Tag: NHL hockey

SUNRISE, Fla. — The Eastern Conference Finals have been a goaltender duel, and nobody should have expected otherwise.

Seems fitting that the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers are knotted at one game apiece heading into Game 3 on Sunday afternoon, given that a pair of Russian netminders and past Vezina Trophy winners as the league’s top goalie — Sergei Bobrovsky for the Panthers, Igor Shesterkin for the Rangers — have basically matched each other save-for-save, stat-for-stat.

Bobrovsky has allowed the Rangers to score two goals. Shesterkin has allowed the Panthers to score two goals, not counting an own goal deflected in by a teammate and an empty-netter that New York yielded in Game 1. And the similarities hardly end there.

“It’s definitely fun,” Bobrovsky said.

Fun is one way to describe it. Hair-raising, gut-churning, and nail-biting would also apply.

The Rangers evened the series on Friday with a 2-1 overtime win at Madison Square Garden, Barclay Goodrow the hero 14:01 into the extra session by beating Bobrovsky and giving New York — which finished with the NHL’s best regular season record — a needed split of the first two games before heading on the road for Games 3 and 4.

There’s been almost no breathing room over the first two games: Through 134 minutes and 1 second of hockey so far in the East finals, 130:13 of it has come with the margin on the scoreboard being one goal or less. The goalies have just been that hard to beat.

“He’s been terrific, he’s been terrific this year and he’s certainly been terrific in the playoffs,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said of Shesterkin. “I thought there was good goaltending at both ends. … Both of these guys are good goaltenders.”

Take away the own goal from Game 1 — Florida’s Carter Verhaeghe got credited with a score that made it 2-0 late in the third when Alexis Lafrenière tipped the puck past Shesterkin — and the goaltender numbers are almost perfectly matched. Bobrovsky has stopped 52 of 54 shots he’s seen, a .963 save percentage. Shesterkin has stopped 50 of the 52 Florida shots that have gotten to him, a .962 mark.

And it’s not a new thing that Bobrovsky and Shesterkin are mirroring one another. Consider these stats, which include both this regular season and the playoffs:

— Shesterkin’s record is 45-20-2, Bobrovsky’s is 45-21-4. They both had 36 regular-season wins, they both have nine wins so far in the playoffs.

— Shesterkin’s save percentage is .915, Bobrovsky’s is .914.

— Bobrovsky’s goals-against average is 2.33, Shesterkin’s is 2.51.

— Bobrovsky’s even-strength save percentage is .922, Shesterkin’s is .920.

— Bobrovsky’s save percentage when facing a power play is .877, Shesterkin’s is .871.

“Two really good goaltenders at each end,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “It’s an exciting series, exciting hockey. Lots of hits, lots of action.”

Just not a lot of goals.

“Obviously, two of the best goalies in the world and it’s a showdown out there,” Verhaeghe said. “We’re looking to get chances and they both are playing unreal. That’s all I can say.”

Goodrow scored four goals, one of them a game-winner, on 61 shots in 80 games during the regular season for the Rangers. In the 12 playoff games, he has four goals, two of them game-winners, on just 12 shots.

He was asked to explain. He could not.

“I don’t know,” said Goodrow, the only skater in the Rangers lineup who has won a Stanley Cup; backup goalie Jonathan Quick is a three-time Cup hoister, including last season with Vegas. “I’m just trying to bring the same game every night, trying to do whatever I can to help the team win games.”

Going back to his time in Columbus, Bobrovsky had won 12 consecutive overtime playoff games — tying the longest such streak in NHL history with Patrick Roy.

And the Panthers had won 11 OT playoff contests in a row, which ends up as the second-longest run in Stanley Cup playoff history behind a 14-game stretch of OT wins by Montreal from 1993 through 1998 (with Roy in the net for much of that).

Florida fell to 13-9 all-time in playoff overtime games.

Friday’s game was the 100th playoff overtime game in Rangers history. It was the 98th playoff game — total — in Panthers history.

