Dallas Stars: Rads’ hatty against Avs powers Stars to fourth straight win

The Dallas Stars shutout the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night 4-0, extending Dallas’ win streak to four, with one game remaining in their current homestand on Saturday night against the Chicago Blackhawks.

To say that the confidence in the Dallas Stars has been renewed over the course of the past several days would be an understatement. The Stars have won their last four games, beating the Los Angeles Kings 4-3 in overtime, defeating the Blues 4-1, blanking the New York Rangers 1-0, and last night’s victory over the Avalanche.

Dallas’ win against Colorado was fueled primarily by the return of Alexander Radulov, who sat out of Tuesday’s game against the Rangers after being late to a team meeting earlier in the day.

"“We’re all human. I just overslept and came a little bit late at the time I was supposed to be here,” Radulov said to dallasstars.com writer Mark Stepneski after the game. “The rules are rules for everybody. I think it is in the past. We’re done. I’ll deal with it. It’s okay.”"

But, Radulov made a big return, scoring three goals to net his first career hattrick.

"“It’s always nice to bounce back and have a game like that,” Radulov said to Stepneski. “You just have to do the little things to help your team win. When you get a chance to score a goal, it is always nice. But the most important thing is the win.”"

Radulov’s first goal of the game was late in the first period. Jamie Benn had gotten the puck in the left face-off circle and thrown a pass to Radulov in front of the net, who deflected it past Avs’ netminder Semyon Varlamov.

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The Russian veteran also scored 8:55 into the second period with a snipe that beat Varlamov’s blocker for his second goal of the game.

Jamie Benn also got involved with the scoring, sending a one-timer off a feed from Jason Dickinson to increase the margin to three goals. Benn, who has five points (four goals, one assist) in his last three games, has 25 goals on the season.

The Avalanche pulled Varlamov with several minutes left in the third. At 17:02, Radulov broke free in the neutral zone after deking by Tyson Barrie and put the puck in the vacant net for his first career NHL hatty.

"“He’s a great competitor and we expected him to play at a high level tonight,” Montgomery said of Radulov’s performance to Stars’ Senior Writer Mike Heika. “You could tell that he had intensity about him the way he was practicing while he was out.”"

Radulov has 20 goals and 54 points on the season. He is second on the team in points behind Tyler Seguin, who has 61.

The Stars also dominated physically in the game. Blake Comeau had the most with six, Benn and Esa Lindell both had five, and Roman Polak had three.

"“This time of year, the league gets hard,” Dickinson said to Heika. “This is crunch time and top guys have to be top guys. They’re going to have their time to shine. [Radulov] played a great game tonight, [Klingberg] played a great game the other night, it’s going to be a different guy every night."

Goaltender Ben Bishop also had a spectacular outing, stopping all 31 shots in the game, including shutting down the Gabriel Landeskog-Nathan MacKinnon-Mikko Rantanen line, which had torched the Stars earlier in the season, scoring 14 points (7 G, 7 A) in the previous two meetings between the Stars and Avalanche.

"“It wasn’t perfect, they had some chances, but all in all, the game ended 4-0, so it was fine,” Dickinson said to Stepneski. “It took all three of us on my line and the defense we were out there with to shut them down. It was a highly-talented line.”"

It was Bishop’s second consecutive shutout to total five on the season.

The Stars moved to 35-27-5—75 points on the season with Thursday night’s win to stay in the Western Conference’s first wild-card spot. The Minnesota Wild, who are also looking to bust into the top three in the Central Division, have 74 points and are right behind the Stars in the standings. Dallas and Minnesota are looking to dethrone the St. Louis Blues from third place. St. Louis, who shutout the Los Angeles Kings 4-0 on Thursday, has 78 points. They play at San Jose on Saturday.

Dallas’ next game will be the last in their three-game homestand, as they’ll host the Chicago Blackhawks. Chicago has struggled this season—at 65 points, they’re last in the Central and nine points (and four teams) out of a playoff spot.

The Stars have played the Blackhawks twice this season, going 1-1 (losing 5-2 at home on Dec. 20 and winning 4-3 on Feb. 24 at the United Center).

Saturday night’s game will be the third of four meetings between the two teams in the regular season.

• Published on 03/08/2019 at 18:00 PM
• Last updated at 03/08/2019 at 18:00 PM