DALLAS — The Colorado Avalanche had a chance to take complete control of this series. That chance slipped away into the Texas night.
Colin Blackwell, who didn’t play in Game 1, scored with 2:14 left in overtime of Game 2 of this Stanley Cup Playoffs first-round series to give the Dallas Stars a 4-3 victory on Monday night inside American Airlines Center. The series is now tied 1-1, with Game 3 is Wednesday night at Ball Arena.
“You want to win every time you play, but I thought we did a pretty good job tonight,” said Avs goalie Mackenzie Blackwood, who made 35 saves in his first career overtime playoff game. “It could have went either way. If you said before we came out here that we’d get a 1-1 split and had a chance to take Game 2 in overtime, I think we would have been happy with that.”
The game-winning play started with a turnover by Avs forward Miles Wood, who also didn’t play in Game 1, in the Dallas zone. Both Wood and Erik Johnson sold out to try to block Blackwell’s first shot, which took them out of position for a potential rebound.
The Stars forward darted between the two of them and was the first one to the loose puck before he snapped it over Mackenzie Blackwood’s shoulder.
“(Blackwell) cut through the slot and shot it. I kind of got bumped into by our guy, or theirs, not really sure,” Blackwood said. “He came out of the corner really quick, and I was facing kind of up ice and not to the post. So he kind of beat me to the spot.”
Colorado controlled this game for significant stretches, particularly in the first period and in overtime. Dallas’ best stretch came in the third period, and it led to the tying goal.
Evgenii Dadonov evened this contest at 3-3 midway through the third. After the Avs failed to get the puck out of their zone, Wyatt Johnston put it on net from near the left point and Dadonov found the rebound before Blackwood did.
“I think they came out with a lot of desperation in the third period. We kind of stopped skating out of our zone and making plays out of our zone,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “We were throwing it right back to them too much in the neutral zone. There’s times where you got to go up and out and make the safe play but we mismanaged the puck a little bit in the third period there — more than a little bit.
“We had some turnovers that we forced because of their forecheck and then we had some other ones that weren’t. They all start to add up and you start playing on your half of the rink too much and bad things are going to happen.”
Logan O’Connor scored one of the goals of his life to put Colorado in front late in the second period. The Avs had to kill off back-to-back penalties, including seven seconds of a 5-on-3. O’Connor took the second penalty, though he mimicked a diving motion to the nearest official on his way to the penalty box.
Nathan MacKinnon got the play started with an outlet pass to Samuel Girard. Artturi Lehkonen got it to O’Connor in the slot, and with Mason Marchment on his back, the University of Denver alum uncorked a no-look, backhand shot into the top right corner with 32.1 seconds left in the second for a 3-2 lead.
Dallas took a 2-1 lead early in the second, but O’Connor, not known as a sniper, looked more like himself while setting up Jack Drury for the tying goal. He chased down the puck in the corner to the left of Jake Oettinger from his own end, then fed Drury for a goal at 4:42, just 62 seconds after Thomas Harley had put the Stars in front.
Drury, who joined the Avalanche as part of the trade that sent Mikko Rantanen to the Carolina Hurricanes, scored just as the ex-Avs star tried to close out on him.
MacKinnon put the Avalanche in front with his third goal of the series. He scored from the left circle at 8:48 of the opening period on the power play after Miles Wood had drawn a penalty on Dallas’ Mason Marchment.
Tyler Seguin evened the score late in the first after a slow start by the Stars. Parker Kelly grabbed Roope Hintz to prevent a 2-on-1, and then Seguin scored on a one-timer from the left circle with 53.1 seconds left in the period. Seguin missed 58 games for Dallas after having hip surgery in December, but returned for the final game of the regular season.
“I thought we were much more direct in our game tonight than we were in Game 1,” Stars coach Peter DeBoer said. “That’s why I felt like we felt more dangerous. I thought we played faster. Those are the things we’ve got to continue to build on.”
The Stars entered this contest on an eight-game losing streak, including the final seven regular-season contests (0-5-2). DeBoer felt like Game 1 was his club’s best overall effort in weeks, despite the lopsided final score.
DeBoer’s troops looked more like a struggling outfit at the start of Game 2, but the Avs were unable to find any separation and the Stars made the final play of the night.
“The margin for error is so small that you turn over a puck or two and they get a little momentum, they’re going to start to feed off of it,” Bednar said. “Once they get going, they’re a lot to handle.”
Footnotes: Avs captain Gabe Landeskog was activated from long-term injured reserve Monday afternoon and participated in warmups for the first time in nearly three years, but his NHL return will have to wait. Wood, not Landeskog, replaced an injured Ross Colton in the lineup for Game 2.
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