler Seguin to give the Stars their fourth win in five games.

Stars Quotes
John Klingberg: "I think they got caught with some guys that were tired. I was tired too, but I saw Jamie [Benn] bump the puck to [Seguin], and I had a clear lane through the neutral zone, and they got caught from the red line. I was just trying to find an open lane for [Seguin] to find me there, and he was making a good saucer pass there. It was pretty empty, and it was fun to see it go in."
Lindy Ruff: "I thought we played well. It was one heck of a hockey game. It's a good team. Their goalie made some huge saves. We missed some great opportunities, some real good looks. They had a couple flurries. I don't think they had as many as we did. We played a heck of a game. [Klingberg] was pretty darn good again. He's made some nice looks. One heck of a goal in overtime, great play by [Seguin] to get it over to him."
Jason Spezza: "We've got a lot of games left against our division, so we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. And we've lost to Colorado. We feel like that's the reason we missed the playoffs last year, because we didn't win enough games in our division. It's no secret how good our division is, so we're going to have to win a lot of games and we'll just keep plugging along."

Wild Quotes
Mike Yeo: "Well, 3-on-3 certainly favors them. We saw just what they can do. I don't think we did a good enough job 3-on-3 tonight. I think that we just gave them too many odd-man rushes, and obviously there's going to be some of that, but we got to make sure we're not giving up 2-on-1 after 2-on-1.  [Scandella's performance] was great. I was real happy for him, getting that goal. It's pretty impressive, really, that he could not be on the ice all week and then come out and play the way that he did tonight. He was a horse, certainly one of our leaders there tonight just as far as the way that he was battling and competing and winning loose pucks and helping us get to our game."
Charlie Coyle: "There's no quit in our team, we know that. It's nice to see. We're coming into a tough road game against a good team, so to battle back, yeah, it's a good thing, and like I said, that point is going to be huge down the road. But we want to keep pushing, see what we can get better at, tighten things up and just go from there."
Mikko Koivu: "[He played] good, gave us a great chance to win a hockey game and made some big saves."

No comments:

Post a Comment