Stars Lose To St Louis
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This week for the Dallas Stars will be a friendly reminder of what was to become last March/April.
We all remember Dallas having to make that difficult trip to St. Louis mere hours after Rich Peverley had a near death experience on the ice.
Alex Chiasson couldn’t make the trip as he was an emotional wreck.
It was left to Captain Jamie Benn to lead a comeback in Missouri that March evening.
A few weeks later it was that same St. Louis Blues team-playoff bound-that came to Dallas with the Stars looking to end a five year drought.
Dallas won and entered the Stanley Cup Playoffs as a #8 seed against the Anaheim Ducks. A memorable series that went six games.
That thought went through my mind this night as the Dallas Stars prepared for a meeting with the St. Louis Blues. A night where pink was prevalent and hockey fought cancer.
Twice the Stars scored in the first two periods…twice the Blues answered back 35 and 37 seconds later. Jamie Oleksiak got his first career goal as a Star along with a power play goal by Trevor Daley.
Tyler Seguin made a third period goal for a 3-2 lead. For the third time in four home
games a lead in the final period was lost which led to a 4-3 overtime defeat to the Blues.
It didn’t help that Vladimir Tarasenko had a hat trick while firing the game winner 1:29 into overtime after a high sticking call on Tyler Seguin. One 91 doing the damage after the other 91 got penalized.
“We’re this close to completing the deal,” said Stars coach Lindy Ruff after the overtime. “It was pedal to the metal for 50 minutes. But we ended up making a couple mistakes, and we beat ourselves again, which hurts.”
Due to the lost leads in the third stanza the Stars have suffered losses in overtime and the shootout to Chicago, Philadelphia, and St. Louis.
Trevor Daley has seen enough of this already.
“Enough is enough in here,” said Daley. “I think we’ve had three of them at home where we’ve had leads in the third period. In order to be a good team, an elite team like the team we just played, you’ve got find ways to get the job done. Maybe the penalty at the end was a tough one, but I don’t think we should have even been in that situation to start.”
Kari Lehtonen took the defeat especially hard which elicited this response from the Stars coach.
“He made some good saves,” said Ruff. “I like it when guys are hard on themselves. I like it when they expect to make every save. That’s the way it should be. Expect to give up nothing. That’s a great attitude to have. Could we have done something better? You’re darn right. His teammates could have done something better, too. I think when you look at yourself first, then you can go look at somebody afterwards.”
Jori Lehtera scored the other Blues goal with Kevin Shattenkirk collected two assists as the Blues improved to 4-3-1.
Dallas has now lost two straight and have fallen to 4-2-3 with the Anaheim Ducks in Dallas on Halloween Night.
It’s a long way to April. How about just being able to close out games when winning late?