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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl kept Edmonton even with Vancouver and Evan Bouchard capped the Oilers’ big win over the Canucks.

McDavid and Draisaitl each had a goal and three assists, and Bouchard scored 5:38 into overtime as Edmonton beat Vancouver 4-3 on Friday night to even their second-round playoff series at one game apiece.

“When they put on a show like the did tonight it’s hard to stop them,” the Oilers’ Mattias Ekholm said.

Ekholm also scored and Stuart Skinner finished with 16 saves for Edmonton.

Draisaitl was listed as a game-time decision earlier in the day due to an undisclosed injury after he appeared to be in pain late in Edmonton’s 5-4 loss Wednesday. He played and had a big game when the Oilers needed it.

“He’s a great player,” McDavid said. “He’s an amazing player, one of the best players in the world, the best player in the world on a lot of nights. And tonight was one of those nights.”

Nikita Zadorov had a goal and an assist, and Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser also scored for the Canucks. Arturs Silovs made 27 saves.

“We’re not going to get too high or too low,” Canucks defenseman Quinn Hughes said. “For the most part we played a pretty solid game and now we just look forward to Edmonton.”

Game 3 in the best-of-seven series is Sunday in Edmonton.

In the extra period, Bouchard got the game-winner with a shot from near the boards that skittered in past Silovs.

“There was lots of resilience,” McDavid said. “I thought we were a little unlucky to be down in the third but we stuck with it, we hung in there all night. It feels good to come into their building and earn a win.”

McDavid used his speed to tie the score 3-3 at 5:27 of the third. The elite center picked up a contested puck in the neutral zone, sprinted down the ice ahead of a pair of Canucks defensemen, and sent a shot flying under Silovs’ blocker for his second postseason goal.

Edmonton continued to press for the winner late, hemming Vancouver into its own end for extended stretches and outshooting the home side 15-2 across the third period, but had to settle for overtime.

“Too many guys were flipping pucks when we didn’t have to,” Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet said about his team’s play in the third period. ”I guess that’s playoff experience. You have the puck, you have someone on your back, skate with it, keep your heart rate down. I feel as soon as somebody got it, they flipped it. Everybody. There were plays to be made but we never gave then anything to defend.“

Edmonton and Vancouver both went 1-for-3 on the power play.

The Canucks opened the scoring on an early power play. With Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in the box for tripping, J.T Miller wound up and looked like he was about to launch a big shot from the faceoff circle. Instead, he sliced a pass across the slot to Pettersson, who fired a quick snap shot past an out-of-position Skinner 4:16 into the game for his first of the playoffs.

Edmonton’s potent power play got to work before the first intermission after Tyler Myers was called for hooking. Stationed at the goal line, McDavid sent a pass in the slot to Draisaitl, who fired it in to tie the score at 1-1 with his sixth goal of the playoffs at 10:56.

Silovs kept the Oilers from taking a lead into the locker room with some last-second heroics at the end of the opening period. Ekholm fired a slap shot from distance and the rookie goalie got a glove on it. He couldn’t contain the puck, however, and Hyman was there to scoop up the rebound. Silovs then dove across the net to stop the sniper from the side of the net.

The ice opened up early in the second after Edmonton’s Derek Ryan was sent to the box for interference and Vancouver’s Nils Hoglander was called for slashing, setting up two minutes of 4-on-4 hockey.

Fifty-three seconds into the period, Carson Soucy fired a shot on net from inside the blue line and Boeser tipped it in past Skinner from the middle of the slot. His fifth goal of the playoffs put the Canucks up 2-1.

The lead lasted 23 seconds.

With both sides still down a man, Draisaitl sent a pass to Ekholm from the blue line and the veteran defenseman sent a shot sailing past Silovs from the high hash marks, knotting the score at 2-2 with his second of the postseason.

