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 Dallas built a big lead Sunday afternoon and needed all of it to
clinch its first-round playoff series with the Minnesota Wild.
First-period goals by John Klingberg, Jason Spezza and Patrick Sharp
gave Dallas a commanding lead and helped withstand a furious
Minnesota comeback, as the Stars beat the Wild 5-4, winning their
best-of-seven series 4-2 and advancing to the second round.
Goalie Kari Lehtonen had 25 saves while Jamie Benn and Alex
Goligoski added later goals as the Stars advanced past Round 1 for
the first time since 2008.
"You have to win a series, and we found a way to win it," Stars
coach Lindy Ruff said. "I thought the Wild played one heck of a
series. There wasn't any quit in them. They came hard with five guys
when they were down, they got a little life in this building and
they made it tough."
Minnesota got 19 saves from goalie Devan Dubnyk, a pair of goals
from defensemen Jared Spurgeon and single goals from Jonas Brodin
and Jason Pominville, making a spirited late charge after trailing
4-0.
 "It was fun. It was a blast. But we didn't get the job done," said
Wild interim head coach John Torchetti, who faces an uncertain
future. "We can't be happy walking away, that's for sure. We should
be playing, and it makes it tough for the summer."
Back-to-back penalties against the Wild gave Dallas more than a
minute of a 5-on-3 power play. Dubnyk made a pair of highlight-reel
saves, but Klingberg finally got the Stars on the board with a slap
shot from the left circle after a cross-ice pass from Spezza. It was
Klingberg's first goal of the playoffs, but his name is familiar to
the Wild. In the regular season, Klingberg had a pair of
overtime-winning goals versus Minnesota.
The Stars went up 2-0 before the first period was half over when
Dubnyk stopped, but couldn't cover, a shot from the blue line. While
the goalie was looking for the loose puck, Mattias Janmark got it to
Spezza at the left of the net, and Spezza's backhand shot doubled
the Dallas lead.
It was 3-0 after a period thanks to a seeing-eye wrist shot by Sharp
with less than two minutes left in the first. Coming in on a 2-on-1
break, Sharp let Jamie Benn break toward the net, then launched a
rising shot headed for Dubnyk's blocker side. The goalie lunged at
it a split second too late, giving Sharp his third goal of the
playoffs.
Content to defend their commanding lead and play defense, the Stars
had just five shots on Dubnyk in the second period, but the fifth
one was significant. With less than 24 seconds to play in the
period, Benn snapped off a wrist shot that fooled Dubnyk on the
glove side, making it 4-0 and producing a notable round of boos from
the Minnesota crowd.
"Very big power play goal to get us started and a 4-0 lead. What
else can you ask for?" Sharp said. "A lot of things that you can
take out of this that are good, a few things that are bad, but it's
never easy to win a playoff series, especially against a tough team
like Minnesota."
The Wild fans finally got a reason to cheer in the third period when
Spurgeon scored a power-play goal, shoveling in the rebound of a
Mikael Granlund shot that Lehtonen had stopped. Just 16 seconds
later, Brodin scored on a backhander from low in the right circle
after a shot by Erik Haula was blocked in front of the net, but went
right to Brodin.
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"The building got loud. Probably one of the most useless timeouts
I've taken, because they couldn't hear a word I said anyway," Ruff
said. "But I was just trying to tell them, 'Listen, we've got to
play.' You've got to live that environment to get better at it."
When Spurgeon scored another power-play goal at the 8:39 mark,
cutting the Dallas lead to 4-3, the crowd was deafening, but
Gologoski dropped the decibel level considerably. His shot from the
blue line hit Dubnyk and landed at the goalie's feet. Unaware that
the puck was under him, Dubnyk dropped down and inadvertently
knocked the puck into the net.
Pominville's goal came with less than five minutes to play, pulling
Minnesota back within a goal. The Wild pulled Dubnyk for the final
two minutes. A shot by Nino Niederreiter with 33.9 seconds left had
the Wild thinking they had tied the game. A review showed the puck
just on, but not over, the goal line before it was covered by a
Dallas defenseman.
"It's a shame we didn't come out like that," said Wild center
Charlie Coyle of the frantic third-period push. "Tough first couple
goals put us behind. But for us to battle back like that, it was a
good feeling. It was right there and we felt it. It comes down to
inches there and we just couldn't get it."
The Stars, who were the top seed in the West, will host either
Chicago or St. Louis to open Round 2.
NOTES: In the wake of renowned Minnesota musician Prince's death
last week, the Wild had a playoff towel draped on each of Xcel
Energy Center's 19,000-plus seats, and behind the team bench had the
towels arranged to form the symbol Prince used as a brand in the
1990s. The Wild also held a moment of silence in Prince's memory
before the game. ... For the fifth time in the six games of this
series, Stars C Tyler Seguin was scratched from the lineup due to a
lower-body injury. He played in Game 2 in Dallas but has not been
along on either of his team's trips to Minnesota. ... The Stars
attempted 93 shots on goal in Game 5 in Dallas, and got 41 of them
on net. But Minnesota's 34 blocked shots in the game were a
franchise record. The Wild led the NHL with 118 blocked shots in the
playoffs after the first five games.
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