The victory puts St. Louis back in the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2001.
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Fabbri scored a power-play goal 5:23 into the first period off a rebound to give the Blues an early 1-0 lead. Meanwhile the “A Team” of Mike Emrick, Eddie Olczyk and Pierre McGuire, which was hustled to from Pittsburgh to Dallas to call the final Blues-Stars game, will work the Pittsburgh Penguins-Tampa Bay Lightning series in the East.
No one seriously thought Hitchcock was about to jump the shark here and name Allen to play Game 7 for the Blues.
Tarasenko took a shot from in front of the left circle that somehow got behind Lehtonen into the net with about 2 minutes left in the first period that appeared to make it 2-0. That was just weeks before the Stars used their fifth-round pick in the draft to select Jamie Benn, now their captain and with a NHL-high 15 points this postseason.
Stars coach Lindy Ruff rotated between Lehtonen and Niemi all season, but in Game 7 he chose Lehtonen over Niemi, who has appeared in three Game 7s in his career.
In fairness, Dallas wouldn’t have made it to Game 7 if Lehtonen hadn’t turned his game around, if only briefly.
“Obviously you don’t like seeing that”. “We have world-class goalies”. In both instances, they were important goals. “It’s breakdowns, all kinds of things”. Here, he gets a helping hand from Brouwer and Fabbri (there’s that line again!) on a great tic-tac-toe play just inches from goaltender Kari Lehtonen. That level of goaltending will not result in a deep run in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Lehtonen was much improved this postseason over the past, but still inconsistent.
“Right now is not the time to assess blame”. “You got to look at the whole picture”. On the Stars side, Jamie Benn didn’t practice today but it was an optional skate. Among the other forwards under contract are veterans Jason Spezza and Patrick Sharp, along with Ales Hemsky, Antoine Roussel and Cody Eakin, along with promising youngsters Radek Faksa and Mattias Janmark. They have pulled the goalie several times in this series.
St. Louis responded with two goals in the final 1:38 of the period. To go from missing the playoffs last season to getting here tonight is a massive undertaking. He then sustained what the team said was a different but related lower-body injury.
This win became the fourth straight game in the series won by the visiting team; in fact, of the seven games, five were won by teams on the road, thus defying the myth of home-ice advantage.
With his goal and assist Wednesday he is now up to six goals and six assists in 14 playoff games this year.
“They’re the future of the National Hockey League”.
“I think that (it’s) a huge disappointment”, Ruff said. They deserved a better fate, but sometimes, that’s just life. We all recognize that. “Everybody sees, everybody knows he’s been lights-out for us”.
Patrik Berglund also had two points and Jori Lehtera added two assists Wednesday at American Airlines Center arena in Dallas. The Stars also lost 6-1 in Game 3 of this series.
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“Nice short plays, and we buried our opportunities”, Brouwer said.