Zadorov put the home side up once again with 1:43 left in the second. The bruising defenseman picked up a puck from Miller in the neutral zone, streaked down the ice and unleashed a wrist shot that soared up and under the cross bar to make it 3-2. It was Zadorov’s fourth of the playoffs.

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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

DALLAS — Miles Wood screamed for the puck, and delivered the game-winner in overtime for the Colorado Avalanche once he got it.

Wood scored on a hard-charging backhander 11:03 into OT after getting the puck from Andrew Cogliano, and the Avalanche, after trailing by three goals in the first period, beat the top-seeded Dallas Stars 4-3 on Tuesday night in the opener of their second-round Western Conference series.

“Instead of just turning and firing it … (Cogliano) gets his eyes up and Wood was fresh and went slashing through their D,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “When Woody get’s going like that, he’s hard to stop. He’s fast and he’s powerful, and he just took it to the house.”

Staying ahead of defenseman Miro Heiskanen, Wood got the puck around Jake Oettinger to wrap up only the Avalanche’s third three-goal comeback to win a playoff game in their history — and first since 1997.

“There’s a scrum in the corner there. … I was just screaming ‘Chip, chip, chip.’ He made a great play, and from there on out, I just used my speed,” said Wood, still breathing heavily from the game-winning play. “I definitely kicked it into high gear there.”

Cale Makar had a goal and two assists for Colorado, while Valerie Nichushkin had a goal and an assist. Nathan MacKinnon had the tying goal only 39 seconds into the third period when left open just to the left of the net, and Mikko Rantanen, who had two assists, had a shot off the post midway through the third period.

“It would have been easy to kind of fold after that first period,” MacKinnon said. “But we felt like we were playing better than what the score showed. We wanted to see it through”

Alexander Georgiev had 19 saves while winning his fifth consecutive start in goal for the Avs. But Dallas, after nine shots on net in the first period, had only seven combined the rest of regulation, and six in overtime when he denied Tyler Seguin twice in less than a minute and knocked down a couple of long high shots by Thomas Harley.

“He’s been playing great for us. We’re all so pumped for him,” Wood said of the goalie. “He let in three there in the first quickly, but he was solid from there on out.”

Stars goalie Oettinger stopped 22 shots, ending his six-game streak of allowing two goals or less.

Dallas led 3-0 in the first period against the 2022 Stanley Cup champion, only two nights after wrapping up a seven-game series against Vegas, last year’s champ, in which both teams finished with 16 goals and the margin was never more than two goals.

“It’s a tough turnaround for us as a group. I thought we had a great start,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “The fatigue from Game 7 I thought hit us in the second half of that game.”

Jamie Benn had a goal and an assist for the Stars, who lost their series opener at home like in the first round when they dropped the first two games. Ryan Sutter and Wyatt Johnston also scored goals.

Game 2 is Thursday night.

Colorado scored 28 goals in five games against Winnipeg, and had gone a full week since wrapping that series up in five games. The Avs had three comeback wins against the Jets, but none of those were from more than one-goal deficits.

It wasn’t the first time this season for the Avalanche to come back from a 3-0 deficit in Dallas. They were down that early in the second period back in November before scoring six unanswered goals in a 6-3 win.

“You can’t take a breath with these guys,” Benn said. “They’re a great team.”

Colorado scored two power-play goals in the second period, with Nichushkin getting his eighth goal of the playoffs, and extending his goal-scoring streak this postseason to six games before assisting on Makar’s goal that got them within 3-2.

Nichushkin, the 10th overall draft pick by Dallas in 2013, knocked in the loose puck after Makar had a shot off Oettinger that Ryan Suter was unable to clear. Makar did get a wrister from about 50 feet into the net on his next shot.

Suter, the 39-year-old defenseman whose 1,444 career regular-season games are the most for any player without winning a Stanley Cup, put the Stars up 1-0 with a 60-footer from near the left boards only 7 1/2 minutes into the game. Georgiev never saw the puck because of all the traffic in front of the net after Suter got a pass from Matt Duchene, who had just gotten up from taking a hit.

