Dallas Stars can’t overcome wretched first period, Lightning evens Stanley Cup Final
For 20 consecutive minutes, the Dallas Stars played like a team determined to see the Stanley Cup Final go the distance.
Tampa Bay scored three consecutive goals in the first period, and the Lightning won Game 2, 3-2, on Monday night in Edmonton.
It’s the first time in four games this season the Lightning actually defeated the Stars. The Final is tied at 1, and Game 3 is Wednesday.
Just as the Stars were tentative in the third period of their win in Game 1, they did the same thing to start the second game. The Stars got away with it in Game 1, and it killed them in Game 2.
Two of Tampa’s first three goals were on the power play, as the Stars were slower, and they took dumb penalties against a talented team.
“We can kill 1, 2, 3 penalties a night but we don’t need to be killing three a period,” Stars forward Joe Pavelski said.
When the Stars did actually have the puck in the first period, they never generated much of a push.
The three goals all came within a six-minute span that felt like it ended the game.
“It was an even game ‘til we started taking penalties,” Stars coach Rick Bowness said.
The Stars’ first period was so bad it looked for a moment that the Stars may actually pull goalie Anton Khudobin and give him the rest of the night off, although Bowness said that move was not considered at that point.
“It couldn’t get much worse,” Stars forward Mattias Janmark said. “They came out in the third (in Game 1), and we were backing off. Maybe they did too (in the second period in Game 2). It couldn’t get much worse than the first period.”
Khudobin stayed in, and the Stars joined the game.
Whatever was said between the first and second periods worked.
The Stars made it a game when veteran forward Joe Pavelski scored a power play goal at the 14:43 mark of the second period.
They trailed 3-1 entering the third period against a team that was 7-0 in the playoffs when leading after two. The Stars had come back three times in these playoffs when trailing after two.
Monday would not be the fourth.
At the 5:27 mark of the third period, Stars defenseman John Klingberg shot a perfect pass to Janmark at the front of the net to tap in for his first goal of the playoffs.
At that point, it felt like the Stars would at least tie it. Later in the period, forward Jamie Benn had an open look for the tying goal but his shot just missed the net.
That push vanished as at one point the Stars only had one shot for nearly a 15-minute stretch after Janmark’s goal.
Benn had one decent look with 58 seconds left but Tampa’s Andrei Vasilevskiy made a nice chest save.
Thus far, both teams have taken turns tilting the ice in their favor in the six periods played. Both teams can say they have been better for stretches of a game, but not an entire game.
The Stars were badly outplayed to start Game 2, and the series is tied at 1.
This story was originally published September 21, 2020 at 10:29 PM.
