EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) – Rasmus Andersson scored the decisive goal with a shot on the wrist after Dillon Dube scored twice in the first half for the Calgary Flames, which beat the Dallas Stars 3-2 in the first game of his best-of-seven Western Conference playoffs on Tuesday.
Andersson scored in a rushed run with four minutes to play at the time, the defender made a difficult shot and the puck overlooked the stick of defender Andrej Sekera in the direction of the net.
Cam Talbot stopped 24 shots for the Flames, adding numerical superiority via Joe Pavelski with 10 seconds to play.
The game will take up position on Thursday.
Dallas already had an additional skater on the ice after sending goalkeeper Anton Khudobin to the bank, then had a 6-on-4 credit due to an error from Captain Mark Giordano. The 36-year-old defender, who spent his 14 seasons in the NHL with the Flames, won a penalty at the end of the game after leaving the puck out while trying to keep him 49 seconds ahead of play.
But Dallas only had one shot on purpose in that final stretch, Pavelski’s attempt to achieve a 31-second purpose that led the Stars to Sunday when they won their last all-against-all game among the conference’s 4 most sensitive seed players.
Khudobin, who in 10 seasons of the NHL never had a playoff game before last week’s robin, made 23 saves.
The stars, the third seed, tied the game by scoring twice in distant shots at nine points of the time. He is the fastest they have scored two goals in a playoff match, with the last score being two goals in 12 moments in the first match of the 2000 Stanley Cup final.
Denis Gurianov, a rookie who led Dallas with 20 goals in the normal season, scored on a shot that deviated from a defender’s hip and beat Talbot with 9:08 remaining in the second. Star captain Jamie Benn sent the album to the net from the blue line, with Alexander Radulov between him and the net, for the tie.
Radulov in the penalty domain halfway to the first was after a questionable penalty for interference, as it gave the impression of being looking to avoid traffic near the center of the ice.
Calgary scored his first goal in this play of strength, with a prevention of Dube from the right circle of Milan Lucic’s pass through the ice in front of two stars. Dube had shot in Khudobin’s chest, but scored back in the era at a pace towards the net.
Dube rushed with the record, ignoring a defenseman and then splitting right in front of Khudobin before the shot that gave the Flames a 2-0 lead.
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