Colorado’s high-flying hockey team has run into a problem it’s going to need to solve, and that’s the defensive acumen of the Dallas Stars.
The Avalanche dominated Game 3 of this second-round playoff series territorially, but not on the scoreboard. Tyler Seguin and Logan Stankoven both had a pair of goals, while Jake Oettinger made 29 saves Saturday night at Ball Arena to help Dallas prevail 4-1 and reclaim home-ice advantage in the series.
The Stars now lead the series 2-1. Game 4 is here Monday night.
“They’re checking hard and they were above everything,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “Obviously very disciplined in their structure in the third period, especially when they didn’t need any more to win. Kind of waited for us to force some stuff and make some mistakes to create their scoring chances.
“My one take would be we’ve got to make it a little bit tougher on Oettinger, getting traffic there.”
Colorado had 61 percent of the shot attempts in this game and nearly a 2-1 advantage in scoring chances, per Natural Stat Trick. The Avs had a 3-1 advantage in power plays, but didn’t create much with the extra man.
The Avs have been the best comeback team in the NHL this season. They have a win in this series because of a third-period comeback. There wasn’t one this time around.
“I thought we did a lot of great things,” Avs forward Nathan MacKinnon said. “We really had a lot of chances, a lot of good looks. Just Oettinger was great and we made a couple of big errors that cost us.”
Dallas found the only goal in a choppy first period. Colorado had a couple of chances to get the puck out of danger, the last of which was a MacKinnon pass to Devon Toews that didn’t connect. Miro Heiskanen collected it, shoveled a backhanded pass to Logan Stankoven and the rookie squeezed his first Stanley Cup Playoffs goal through Alexandar Georgiev at 18:39 of the period.
Colorado had 25 of the 34 shot attempts in the opening 20 minutes, but crisp passing sequences were hard to come by. The Stars also blocked nearly as many shots (10) as ones that reached Oettinger (12).
“(Oettinger) played well. I think we’re trying to get traffic there,” Avs forward Andrew Cogliano said. “He seemed like he found his rhythm tonight a little bit in that game, but I think we’ve had good opportunities throughout the series and created a few good rebounds and we’ve scored goals. So we’ll draw on that.”
Mikko Rantanen got the Avs on the board midway through the second period. Toews found MacKinnon at the top of the circles and he deked past Chris Tanev for a backhanded shot. Rantanen was there to clean up the rebound for his third goal of the postseason.
The Avalanche continued to pour on the pressure, but the Stars have already proven to be much more adept at keeping Colorado from stringing together a bunch of scoring chances.
Colorado was in the middle of a disjointed line change when Dallas quickly turned a dump-in into a counter-attack goal. Evgenii Dadonov sent a centering feed from outside the left faceoff circle towards the far post, and Seguin was able to beat Cogliano to it and redirect it across the goal line at 15:13 of the period. He added an empty-netter in the 59th minute to seal the victory.
Dallas was one of the best road teams in the NHL this season. The Stars were able to claw back from a 0-2 series hole after losing twice at home in the first round to the defending champions before knocking the Vegas Golden Knights out in Game 7.
Stars forward Mason Marchment said his team would need to play a greasy road game Saturday night. Mission accomplished.
Now the Avalanche is going to have to win at least one more game in Texas to advance, and faces a critical Game 4 at home two nights from now.
“I don’t think a coach has ever seen a perfect game, but that’s as close to a perfect road game as you can play in my mind coming into this situation,” Stars coach Peter DeBoer said. “We knew they were going to come out guns-a-blazing in the first period. You knew their home record. You knew they had challenged their best players, their coach did after last game. So, we knew we were going to get a lot thrown at us early in that game.Our composure throughout the night was outstanding.”
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