Dallas Stars: After defeat 3: St. Louis, Stars must make another comeback in the playoffs

Two weeks later, the Stars find themselves in the same situation: they drag in a playoff series after a defeat at home against the third match.

The Stars lost to St. Louis 4-3 on Monday night in Game 3 of their second-round series, giving the Blues a 2-1 lead after the teams split a pair of games in the Missouri. last week. It's the same situation that Dallas faced in the first round against the Predators, and they continued their defeat in Game 3 with three straight wins over the Nashville elimination.

"One can draw experiences, but it's a different series," said Stars striker Andrew Cogliano. "It's a different team, I think at the end of the day we did not play well enough to win tonight."

Pat Maroon scored the winning goal with 1:38 left in the third period, beating Ben Bishop from the other side with a shot from the brink. Maroon's goal was crowned by a wild sequence in the third period in which four goals were scored in 5:16.

Alex Pietrangelo scored while he only had 5:36 left in the third period to give the Blues a 3-2 lead, which deflated the arena after Cogliano's out-of-range goal, 78 seconds earlier, tied at 2 points. match the score to 3 with 4:08 remaining.

Overtime seemed imminent, but then Maroon played the hero of the Blues.

Jaden Schwartz and Tyler Bozak also scored for the Blues, while Alexander Radulov added a goal for the Stars. Bishop made 29 saves in a lost effort. Game 4 is 8:30 pm Wednesday at American Airlines Center.

"These past 48 hours, I'm sure they've learned how fast and how fast we are," said star defender Ben Lovejoy. "And maybe we heard it too.We were not good enough.I thought they'd made us work.They were harder than us, and they were more disciplined in their game. They continued to have deep pucks, they kept us lucky, but I thought it was the best team tonight. "

The Stars are hardly against the wall, not with a decent effort Monday night and with two other defeats before their elimination. On Monday night, the Blues and Stars were tied, with similar shooting attempts (55-52 Dallas), shots on goal (31-27 St. Louis) and scoring opportunities (33-32 Dallas) at 5 out of 5.

But the Blues scored greasy goals – Schwartz deflected a shot from Robert Bortuzzo in the first period, and Bozak blocked at home a loose puck that snuck into Bishop – which the Stars did not find often enough.

Dallas had a series of highly skilled games that led to scoring opportunities, including Jason Spezza's saucer pass to the slot and a barely open Radulov that resulted in a goal. Heiskanen narrowly missed Seguin. Bishop's pass to the opposing blue line for Cogliano and a partial breakaway were thwarted by Carl Gunnarsson's backcheck.

And so, after two almost equal games and a close match, it's the Blues who are the ones who hold the bar.

"We have always preached to improve throughout the series, and we must continue to do so," said Stars coach Jim Montgomery.

This is the type of situation that the Stars have savored in the final right and in the playoffs. They were calm against deficits in the games. In the first round, the Stars won three of the four games in which they scored the first goal. They trailed after match 3 of this series. On Monday night, they scored twice in the third period to clear the goals of a St. Louis goal.

The Stars did not panic and Montgomery created an informal culture within the team.

Before the third game, Montgomery was asked what he had learned about match 3 against Nashville in the first round, when the Stars controlled the game but were complicated by an unusual evening for Bishop and the power play.

"We did not get the expected result, but we were the best team," he said. "We have continued to improve, we need to continue improving this series, I thought St. Louis had made a lot of progress from game 1 to match 2 in many areas, and we need to do the same."

Blues are not predators, however. They closed most of the series in the middle of the ice and their front lines are deeper and better than those in Nashville. Their defensive group is led by Colton Parayko, Pietrangelo and a rookie goaltender at Jordan Binnington.

The challenge is steeper, but the Stars know him well. After losing the third game against Nashville, they eliminated the Predators 5-1 in the fourth game, thus starting a dominant end of the series.

"As a team, we talked a lot about staying balanced, staying stable," Lovejoy said. "The guys who have been in this situation, you know the ups and downs, you win a game and you feel that you can plan your Stanley Cup party, you lose a game and you feel like the end of the season. What we did in the first round came out and probably played our best Match 4 playoff game. We still need that effort. "