The Stars made it 2-0 directly off a faceoff win by Benn, with the 20-year-old Johnston scoring from the top of the left circle for his fifth goal this postseason.

Dallas was on a 5-on-3 power play when Benn scored with three minutes left in the first period by deflected a flying puck into the net.

And the Stars captain almost had another goal in the closing seconds on another power play. He made a nifty move and made a swiping shot while falling down to get the puck behind Georgiev before defenseman Josh Manson knocked it away from the goal line.

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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL

TORONTO — Brad Marchand broke a tie midway through the third period and the Boston Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 on Wednesday night to take a 2-1 lead in the first-round playoff series.

After Todd Bertuzzi tied it for Toronto with 8:35 left, Marchard put the Bruins back in front 28 second later. He took a pass from Danton Heinen and ripped a shot past goalie Ilya Samsonov’s ear. Marchand capped the scoring with an empty-netter and also had an assist.

“We stuck with it all game,” Marchand said. “We elevated to another level.”

The Maple Leafs were livid at Marchand’s agitating antics.

“The gamesmanship and everything, it’s world class,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said about Marchand. “He’s been in the league long enough … he gets calls. It’s unbelievable, actually, how it goes. We’ve got to play through that.”

Marchand got tangled up with Bertuzzi in the second period with Toronto up 1-0. A frothing Scotiabank Arena crowd clamoring for a penalty, the referees took no issues before Trent Frederic scored the tying goal seconds later.

“I don’t think there’s another player in this series that gets away with taking out Bertuzzi’s legs the way that he does,” Keefe said. “It’s an art and he’s elite at it. We have to manage our way through that.”

Jake DeBrusk also scored for Boston, and Jeremy Swayman made 28 saves. Swayman made 35 saves in Boston’s 5-1 victory in Game 1, then gave way to Linus Ullmark in Toronto’s 3-2 victory in Game 2.

Matthew Knies also scored for Toronto, and Samsonov made 30 saves. Toronto was 0 for 5 on the power play, leaving it 1 for 11 in the series.

“At times we played well,” Keefe said. “Not well enough to get the win.”

Game 4 of the best-of-seven series is Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena.

Toronto pulled Samsonov for the extra attacker with just over two minutes to go, but Maple Leafs captain John Tavares took a holding penalty with 1:04 left and Marchand sealed it with the empty-net goal.

The Maple Leafs opened the scoring with 6:50 left in the second. Mitch Marner deftly moved past a defender and slid a pass for Knies to redirect upstairs on Swayman.

Boston tied it with 2:23 left in the period when Frederic’s shot went off the lost and in. DeBrusk gave Boston a 2-1 lead at 1:07 of third.

UP NEXT

Game 4 is Saturday night in Toronto.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

PHILADELPHIA — Forget flipping games on TV, scrolling social media, reading the ticker or most traditional means of scoreboard watching in the NHL.

The Philadelphia Flyers are ready to tune out the noise — and can only hope when they tune back in, Game 82 will mean something to their playoff fortunes.

“We’re not going to look at the scoreboard,” coach John Tortorella said. “Maybe some people do. I’m not.”

Travis Konecny scored a short-handed breakaway goal and Samuel Ersson stopped 20 shots to keep the resolute Flyers’ miniscule postseason hopes alive with one game left to play in a 1-0 win over the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night.

“I’m just glad they showed who they are,” Tortorella said. “They’ve been that all year long.”

The Flyers entered Saturday with two games left while Pittsburgh, Washington and Detroit all had three games remaining as they competed for the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.

The Flyers had to win both games to have a shot at a playoff berth. The rest hinged on Detroit, Pittsburgh and Washington all losing or tying their games to give the Flyers a slim mathematical edge at making the postseason for the first time since they reached the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2020.

Ersson said he won’t watch the other games “at all” ahead of Tuesday’s finale against Washington.

