There was no question the Dallas Stars' game against the Columbus Blue Jackets would be postponed after the cardiac incident involving forward Rich Peverley. There was some question as to whether Dallas would travel to play against the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday. Peverley, who collapsed Monday on the bench during the first period, is resting comfortably, general manager Jim Nill said in a statement released by the team. The Stars made the trip and left with two points when Jamie Benn's goal with 1:18 remaining in overtime gave them a 3-2 victory at Scottrade Center. The Stars (32-23-10), who remained one point in front of the Phoenix Coyotes for the second Stanley Cup Playoff wild-card spot in the Western Conference, got goals in regulation from Colton Sceviour and Antoine Roussel. Goalie Tim Thomas stopped 28 shots in his first start after being acquired at the NHL Trade Deadline. Dallas chose not to use a "Win One for the Gipper" approach, but Peverley wasn't far from anyone's mind.
"Obviously last night was a scary
situation but today's a new day," Benn said after scoring
his 26th goal. "We were thinking about Rich back home, but I
thought we did a great job getting mentally ready for this game.
We're still in a big playoff push and we found a way to get two
points. It's not easy. It hit our guys pretty good last night. We did
a great job as a group."
Benn took a pass from Trevor
Daley and beat goalie Ryan
Miller high on the short side.
"Obviously it's a great win,"
Benn said. "I thought our guys did a great job staying
patient."
Stars coach Lindy Ruff sent a text message to
Peverley in Dallas and got a quick response. "I think they'd
let him [watch the game]," said Ruff, whose team also played
without Alex
Chiasson because of an anxiety episode following Peverley's
episode. "I know he was undergoing tests, [I'm] not sure
whether he was sedated.... He was happy, he said, 'Keep rolling.' I
just said at the end, 'See you tomorrow.'"
Alex
Pietrangelo and Roman
Polak scored for the Blues. Miller made 27 saves and lost for the
first time in five starts since being acquired from the Buffalo
Sabres on Feb. 28.
"I came across. I just went from a down
position covering the more obvious play and it just leaves you a
little more out of position for those cross passes," Miller
said of the game-winner. "I kind of knew [Benn] got lost up
there, but no one was on the backside the way the play developed.
Just didn't get my whole body over in time."
The Blues (44-14-7) have 95 points, two more than
the Anaheim Ducks in the race for the Presidents' Trophy. St. Louis
leads the Pittsburgh Penguins, the top team in the Eastern
Conference, by three points. Despite the loss, St. Louis set a
franchise record for consecutive games with at least a point in
division play; they're 18-0-2 in the Central. In 1968-69, when there
was no overtime and games ended in ties, the Blues were 15-0-4 in the
West Division. The loss snapped a five-game winning streak for the
Blues, but coach Ken Hitchcock said he could see this result coming
after one-goals wins against the Colorado Avalanche and Minnesota
Wild.
"We got away with this in Colorado and got
away with it in Minnesota," Hitchcock said. "We
didn't get away with it tonight. We're just feeding teams transition.
We're not putting pucks in deep, we're not getting on the grind.
We're turning way too many pucks over. The times that we did things
the right way, we were really effective. We had a lot of good play,
but we just got too many inconsistencies within our group about
putting pucks in deep, playing the right way ... so we pay for it."
The Stars took the lead when Roussel broke in and
squirted a backhand through Miller after a David
Backes turnover 2:19 into the third period. Much of Dallas'
transition game is based off speed, and the Blues seemed to feed into
the Stars' strength.
"They put you under pressure, make you
make plays before you want to and faster than you want to and create
turnovers," Backes said of the Stars. "If we talk to
each other, make solid plays tape-to-tape, get pucks out, get pucks
in, go forecheck, that's tough to play fast when we're doing that. We
didn't get to that game a ton. The result is a loss on the record,
but we've got to take some learning lessons from this one as well and
play a good team on Thursday."
Polak's first goal in 37 games tied it 2-2 at 5:01
of the third. His fourth goal of the season, which tied a career
high, came off a one-timer from inside the blue line that beat Thomas
high to the stick side. The Blues, who did not earn a victory for
only the sixth time when scoring the first goal (36-1-5), had much of
the better play the remainder of the period but could not get another
puck past Thomas. Pietrangelo's first goal since Jan. 10, a span of
21 games, gave the Blues a 1-0 lead. Magnus
Paajarvi's wraparound attempt created a loose puck and gave
Pietrangelo the opportunity to jump into the play and beat Thomas
13:01 into the first period. Sceviour, recalled earlier in the day to
replace Peverley, got the Stars even when he was on the doorstep and
backhanded a shot past Miller, who gave up a rebound on Alex
Goligoski's one-timer from the right point on the power play with
52.7 seconds remaining in the first. The Blues had killed 33 of 35
since Feb. 1, a span of 11 games. The Stars had every reason to lose
Tuesday night but didn't.
"I told them you can look for a reason to
lose or you can find a way to win," Ruff said, "and
I said we need to find a way to win and we need to win it for a
couple of our teammates. We didn't spend a lot of time talking about
St. Louis. We just talked about how we wanted to play."
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