Dallas Stars: Rallying Over Kings In Crunch Time Shows Resilience
Thursday night felt like a “must win” for the Dallas Stars, and they made sure to follow through. After an emotional and thrilling rally, the Stars defeated the Los Angeles Kings 4-3 in overtime and wrapped up another rollercoaster month on a high note.
For the Dallas Stars, the motto “two points is two points” has become a prevalent theme in their journey through the 2018-19 regular season.
The theme centers around the idea that a win is a win, no matter how dominant or messy it may be. Regardless of whether it’s 6-0 or 6-5 in overtime, the two points still look the same in the big picture. And though the first 63 games of the regular season, the Stars had their fair share of messy contests.
A 1-0 win in overtime against Boston back in November, a 6-4 win over Ottawa one week later, a 2-1 victory in overtime against Minnesota just before Christmas, and a 2-1 overtime win over the Capitals at the beginning of January all embodied the “two points is two points” mantra.
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And on Thursday night in Los Angeles, the Stars once again clung to the gritty anthem.
It was game 64. The opponent? A struggling Los Angeles Kings team stuck at the bottom of the Western Conference standings. The Kings were 1-6-3 in their last ten games going into the contest and hadn’t won a game since Feb. 7.
The Stars, on the other hand, found themselves in an unfamiliar corner. They had been pushed out of the Western Conference playoff picture by the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night. It was their first time on the outside looking in since late December 2018 and provided a certain dose of reality, being that the last month of the postseason race is going to be a grind.
So the Stars converged in California with a critical two points on the line in a potential “trap game” against a struggling team with nothing to lose. And through the first 20 minutes, it looked like Dallas was on their way to a collapse.
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The Kings jumped out of the gate and took it to the Dallas Stars, scoring the first two goals of the game in under 14 minutes. Anze Kopitar scored on a redirect and Brendan Leipsic followed it up a few minutes later with a deflection goal on the power play. Just like that, the Kings were up 2-0 and in control against a Dallas team still trying to find an emotional spark to rally around.
Tyler Seguin got Dallas back into the game 80 seconds later after deflecting a Taylor Fedun shot past Jonathan Quick. But the first period ended with LA in front by a 2-1 margin.
In the second period, Mattias Janmark pulled Dallas back to even after a few minutes of aggressive play. It wasn’t knotted up for long, though, as Kopitar scored on an unlucky turnover from Roope Hintz to push the Kings lead back to 3-2.
And as the Dallas Stars entered the locker room for second intermission, their hopes and aspirations for the 2018-19 regular season seemed to hang in the balance. They were sitting outside of a playoff spot for the first time in months, were losing to a sloppy Kings team, and looked to be on a road to self-destruction in another failed road trip.
But then, the third period kicked off. And after blowing an opportunity in the final frame against Vegas just two nights earlier, the Stars battled back against an LA team doing everything in its power to get a win.
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Around the midway point of the period, Blake Comeau and Radek Faksa entered the zone on a rush and, following the initial slap shot from Comeau, Faksa cashed in on the rebound chance to tie the game at 3-3. But, unlike in past games, it didn’t stop there. The Stars kept applying pressure and generating chances as the period drew closer to an end, and all the Kings could do was try and stay afloat. Dallas outshot Los Angeles 13-7 in the final frame and kept their foot on the gas as the game transitioned to overtime.
And though it took longer than 3-on-3 overtime usually does for the Stars, Dallas came out on top after some key defensive stops led to a Roope Hintz rebound goal. Dallas claimed the 4-3 win and, more importantly, escaped from a desperate LA Kings team with two points.
So yes, two points is two points. The Dallas Stars had to claw and fight to get the win against the Kings. It wasn’t pretty at times and was downright ugly at others, but the Stars found a way. And to the Kings’ credit, they made the Stars earn it.
In a game that helped define the four-game road trip that the Stars are currently on, they dug their heels in, found an emotional spark, and rallied around some unlikely heroes.
With Jamie Benn and Andrew Cogliano out of the lineup, Tyler Seguin got the game off and running for the Stars. After that, it was up to the depth scorers to finish it off. They found a way to do so emphatically.
The line of Mattias Janmark, Blake Comeau, and Radek Faksa combined for two goals, two assists, and a +6 rating. Janmark tied the game up in the second period and Faksa tied it up once again in the third. Comeau had the primary assist on both goals.
To top it all off, Roope Hintz made up for his turnover in the second period by churning the offensive attack in overtime and finishing it off with a resilient goal. And with that, the Dallas Stars enter the month of March in a playoff spot and on a high note.
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On top of that, they showed off just how resilient and relentless they can be when they are backed into a corner. With the Kings up 2-0 early, the game seemed to have all of the makings of previous Stars’ losses. A few weeks ago, they fell behind early to the Carolina Hurricanes and eventually dropped a 3-0 loss. The week before, they fell behind 3-0 to the Coyotes and missed out on two points.
Slow starts have been a common theme for this 2018-19 Dallas Stars team, and they were once again slow out of the gate on Thursday night. But unlike in other games this year, they found a way to rally. That shows grit and resilience.
The pressure was on for the Stars on Feb. 28, 2019 as they took the ice at Staples Center. And for the first 40 minutes, they endured a bit of a rocky path. But the statement they made in the final 23:19 (for all of you Monsters Inc. fanatics out there) was one of resilience. Dallas rose to the occasion and made a confident final push that eventually led them to victory.
As a result, here they sit in the first wild card spot on Friday, March 1, 2019. The race is far from over and the pressure is just now starting, but this was a character win for the Stars. It’s also something that they can rally around as the sprint to the finish heats up.
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And when a team has a rallying point like that, there’s no telling where they can go.