“You want to look,” he said, laughing. “But I think it’s better to just focus on what we’re doing and what we can control here.”

Konecny’s NHL-best sixth short-handed goal past Kaapo Kahkonen in the second period stood as the difference maker and ensured the Flyers at least ended the game with a chance to extend their season.

“It was just getting back to believing,” Konecny said. “We know where we’re at. We talk in the room about as long as we go home after the last three and say we gave it our best shot, it’s all you can do. You can feel it in the room right now. Guys want to prove we should be in the spot we’re at.”

Just getting to the last week of the season with meaningful hockey to play had to feel like a small win for the franchise. In the midst of a rebuild, the team was widely picked by experts, fans and bettors to finish near the bottom of the NHL. In his second season on the bench, Tortorella instead squeezed every ounce of talent, and summoned all the grit he could out of his players to thrust them into a playoff race.

For most of the season, the Flyers not only played over their heads, they succeeded while navigating the loss of No. 1 goalie Carter Hart to sexual assault charges and the murky circumstances that led to 2022 No. 1 draft pick Cutter Gauthier forcing a trade.

The good times have been scarce in Philly when the NHL playoffs start — the Flyers missed each of the last three seasons and haven’t played a home postseason game since 2018. Philadelphia hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since its lone championships in 1974 and 1975.

So why did the slide start?

Perhaps a notoriously prickly Tortorella pushed his players past the point where they could produce more than what he expected out of them. Ersson went from backup goalie to workhorse and faded down the stretch under the stress of heavy minutes. The Flyers lost eight straight games — a streak snapped only Thursday against the Rangers — against some of the worst teams in the NHL. And only those inside the locker room know the true consequences of Tortorella’s decision to healthy scratch Sean Couturier only 34 days after he was named team captain.

“I know the record thinks we just fell off the map but we were playing good,” Tortorella said. “We just couldn’t keep the puck out of that and we couldn’t score.”

Tortorella said he expected in the preseason for Ersson to play no more than 20 games. The Swedish goalie instead played his 50th out of 81 games on Saturday night.

“We have struggled in net. And it’s not the persons, it’s the goaltending situation that I think knocked us down,” Tortorella said. “I think we’re 90-plus (points) if the goaltending situation didn’t happen the way it did. It caught up to us. And I’m not apologizing to anybody for playing Ers as much as I did. I’d do it again.”

Flyers general manager Danny Briere and team president Keith Jones are poised for another long offseason to figure how to separate the good from this year out of the freefall at the end and find out just what can turn the franchise into winners again.

They just have to keep the faith the decisions won’t start this week.

UP NEXT

Devils host the Islanders on Monday.

Flyers host the Capitals on Tuesday.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Akil Thomas scored his first NHL goal and David Rittich stopped 15 shots as the Los Angeles Kings beat the San Jose Sharks 2-1 on Thursday night to improve their playoff position.

“It felt amazing,” Thomas said. “For me, I just wanted to have a good first (period). To score in the first period kind of just made the nerves go away and made me feel a little bit more comfortable.”

Adrian Kempe also scored for the Kings, who are 7-0-1 in their last eight games against San Jose. Los Angeles moved seven points ahead of St. Louis for the second Western Conference wild card with six games remaining.

The Kings also stayed one point behind Nashville for the top wild card and climbed within one point of Vegas for third place in the Pacific Division.

“We’re well aware of who’s ahead of us, who’s behind us,” Thomas said. “I think we just come to every game knowing that we need the win.”

Klim Kostin scored for the last-place Sharks, who have lost 11 of 12. Mikael Granlund had an assist to extend his point streak to six games.

Mackenzie Blackwood made 25 saves in the loss.

“I didn’t love our team’s first period,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “They played much better in the second and third.”

Kempe scored his 25th goal on a breakaway midway through the first to give the Kings an early lead.

Thomas scored 18 seconds later to make it 2-0. The 24-year-old center was playing his second NHL game. He had 22 goals in 61 games this season for Ontario in the American Hockey League.

