DALLAS (AP) — With the numbers in their favor, Joe Pavelski and Tyler Seguin came through in the shootout for the Dallas Stars.
Pavelski and Seguin both scored against goalie Robin Lehner in the tiebreaker to lift the surging Stars over the Chicago Blackhawks 2-1 on Saturday night for their sixth consecutive victory.
Dallas is 10-0-1 during an 11-game point streak, one shy of the team record.
Pavelski, with 104 career shootout attempts, has converted 38% of them. Seguin is even better at 51% in 57 tries.
Lehner, meanwhile, has stopped only 51% of the 96 shots he’s faced in shootouts.
"I'm not very good at them,” Lehner said. “I don't seem to make the save on the shootout but I do on the breakaway. I've tried to do a lot of different things."
At the other end was Dallas goalie Anton Khudobin, who stopped Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in the tiebreaker.
Khudobin has been successful on 81% of the 61 shootout attempts against him.
“I didn’t know what to expect because I know they are both a hell of a player,” Khudobin said. “The stat says 50-50 they are going to be deking or shooting. On the first one, I’m lucky that I got the poke check. On the second one, it hit my glove, and went out. That’s it.”
Khudobin tied his season high with 38 saves, including one on a breakaway by Kane in overtime.
“He was the best player in the game,” Stars coach Jim Montgomery said. “We’re very fortunate to have (Ben Bishop) as our starter and have him as 1B or 1A.”
Lehner finished with 40 saves.
Roope Hintz scored for Dallas and Olli Maatta for the Blackhawks in the first period.
Chicago had two possible goals disallowed in the third.
Just 2½ minutes into the period, a long video review confirmed a call of no goal after Khudobin stopped a close-up wrist shot by Dominik Kubalik and two other attempts to poke in the puck by David Kampf and Andrew Shaw.
With three minutes to play, Dylan Strome redirected Maatta’s shot from the left point into the net. The ruling that the puck went off a high stick was upheld following a review.
“We had a couple that may have went in,” Chicago coach Jeremy Colliton said. “That's going to happen. Sometimes you're going to get the bounces and the calls, but some nights you're not. I thought we did enough to score.”
A pair of Stars just off injured reserve combined for the game’s first goal at 14:08 of the first period. In front of the net, Hintz deflected John Klingberg’s shot from the blue line past Lehner to become the first Dallas player with 10 goals this season.
Maatta tied it with his first at 17:24. He took a cross-ice pass from Alex DeBrincat in the left faceoff circle, and Maatta’s wrist shot went in off Khudobin’s left leg.
Nobody scored in the second period, even though each team had two power plays. It ended with two Stars and a Blackhawks player in the penalty boxes. Shots on goal for the teams over the first two periods were 25 each.
Khudobin also stopped a snap shot by Zach Smith on a 2-on-1 break with nine minutes to play.
By then, the game had swung back in the Stars’ direction. Chicago killed a penalty, and with 5:39 left Dallas’ Jason Dickinson shot wide from short range.
By going 13-1-1 in the last 15 games, Dallas has moved into second place in the Central Division, three points behind St. Louis.
“(Chicago’s) a division rival,” Montgomery said, “and I don’t think we were on top of our game like we have been, and we still found a way to win.”
NOTES: Lower-body injuries had sidelined Hintz for seven games and Klingberg for six. ... Dallas killed off all four Blackhawks power plays and has been successful on 34 of 37 penalty kills in the past nine games. Chicago’s power play is 1 for 17 in the last six. … Kane assisted on Maatta’s goal to extend his point streak to 12 games. In 59 career games against the Stars, Kane has 59 points (28 goals, 31 assists). He has more goals vs. Dallas than any other team, with highs of 38 assists and 62 points against St. Louis. Kane is averaging at least a point per game against 17 teams. … Stars C Justin Dowling left late in the second period with an upper-body injury and didn’t return.
UP NEXT
Blackhawks: Play the Stars again at home on Tuesday.
Stars: Complete a four-game homestand Monday against Vegas.
