The Dallas Stars' opening night turned on a play that never needed a perfect shot. With Dallas pressing in the second period Friday at American Airlines Center, Jake Oettinger tried to leave a puck behind the net for Nils Lundkvist. Pius Suter beat him to it, Philip Broberg moved the puck out front, and Oettinger tripped over Roope Hintz while scrambling back into the crease.
Dalibor Dvorsky scored into the open net at 13:05, NHL.com reported, and St. Louis left with a 2-0 lead it never surrendered in a 4-0 win.
DallasStars.com's Mike Heika described the sequence as arriving while Dallas controlled the second period. Hintz said afterward he did not even know he had hit Oettinger - he was trying to clear to the other side and caught the goalie's skate, Heika reported. Intent was irrelevant. The scoreboard read 2-0, and Joel Hofer's night got easier.
The early strike that made the glitch fatal
Mason McTavish had already scored 1:34 into his Blues debut off a Colton Parayko rebound, per NHL.com. Per NHL.com, Gulutzan said St. Louis dictated early and Dallas' legs showed up only after the first intermission. That second-period push was supposed to be the corrective. Instead it became the moment a detail failure doubled the deficit.
CBS Sports listed the final shot count at 25-24 for Dallas. Heika also listed a 62 percent faceoff edge for Dallas and only 50 shot attempts allowed against St. Louis.
Those numbers explain why the Dvorsky goal felt heavier than a routine rebound: Dallas had earned territorial ground and then donated a goal without a screened shot or a broken coverage scheme in front of Oettinger.
Empty nets and an empty power play
Empty-net goals from Jimmy Snuggerud and Pius Suter, 15 seconds apart in the final minutes, closed the 4-0 final, NHL.com reported. Hofer stopped 25 shots for his ninth career shutout. Oettinger finished with 20 saves.
Between the second-period gift and the late empty-netters sat another failure of detail: Dallas could not convert after Brandon Carlo's five-minute major for a knee-to-knee hit on Hintz early in the third.
Hintz, playing his first game since March 6, went down, left, and returned, Heika wrote. Gulutzan told Heika the knee contact concerned him and that Hintz's return was a relief. The power play that followed - for a team Heika noted led the league in power-play goals last season - produced no goals.
