The Dallas Stars hockey team nothing if not gutty and resilient. For the fifth time this season -- and the 17th time overall since the start of last season -- the Stars came back to win a game that they trailed at some point in the third period. Last night, Dallas managed to pull off the feat with a lineup that is still decimated by injuries.
Last night's game against the Ottawa Senators at the American Airlines Center was tied, 1-1, midway through the third period. Milan Michalek seemingly drove a dagger through the Stars' hearts when he potted the juicy rebound of a Daniel Alfredsson shot.
A team can only go to the comeback well so many times, and it would have been easy for the Stars to sag after falling behind for the second time in the game. Instead, Radek Dvorak tied the game during a partial line change with 5:34 remaining in the game.
The Stars third line -- which has so often been this team's spark plug this season -- delivered again with a tremendous shift that eventually resulted in Eric Nystrom scoring his 9th goal of the season with 2:20 left in the game to win the game for Dallas.
What else can be said about the play of the line with Nystrom, Dvorak and Vern Fiddler? Sooner or later, the Jamie Benn and Mike Ribeiro lines had better start bearing the brunt of the scoring load again. Nystrom and Dvorak have combined to scored six of the team’s last nine goals, which speaks volumes about just how effective they've been but also is a pace they are unlikely to be able to maintain.
Apart from the play of the third line, the other big positives from last night's win were that:
* Dallas stayed out of the penalty box for the second straight game and killed off its lone penalty to run their PK hot streak to 17-of-18.
* the Stars finally broke their power play drought (Steve Ott's tip-in of a Toby Petersen shot equalized the game, 1-1, shortly after Ottawa opened the scoring).
* Andrew Raycroft (33 saves) played well again in substitution for the injured Kari Lehtonen (IR, groin pull).
* the Stars improved their record in one-goal games this season to 8-1-1; tops in the entire NHL.
*****
Dallas is back in action on Saturday night, taking on the New York Islanders. This is a game in which the Stars had better be careful, because the Islanders may have a miserable record overall (7-11-4 with only 2 wins on the road) but they have played much better hockey of late and have won their last two games.
The Islanders' winning streak would likely have been at three games but Rick DiPietro was awful in net in an overtime loss at home to Philadelphia the night before Thanksgiving. The Islanders blew a 3-1 lead and lost, 4-3, but the problem had a lot more to do that night with poor goaltending (3 of the 4 goals DiPietro gave up should have been routine saves) than it did with the team in front of him.
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