After so many prime chances in two overtimes, everything came down to a fortunate puck bounce.
A clearing attempt by the Stars’ Colin Miller deflected off a skate to the right of the Stars’ goal and deflected to the Minnesota Wild’s Ryan Hartman. His shot 12:20 into the second overtime from in front of the net beat Stars’ goalie Jake Oettinger for a 3-2 win in Game 1 of the opening round NHL playoff series.
“That’s playoff hockey to a ‘T,’” Stars forward Max Domi said. “A couple of bounces could have gone either way.”
Oettinger finished with 45 saves but was outdueled by Minnesota’s Filip Gustavsson, who had 52 saves.
Just like that, the Stars lost Game 1, lost home-ice advantage in the series and may have lost first-line forward Joe Pavelski after a nasty hit.
Via hockey-reference.com, teams that take the first game go on to win a best-of-seven series 68.3% of the time.
Game 2 is Wednesday at the AAC before the series shifts to St. Paul for Games 3 and 4.
Stars’ thoughts immediately turned to the condition and availability of Pavelski. He was helped to the locker room after a jarring high hit by Wild defenseman Matt Dumba as Pavelski attempted a backhand shot on net and did not return.
Pavelski’s head appeared to hit the ice after the hit and he stayed down as a scrum occurred around him.
Stars coach Pete DeBoer said Pavelski’s condition was “OK” but maybe not for Game 2.
“No. No, I’m not confident for Game 2,” DeBoer said. “He’s OK, he’s walking out of the rink on his own OK.”
Dumba was given a two-minute minor penalty for roughing. The Stars’ Max Domi was given a two-minute roughing penalty and a 10-minute misconduct for throwing a few punches at Dumba in retaliation.
The original on-ice call was a five-minute major against Dumba. It was reduced to a two-minute minor after a review by the league office in Toronto.
“We have the best officials in the world. They called a 5, they reviewed it, which is the right thing to do,” DeBoer said. “If they reviewed it and decide it wasn’t a bad hit, then I guess it’s not for me to argue with that. They got to look at it at multiple different angles and that was the decision they made. We’ve got to live with that.”
Oettinger had a different view.
“From what I saw, it looked like a major penalty … I don’t think my opinion is going to change,” Oettinger said. “It’s tough, you lose your leader like that, a guy we need, to a cheap shot like that.”
Predictably, Minnesota coach Dean Evason defended his player and the call in an ESPN interview during the game.
“It’s a body check,” Evason said. “Obviously the refs saw it correctly. We saw it. The stick hit him in the head. Unfortunately it got him in the chin.
“Yeah, you never like to see anybody get hurt. We want to be physical for sure and we’re going to continue to do that.”
Pavelski has been a huge component of the Stars’ potent first line with Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz with 28 goals and 77 points in 82 games. He scored the 1,000th point of his career in the final week of the regular season against Detroit. Pavelski also enabled coach Pete DeBoer to play four lines, a trademark of this Stars’ team.
Minnesota gained momentum after the hit and later scored to even the contest at 2-2 after the end of two periods.
The Wild controlled the first period and was rewarded on the power play with 1-0 lead.
Jared Spurgeon’s wrist shot from the point deflected off Kirill Kaprizov for a goal with 47.7 remaining in the period. The Wild had the man advantage after a Wyatt Johnston slashing penalty on Kaprizov.
Minnesota outshot Dallas 10-5 in the first 20 minutes.
Things turned early in the second period on the Stars’ power play.
On the first Stars goal, Jamie Benn won the faceoff directly to Roope Hintz, who beat Gustavsson with a wicked wrist shot just three seconds into the man-advantage.
Robertson scored on a wrist shot from beyond the left circle on another power play. Pavelski won the faceoff to Miro Heiskanen who found Robertson.
In exactly nine seconds on the power play, the Star had two goals – equaling their total from the seven games against Calgary in the first round last season.
Then came the big hit against Pavelski at 12:02, along with the review, that seemed to change the flow of the game. Sam Steel got behind the Stars defense and beat Oettinger on a breakaway for a 2-2 tie after two periods.
It stayed that way through the first overtime.
Oettinger had a key save early on Dumba from point-blank range, although the Wild went the final 9:31 of the period without a shot. Although the Stars outshot the Wild 17-6 and received the only power-play chance, they weren’t able to get the puck past Gustavsson.
“It’s crazy how close these two teams are,” Oettinger said.
Twitter: @ChuckCarltonDMN
