Roope Hintz scored twice and extended his point streak to 10 games, helping the Dallas Stars defeat the Florida Panthers 6-4 at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, Florida, on Thursday.
Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Ty Dellandrea each had a goal and an assist for the Stars (10-5-2), who led 4-0 after the first period and 5-1 midway through the second. Scott Wedgewood made 21 saves before sustaining an upper-body injury 14:01 into the second and leaving the ice on a stretcher.
“He’s not in any danger,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said. “He’s coherent, all that stuff. I don’t know if he’s fine. But I think he’s OK.”
Wedgewood was holding his back after stopping Anton Lundell on a breakaway and a rebound from in close. After play was stopped moments later, he lay flat on his back on the ice for several minutes while being examined by a trainer and left the game at 14:05.
Jake Oettinger made 19 saves in relief.
“I think we started pretty well tonight,” Hintz said. “Then, of course, they came back. They played pretty well the second and early third. But we kept it. It feels good [to score]but the biggest thing was that we got the win.”
Video: DAL@FLA: Seguin, Hintz team up to kick off scoring
Matthew Tkachuk and Carter Verhaeghe each had a goal and an assist, and Sam Bennett had three assists for the Panthers (9-7-1). Sergei Bobrovsky allowed four goals on 11 shots before being replaced by Spencer Knight (16 saves).
“When you’re down 2-0, you’re going to come back out and play hard,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “But when you’re down four, to find that grit to come back, those are the things that over the year you get to keep a little bit. One, we haven’t had those starts, so that’s not our team. But how we handled it, very impressive. They fought back. It was a tough night for us, but they didn’t quit at all.”
Hintz gave Dallas a 1-0 lead at 4:58 on his first shot of the game when he finished a 2-on-1 off a toe-drag pass from Seguin.
“They put a lot of pressure on you,” DeBoer said. “If you can win some of those pinches, make some of those plays under pressure, you can create some of those odd-man rushes. I think that was our goal coming in and I thought we did that. We executed when we got the chances too, which is critical.”
Nils Lundkvist made it 2-0 at 15:16 when he walked the puck in from the blue line and shot it over Bobrovsky’s shoulder from a sharp angle. It was his first goal with Dallas in his 17th game after being traded from the New York Rangers in the offseason.
Benn extended the lead to 3-0 at 15:53 when he got behind a Florida defenseman Aaron Ekblad and slipped the puck through the five-hole.
“I don’t think there was anything good in the first period,” Bennett said. “We got outcompeted, outskated, we really left [Bobrovsky] out to dry in the first period. It’s tough to do that because he’s been so good for us. It was a horrible first period. It’s a tough league to be able to come back from four goals.”
Video: DAL@FLA: Lundkvist, Benn extend Stars lead in 1st
Seguin made it 4-0 with nine seconds left when he scored through the five-hole off a Mason Marchment pass on a 2-on-1. Marchment, playing against his former team for the first time, picked off a pass by the Florida forward Sam Reinhart in the defensive zone, leading to the odd-man rush.
“That first period didn’t go nearly the way we wanted it too,” Ekblad said. “We set out in the second and third to play a little bit more of a structured game, not take chances, but just get pucks on net, get bodies to the net. I thought we did a good job of trying to come back there.” “
Verhaeghe cut it to 4-1 on the power play at 7:29 of the second when his shot from the top of the left face-off circle got through traffic.
Hintz made it 5-1 at 10:56 later Jason Robertson found him alone behind the Panthers defense. With the assist, Robertson extended his point streak to 10 games (19 points; nine goals, 10 assists).
“It wasn’t exactly how we wanted to draw it up,” DeBoer said. “That’s a tough lead to play with, and then with the goalie going down… we got on our heels. We bent but we didn’t break. There wasn’t any panic. I thought we had good composure.”
Video: DAL@FLA: Hintz goes top shelf for second goal
Eetu Luostarinen cut it to 5-2 at 12:12 after Bennett fed him in front.
Reinhart pulled the Panthers to within 5-3 on the power play at 18:27 with a point shot through traffic.
Tkachuk cut it to 5-4 at 13:57 of the third period when he took a pass from Bennett and scored on a backhand from close range.
Dellandrea scored into an empty net with 18 seconds left for the 6-4 final.
NOTES: Hintz has 15 points (six goals, nine assists) during his point streak. Wednesday was his 26th birthday. Hintz became the second player in franchise history to score multiple goals on his birthday; Dave Gagner had two for the Minnesota North Stars in a 5-4 loss to the Calgary Flames on Dec. 11, 1990. … Marchment signed a four-year, $18 million contract ($4.5 million average annual value) with Dallas in the offseason after two seasons with Florida. … Panthers center Alexander Barkov was scratched with a non-COVID illness. Florida was short one skater and dressed 17 (11 forwards, six defensemen). … Verhaeghe has three goals in his past two games and seven goals in his past seven.
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