DALLAS — Radek Faksa made a promise to his 2½-year-old son after they have been enjoying collectively earlier than the Dallas Stars took the ice for Game 7.
Faksa did certainly rating in his return to the lineup after lacking 4 video games as a result of of an undisclosed harm. His go-ahead objective got here on a backhander 44 seconds into the third interval, after his son had been taken dwelling, and Dallas beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights 2-1 on Sunday night time to wrap up the first-round sequence.
“I’m happy I did,” Faksa mentioned. “And so I can show him the video in the morning, and we can watch it together.”
Only captain Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin have performed longer for the Stars than Faksa, a fourth-liner in his ninth season who received his objective from the circle to the left of goalie Adin Hill. Dallas additionally received one other Game 7 objective from 20-year-old Wyatt Johnston.
Jake Oettinger had 21 saves in his second Game 7 victory. He additionally had the Stars’ solely penalty, although they killed that off after he was referred to as for tripping Ivan Barbashev in entrance of the online halfway by the third.
“The last period was a clinic. Just so proud of the guys of how we responded,” Oettinger mentioned. “It’s a long playoffs, and you’re going to need different guys to step up at different times. A lot of hockey left, so hopefully a lot more heroes. It’s going to be a fun ride.”
The Stars, the No. 1 seed in the West, transfer on to play well-rested Colorado in the second spherical. Game 1 is in Dallas on Tuesday night time, per week after the Avalanche wrapped up their sequence towards Winnipeg with a Game 5 victory.
Brett Howden scored for Vegas, which could not pull off one other sequence winner in Dallas, the place final yr the Knights wrapped up the Western Conference finals with a win in Game 6. Hill had 22 saves in his third recreation of this sequence after Logan Thompson began the primary 4.
The visiting group received the primary 4 video games in this sequence till the house groups held serve the final three.
“There’s probably a lot of doubters out there. After Game 2, they probably thought we couldn’t come back,” Benn mentioned. “A lot of believers in this room, in this organization. And we showed them.”
Dallas has received Game 7s in every of its first two postseasons for coach Pete DeBoer, who’s now 8-0 in his profession in such video games with 4 completely different groups. That contains the Knights’ solely Game 7 wins in 2020 and 2021 when he was their coach.
Johnston scored his series-high fourth objective on a wrister from the highest of the slot with 5:26 left in the primary interval after selecting off a clearing go by Shea Theodore that his teammate, Tomas Hertl, missed when taking a twisting swipe at it.
A day after his twentieth birthday final May, Johnston turned the youngest participant in NHL historical past with a game-clinching objective in a Game 7. He gathered a puck that ricocheted off the again boards in the third interval of the Stars’ 2-1 win over Seattle in that second-round sequence.
The objective Sunday towards got here in fast succession after Vegas had two scoring possibilities. Oettinger made a tricky save to disclaim Jack Eichel and Jonathan Marchessault then shot the rebound off the left publish, and received a success on Johnston earlier than the Dallas teen skated to the opposite finish and scored about 10 seconds later.
“I think a couple of our players will probably not sleep tonight, because if you look at what transpired in the game,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy mentioned. “We hit a post, take them down, they score 10 seconds later. We miss an open net at the end of the second, and they score on the first shift of the third. … It’s a little bit of hockey sometimes when two close teams play.”
The sequence ended with each groups scoring 16 objectives.
Vegas, which returned 22 of its 27 gamers from the Stanley Cup-winning roster, tied it in the second interval when Michael Amadio made a crossing go to Howden, who poked the puck into the open left facet of the online behind Oettinger.
The solely coach aside from DeBoer to win eight Game 7s is Darryl Sutter, who was 8-3 in such video games over 182 playoff video games in 15 postseasons with 4 groups.
The Knights are 2-2 in Game 7s. DeBoer was additionally the opposing coach in their different loss, to San Jose in 2019.
It was solely the second time of 16 that the Stars received a best-of-seven sequence after shedding the primary two video games. The different was the very first playoff sequence in franchise historical past, when the Minnesota North Stars have been down 0-2 earlier than beating the Los Angeles Kings in seven video games to open the 1968 playoffs.