Dallas Stars Top 25 Games Of 2017-18 Season: 20-16
By Josh Clark
20. Minnesota Wild @ Dallas Stars, Feb. 3, 2018
To get this next segment started, let’s take it back to Feb. 3, which happened to take Stars fans back to the 1990’s.
Retro Night was one of the Stars’ promotional nights at the AAC during the 2017-18 season. And it just happened to be a smashing success.
Part of that was due to the premise behind the promotion. The Dallas Stars offered food and drinks at 1990’s prices, played an extensive playlist from the 90’s, and included graphics and animations from 20 years ago in their in-arena presentation. And to top it all off, the Stars wore throwback uniforms for warmups from their debut season in Dallas in 1993.
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The Stars welcomed in the Minnesota Wild for Retro Night (which fit the theme perfectly). It just happened to be a critical Central Division matchup in regards to the standings. With the midseason push raging on, Dallas sat in the first wild card spot. But two points back sat a Wild team looking to capitalize and move ahead.
On top of that, the Stars were already 0-1-0 against Minnesota in the season after suffering a 4-2 loss in December.
Two precious points were on the line with both teams desperately needing the boost. But only one team seemed to want them once the puck dropped. That team was the Dallas Stars.
Dallas ended up winning it 6-1 behind a stellar offensive showing along with solid goaltending from Kari Lehtonen. But it was HOW they did it that made the win so impressive.
The Stars and Wild went scoreless through the first period, with neither team finding a way to break through. It wasn’t until Mattias Janmark scored with 11:02 to go in the second period that the scoreboard changed. And that’s when the Dallas offense hit the turbo button.
Behind goals from Stephen Johns, Jamie Benn, and Tyler Seguin all within 5:08 of Janmark’s goal, Dallas all of a sudden owned a 4-0 lead. And after Jason Zucker scored early in the third period to get Minnesota on the board, Alexander Radulov and Dan Hamhuis tacked on goals of their own to secure a 6-1 final.
The Stars were 2/2 on the power play and penalty kill, put 38 shots on net (including an incredible 20 in the second period), and won 67 percent of the face-offs. They were the better team in every regard and put on an offensive onslaught that the Wild had no answers for.
Lehtonen earned his second win in a row in impressive fashion, stopping 30 of 31 and earning the second star of the game. He made some key saves early to keep the Wild at bay and bought the Stars a chance to build a lead, which they eventually grabbed.
It was the second win in a five-game win streak that Dallas built to start off the month of February.
What a way to ring in the good old days.