NHL - Winnipeg Jets @ Dallas Stars 3-6 - Thursday, November 12, 2015

Special teams were key for the Dallas Stars in their 6-3 victory against the Winnipeg Jets at American Airlines Center.
Jamie Benn scored the game-winning goal on the power play with 5:55 left in the third period, 39 seconds after the Stars finished killing off a double minor against Tyler Seguin for high sticking. With Jets defenseman Dustin Byfuglien in the penalty box for holding, Benn scored on a rebound after goalie Ondrej Pavelec made a save on Seguin’s slap shot from the left circle. Benn knocked the rebound off the far post and into the net for his 11th goal.
Dallas got empty-net goals from Antoine Roussel and Vernon Fiddler after Winnipeg pulled Pavelec in favor of an extra attacker with 2:21 remaining.
The Stars were 2-for-4 on the power play and 4-for-4 on the penalty kill. They are second in the NHL on the power play (30.2 percent) but 19th on the penalty kill (78.4). Ales Hemsky had a goal and two assists, John Klingberg and Colton Sceviour each had a goal and an assist, and Johnny Oduya had two assists for the Stars. Dallas goalie Kari Lehtonen made 35 saves. Blake Wheeler, Jacob Trouba and Tyler Myers scored for the Jets, who lost their third straight. Dallas and Winnipeg combined for four goals in the first period. There were three ties in the game.

The Stars opened the scoring when Klingberg beat Pavelec top shelf to the short side with a wrist shot from the high slot 2:32 into the first period. The Jets then scored twice in 18 seconds to take a 2-1 lead. Wheeler got Winnipeg on the board with a wrist shot from the far edge of the left circle to Lehtonen’s short side at 4:13. Trouba gave the Jets their first lead at 4:31 when he scored off a rebound. Adam Lowry's pass off the rush hit the left skate of Chris Thorburn, but Lehtonen left the rebound in the paint, and Trouba capitalized. Winnipeg nearly scored again at 11:04, but Jason Demers made a kick save on a wrist shot by Andrew Ladd, who was attempting to score into an empty net after Bryan Little took Lehtonen out to the left of the Stars net.

Dallas tied it at 2-2 when Sceviour scored off the rebound at 12:38. Oduya's slap shot from near the blue line hit the crossbar. The carom landed in front of Sceviour, who scored his first of the season through Pavelec's five-hole. The Stars regained the lead at 3:17 of the second when Hemsky scored on a breakaway. Hemsky received Jordie Benn's pass from the Dallas goal line near the Winnipeg blue line and beat Pavelec to his right with a wrist shot from the slot off the rush. Lehtonen preserved the Dallas lead with a kick save at 10:44 of the second after a wrist shot by Mark Scheifele was deflected. Myers made it 3-3 at 9:17 of the third with a wrist shot from the high slot that beat Lehtonen to the far post.

Stars Quotes

Jamie Benn: "Just a lot of good work by the other four guys. I pretty much stand in front and tap them in."
Lindy Ruff: “We've had some tough breaks on the penalty kill, but that four-minute kill was big for us. I thought we did a great job on that. I loved the battle in [Lehtonen's] game. That's the one thing he's getting better at. He's got some battle. He could have come unglued too, but he didn't. He stood tall for us."
Ales Hemsky: "It was a tough game. They have a good team. Really big bodies, and they play really heavy, and they're shooting from everywhere, so it's always tough against them. We had a slow start, but we stuck with it. It's a good feeling."
Jordie Benn: “It was just kind of a weird play. I got the puck and I had a lot more time than I thought. I saw Hemsky just kind of gliding backwards and got him behind their forward and defense. Maybe it was a little bit of luck. Maybe I’d seen Klingberg do it too many times and thought I’d go for it, and it worked out.”

Jets Quotes

Paul Maurice: “When your power play’s on, there’s a certain quickness to it, the way pucks get to the net, the traffic that you get in front of the net. We didn’t have a whole lot of that going on. I thought after the first 20, maybe 25 minutes of the game, I don’t know if it was particularly well-played by either team. Then I liked our stretch of hockey after that, we looked simple and fast.”
Blake Wheeler: “We’re going through a tough stretch right now, so we’re just going to have to work our way out of it. I don’t know if there’s one specific thing that went wrong that forced us to lose the game. I think it’s just kind of the way it’s going right now.”
Tyler Myers: “I thought we were better the second half of the game. We were a little inconsistent the first half. It’s a tough one. We’re going to have to learn from it to get more consistent throughout a full 60 minutes to get better and we need to try to carry that mindset going into Nashville.”