DALLAS– Radek Faksa made a promise to his 2 1/2-year-old son when they were playing together before the Dallas Stars took the ice for Game 7.
Faksa really scored in his return to the lineup after missing four games with an undisclosed injury. His go-ahead goal came on a backhander 44 seconds into the third period after his son was taken home, and Dallas defeated the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights 2-1 on Sunday night to end the series of the former. shift.
“I’m glad I did it,” Faksa said. “And so I can show him the video in the morning and we can watch it together.”
Only captain Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin played more time for the Stars than Faksa, a fourth player in his ninth season who scored his goal from the circle to goalkeeper Adin Hill’s left. Dallas also scored another goal in Game 7 from 20-year-old Wyatt Johnston.
Jake Oettinger made 21 saves in his second win of Game 7. He also had the Stars’ only penalty, although they killed him after he was called for tripping Ivan Barbashev in front of the net midway through the third.
“The last period was a clinic. I’m really proud of the way we responded,” Oettinger said. “These are long playoffs and you’re going to need different guys to step up at different times. There’s still a lot of hockey left, so I hope there are a lot more heroes.
The Stars, the No. 1 seed in the West, move on to face well-rested Colorado in the second round. Game 1 will be in Dallas on Tuesday night, a week after the Avalanche wrapped up their series against Winnipeg with a Game 5 victory.
Brett Howden scored for Vegas, which failed to get another series winner in Dallas, where last year the Knights wrapped up the Western Conference final with a victory in Game 6. Hill made 22 saves in his third game of this series after Logan Thompson started the first four.
The visitor won the first four games of this series until the home team served in the last three games.
“There are probably a lot of skeptics out there. After Game 2, they probably thought we couldn’t come back,” Benn said. “There are many believers in this room, in this organization. And we showed them.
Dallas has won Game 7 in each of its first two postseasons for coach Pete DeBoer, who is now 8-0 in his career in those games with four different teams. That includes the Knights’ only Game 7 wins in 2020 and 2021 when he was their coach.
Johnston scored his series-best fourth goal with a wrister from the top position with 5:26 left in the first period, after receiving a pass from Shea Theodore that his teammate, Tomas Hertl, missed by giving a pass. crooked blow to him.
A day after his 20th birthday last May, Johnston became the youngest player in NHL history with a game-clinching goal in Game 7. He caught a puck that bounced off his back in the third period of the Stars’ 2-1 victory over Seattle in that second-round series.
Sunday’s own goal came in quick succession after Vegas had two scoring chances. Oettinger made a tough save to deny Jack Eichel and Jonathan Marchessault, then fired the rebound off the left post and past Johnston before the Dallas youngster skated the other way and scored about 10 seconds later.
“I think some of our players probably won’t sleep tonight because if you look at what happened in the game,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We hit a post, we knocked it down, they scored 10 seconds later. We lost an open net late in the second, and they score on the first shift of the third. … Sometimes it’s a bit of hockey when two nearby teams play.
The series ended with both teams scoring 16 goals.
Vegas, which returned 22 of its 27 players from its Stanley Cup-winning roster, tied it in the second period when Michael Amadio passed a crosscourt pass to Howden, who slotted the puck into the open left side of the net behind Oettinger.
The only coach other than DeBoer to win eight Game 7s is Darryl Sutter, who was 8-3 in such games in 182 playoff games in 15 four-team postseasons.
The Knights are 2-2 in Game 7. DeBoer was also the opposing coach in the other loss, to San Jose in 2019.
It was just the second time in 16 that the Stars had won a best-of-seven series after losing the first two games. The only other was the first playoff series in franchise history, when the Minnesota North Stars went down 0-2 before defeating the Los Angeles Kings in seven games to open the 1968 playoffs.
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