The Dallas Stars’ pursuit of a second Stanley Cup took another step forward on Sunday when they defeated the Winnipeg Jets 5-2. Dallas now leads the Jets two games to one in the second round of the playoffs.
Sunday’s win was not without some drama though, with a third period score by the Stars’ Alexander Petrovic.
For the details of the series up to this point and a look ahead to Dallas’ path to the finals, the Standard was joined by Taylor Baird, managing editor at Defending Big D and an independent correspondent based in Dallas for NHL.com.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Give us a snapshot of Sunday’s game up to the third period. Dallas was first on the board, but the game was tied at two going into the third. Is that right?
Taylor Baird: Yeah, the game had basically been pretty even between the two teams through two periods – kind of a 4-D chess match going on out there – and it kind of looked like next goal wins. And then oh boy, did it when we hit the third period.
All right, so talk us through this goal by Petrovic.
Yeah, so the play basically unfolded where Petrovic got the puck kind of to the right of the goal, and he tried what appeared to be a play to kick the puck to his stick to shoot it on goal. But as a result of that kick, what actually ended up happening was it redirected the puck towards the net.
So essentially, that was a huge momentum shift for Dallas. They come out less than a minute later, the score has gone from 3-2 to 4-2. Mikko Rantanen continues his absolutely insane scorched earth run here in the playoffs.
And from there, it fell apart for the Winnipeg Jets. And Dallas took the momentum to the 5-2 win.
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What do you think Dallas does in Game 4?
So I think that’s going to be the crucial one of this series. It’s going really be dependent on how Dallas responds. They have been a very good response team, you know, being able to rise to the occasion.
But the problem is that you’re going to get Winnipeg’s most desperate game because they know that if they go back to home ice with a 3-1 deficit in the series, the chances of them being able to rattle off three straight wins against this team are looking very, very slim.
So they are gonna be highly motivated to get back to Winnipeg with this series tied, because then they essentially also regain their home ice advantage with two of the next three in the confines of Canada.
If the Stars do end up taking the series against the Jets, they’ll advance to the conference finals and play against either the Vegas Golden Knights or the Edmonton Oilers. Is there a best case scenario here for Dallas?
You have to believe that if the Dallas Stars can get through not one, but two of the top five or six teams in the entire NHL in these first two rounds, that pretty much nobody is going to be totally scary for them to face off against.
I think that they did that without their arguably best player in Miro Heiskanen on the back end. You got to think that as he gets healthy and gets inserted into the lineup that Dallas is only gonna get better.
You know, Vegas, I think, you know, a lot of playoff history between the two teams. They finally vanquished them in the first round last year, but then they kind of ran out of gas going into the conference final. Edmonton Oilers were the ones that they lost to in the conference finals last year, so you kind of want to see them and be able to slay that particular dragon.
But realistically, I that Dallas has the depth, both on the forward lines and the goaltending to Beat either one. So I think they’re a team that believes that in order to be the best, you have to beat the best, and they’re not really intimidated by anyone.
