Photos by Dominic Ceraldi
One streak continued, and one ended on Tuesday night at American Airlines Center, as the Stars lost 4-1 to the St. Louis Blues.
Not only was it the Stars’ fourth consecutive loss, but it also snapped an eight-game home winning streak – tied for the second-longest such streak in franchise history.
The loss put a damper on an electrifying goal from Riley Damiani, who scored in his NHL debut. His goal gave the Stars a 1-0 lead with under five minutes remaining in the second period in what was a tightly contested scoreless contest up to that point. His goal sent the crowd of 18,012 into a frenzy and gave the Stars life.
“I just fanned out to the backdoor, and Klinger made a great play,” Damiani said to reporters after the game. “I think he’d be pretty mad if I missed that one. It was exciting and I’m happy it went in. All around a good feeling.”
Unfortunately for Dallas, the Blues came roaring back. They found the equalizer less than two minutes later on a goal from Colton Parayko, and then scored three times in the third period on a tallies from Justin Faulk, Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko to give them a 4-1 cushion.
Jake Oettinger got the start and finished the game with 24 saves on 28 shots. It marked just the second loss of any kind this season for the young netminder, who’s now 5-2-0 in eight appearances.
Stars head coach Rick Bowness had strong words for some of his players in his postgame press conference with the media.
“When you get one goal, and it’s from Damiani’s first NHL game, that’s incredibly disappointing in a big game like this,” he said. “We had some guys who, I’ll have to check the video to see if they even played. I couldn’t find them on the ice. Unless you want to show up and get your nose dirty and get involved in a game like that then you’re a complete non-factor, and we had a few of those guys that were complete no-shows. We have no chance if we have guys that don’t want to show up and play in those games.”
The loss dropped Dallas’ record this season to 13-11-2 (28 points) and made its seven-game winning streak seem almost like a distant memory.
Ty Dellandrea skated in his first game with the Stars this season, recalled earlier in the day from Texas along with Damiani.
The Stars were without Joel Kiviranta (upper-body injury) and Alexander Radulov (illness), and also Roope Hintz (illness), who was placed on injured reserve retroactive to Dec. 9 against LA.
These two clubs will meet again on Friday at Enterprise Center in St. Louis.
Courtesy Kyle Shohara
