For the second time in three games, the Dallas Stars relinquished a lead in the last minute of a game. The first time they were able to salvage a shoot-out win, but in St. Louis on Sunday afternoon, a wild sixty seconds saw the Stars skate off the ice with a 2-1 loss.
Dallas led 1-0 with a minute to play in the game on the power play when St. Louis Captain Ryan O’Reilly took a rebounder off the back wall and punched it under the legs of Dallas goalie Braden Holtby. The late goal tied the score at one.
Before the score, Dallas defenseman Miro Heiskanen scrambled for a loose puck in hopes of pushing it out from inside the Stars’ zone but had his stick pulled by St. Louis center Brayden Schenn, knocking him to the ice. There was no penalty called on the play. Stars head coach Rick Bowness disagreed with the no-call.
“You’re watching the game. You saw what happened, so you know (Schenn) clearly pulled Miro down, clearly grabbed Miro, and pulled him down,” Bowness said after the game. “It’s my opinion, so yeah, they got lucky.”
Heiskanen was called for a slashing penalty on the O’Reilly goal after he attempted to rally from being pulled down and then block the shot.
Eighteen seconds later, with the Stars shorthanded, St. Louis swarmed Holtby and the Dallas net. A Blues pass bounced off the leg of Dallas’ Jani Hakanpaa’s right shin pad and past Holtby for the game-winning, 2-1 goal.
Jason Robertson scored the lone goal on the day for the Stars, which extends his consecutive point streak to seven games (10 points total in those seven games.) Robertson, the 21-year-old left-winger, also leads the team in assists with 18.
Before the power-play barrage from the Blues in the last minutes of the game, Holtby was perfect and stopped all of the first 29 shots he faced.
“I just kind of expected that for him because he is a phenomenal goalie,” Robertson said of Holtby. “I think it’s just another game for him, you know … it’s a luxury for us.”
With the loss, Holtby’s record on the season drops to 6-8-0, and the Stars drop to 17-13-2.
“We played a hell of a hockey game,” Bowness said. “We deserved a lot better than that. We played a hell of a road game for our third game, three and a half days. We battled hard. We deserved a lot better than that.”
The Stars next take the ice on Wednesday, January 12, in Dallas when they host the Seattle Kraken at the American Airlines Center starting at 7 p.m. The game can be viewed on Bally Sports, and tickets for the contest can be purchased here.
