Jake Oettinger knocked down 27 of 29 Islander shots on Saturday night at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, slowing New York enough for his Stars teammates to rally to a 5-2 win.
“I think Jake kept us in it, you know, for as long as we needed,” Dallas captain Jamie Benn said.”Every time we scored a goal, they kind of found a way to get some momentum back, and we finally broke through in the third there.”
Benn notched the go-ahead goal at 8:17 in the third period and had two assists, helping Dallas win and pushing the team to 11-5-2, 24 points, and a three-point lead over second-place Colorado (10-5-1, 21 points) in the Western Central.
After a scoreless first period, New Jersey struck first when Mathew Barzal scored 90 seconds into the second for a 1-0 lead.
Radek Faksa knotted the game at 1-1 nearly six minutes later after knocking home a shot from the crease following passes from Tyler Seguin and Benn.
Barzal scored his second goal of the game for New Jersey six minutes before the second intermission to recapture the lead after he weaved his way through Dallas defenders before beating Oettinger in the net.
Dallas ratcheted up the offensive pressure on the Islanders after the goal and seconds later tied the game again at 2-2 as Marchment skated into the New Jersey zone undetected by anyone other than Benn, hitting him with a pretty pass that he snapped passed goalie Semyon Varlamov.
The third period was all Stars, all the time.
Benn earned his third point of the game eight minutes into the final period. Marchment notched the assist on Benn’s goal, his NHL-leading eighth goal in November.
Jason Robertson added a late goal for a 4-2 lead – pushing his scoring streak to 11 straight games – and Jani Hakanpaa put the contest away with a long-range empty netter with 20 seconds left on which Oettinger (7-2-0) earned an assist.
“We got contributions from everybody tonight,” Pete DeBoer, Stars head coach, said. “It is one of those games, I think, where you can find out a lot about your group. You have every excuse in the world to kind of mail it in …I thought we dug deep and showed what our group’s about.”
The Stars’ next game is Monday when they will host the Avalanche for the first of two meetings this season.