Kostin put the Sharks on the board with 1:52 left and Blackwood pulled for an extra skater.

“In the end, all anybody cares about tomorrow is, did you get the two points or didn’t you?” Los Angeles interim coach Jim Hiller said. “So we’ll take the two points. We’ll leave this one behind. We’ll have a rest tomorrow and then we’ll work on the next two points.”

The Kings outshot the Sharks 27-16.

Rittich’s best save came in the first period when he stopped Filip Zadina on a partial breakaway.

“We didn’t give them much,” Kings center Pierre-Luc Dubois said. “We clogged the middle of the ice pretty well. And when we made mistakes, (Rittich) was huge for us.”

Los Angeles center Phillip Danault missed his fourth straight game with an upper-body injury.

San Jose center Jack Studnicka played his 100th NHL game.

UP NEXT

Kings: Host the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday.

Sharks: Host the St. Louis Blues on Saturday.

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TAMPA, Fla. — David Perron scored the go-ahead goal with 2:40 remaining and the Detroit Red Wings ended a four-game winless streak with a 4-2 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday.

Perron shoveled a rebound past Andrei Vasilevskiy to break a 2-2 tie as the Red Wings won the finale of a five-game road trip. Patrick Kane, Robby Fabbri and Lucas Raymond also scored and Alex Lyon made 34 saves to end a personal 0-8-2 streak. The Red Wings have 82 points and are even with the Washington Capitals for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference, though Washington has played two fewer games.

“DP does a lot of things right all the time,” Detroit coach Derek Lalonde said. “He’s an emotional leader for us. No one wants it more than him. It’s one thing to talk, but he’s doing it by example.”

Lyon won for the first time since Feb. 27, an 8-3 win against the Capitals.

“For me it was very satisfying; it’s been a while,” he said. “We’ve got to take it a day at a time and a game at a time. That was a big win, so we can enjoy that one on the flight home.”

Perron said Lyon was “the best player on the ice for us. That’s what we need from our goalies, to be honest. The margin of error is very slim for us, and we’ve got to be solid all the time.”

Anthony Cirelli and Steven Stamkos scored for the Lightning, who had been 8-0-1 in their previous nine. Vasilevskiy finished with 28 saves.

Perron’s goal came after the Lightning had dominated for long stretches of the third period.

“We were in pretty good shape for most of that third period, until we weren’t,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “We haven’t lost in regulation since the first week in March, now we’re in April. We’ve asked a lot from the guys, and they’ve delivered.

“I can’t sit here and be hard on the guys, they’ve played really well for us.”

The Red Wings took a 1-0 lead 37 seconds into the second when Kane picked up the rebound of Dylan Larkin’s shot and whipped in a backhander from the lower right circle. But Cirelli tied it at 8:36 with a shorthanded goal, beating Lyon with a wrist shot from the top of the right circle.

Fabbri put the Red Wings back in front at 3:40 of the third period, jamming a loose puck past Vasilevskiy. Stamkos tied the game 2-2 at 5:59 with a power-play goal.

Raymond hit the empty net with 1:03 left.

The Lightning dressed Kyle Konin, a 26-year-old emergency backup goalie, because Jonas Johansson was unable to play due to a lower-body injury. Konin last dressed for an NHL game on Dec. 2, 2021, for the St. Louis Blues when Jordan Binnington was placed in COVID-19 protocol the morning of their game against the Lightning.

UP NEXT

Red Wings: Host the New York Rangers on Friday night.

Lightning: Open a three-game road trip Wednesday night at Toronto.

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SUNRISE, Fla. — Aleksander Barkov scored twice in the third period to get Florida going, Sam Reinhart scored the lone shootout goal and the Panthers rallied to beat the Detroit Red Wings 3-2 on Saturday.

It was the first time Barkov — in his 11th season in the NHL, all with the Panthers — had ever scored multiple third-period goals on home ice. He picked the right time to do it, and the two points in the standings pulled Florida, at least temporarily, back atop the Atlantic Division with the Boston Bruins.

Boston plays at Washington later Saturday.

“We didn’t like our first period,” Barkov said. “We had some chances but I don’t think that was our game. So after the first period, in the second and third, we started playing a lot harder and that looked more like us. I think we found the way to win and we just need to believe that that’s how we need to play.”

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped all three shots he faced in the shootout and made 20 saves for Florida, which won for the second time in its last eight games.

Dylan Larkin, who took a shot to the inside of his knee 28 seconds into the game and briefly left later in the first period, scored a game-tying goal with four minutes left in regulation for the Red Wings. Robby Fabbri also scored for Detroit to open the game.

Both of those goals came with the man-advantage. Former Panthers goalie Alex Lyon, who played a huge role in getting Florida to the playoffs a year ago, stopped 36 shots for Detroit.

“He was excellent,” Detroit coach Derek Lalonde said. “And he had to be.”

The Red Wings picked up a point and moved within one of Washington, pending the Saturday night outcome, for the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.

“An absolute huge point,” Lalonde said. “Under the circumstances, you probably want both points, but all that said that’s points in two of our last three games.”

Barkov told Bally Sports Florida after the game that the Panthers got yelled at a bit after a lackluster first period. He took coach Paul Maurice’s words to heart and had two goals in the third just 2:43 apart.

“That’s what you want out of your best player,” Reinhart said. “When we’re playing our best, he’s leading the way.”

UP NEXT

Red Wings: Visit Tampa Bay on Monday.

Panthers: Visit Toronto on Monday.

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Roope Hintz had a goal and two assists and the Western Conference-leading Dallas Stars wrapped up a playoff spot, beating the Vancouver Canucks 3-1 on Thursday night for their sixth straight victory.

“You have to do a lot of work, starting six, seven months ago, to give yourself the opportunity to be one of those 16 teams that plays for the Stanley Cup,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “So, I’m just proud of our group. You go through all kinds of adversity through the year, injuries and different things, but we found a way every week to find a way to wins games.”

Jake Oettinger stopped 27 shot to help Dallas improve to 46-19-9 and open a three-point lead over second-place Vancouver in the West.

“It felt like a playoff game,” Oettinger said. “They’re a great team, obviously, over there. They’ve been one of the best teams in the league all year and there’s just not a lot of flaws in that team. So just a good measuring stick and obviously we know what’s at stake. Just to get a gritty win like that is huge.”

Jamie Benn added a goal and an an assist, Jason Robertson had an empty-netter and Joe Pavelski had two assists. Dallas went 2 for 5 on the power play, while Vancouver was 0 for 3.

A “mechanical” power play and careless penalties proved costly for the Canucks, said coach Rick Tocchet.

“I think guys will be disappointed,” he said. “You’re looking for somebody to make a play or maybe a little more discipline. Maybe that’s the difference in the game. These games are coin flips.”

J.T. Miller scored for Vancouver, and Casey DeSmith made 31 saves.

“This is the kind of hockey it’s probably going to be the rest of the way, the kind of hockey it is around the league right now,” DeSmith said. “Everyone’s just trying to buckle down and play the right way, do the right things. I thought we did that for most of the night. Obviously, special teams was the difference.”

Benn gave Dallas a 2-1 lead on a power play with 3:08 left, scoring a snap shot from the slot. The Stars captain has points in eight straight games and goals in six.

Hintz opened the scoring on a power late in the first period. Miller tied it midway through the second, sending a one-timer flying past Oettinger for his 35th.

Vancouver pulled DeSmith late for an extra attacker, only to see Hintz win a neutral-zone puck battle that led to Robertson tucking a shot into the empty net for his 27th.

UP NEXT

Stars: At Seattle on Saturday night.

Canucks: Host Anaheim on Sunday.

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AP NHL: https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL