In Ben Bishop’s final start of the 2019 calendar year, he backstopped his team to a victory with a big performance against the Colorado Avalanche. On Sunday night, backup goaltender Anton Khudobin had a similar performance to help the Dallas Stars beat Taylor Hall and the Coyotes on the road in Arizona. The Stars recorded their second win in a row while they handed the Coyotes their third loss in as many games.
The Coyotes, who are the second-place team in the NHL’s Pacific Division, recently acquired the 2018 NHL MVP Taylor Hall who opened the scoring for the Coyotes in the first period. By the end of the opening frame, Arizona would be up 2-0, however, that lead would not last for long. Despite not putting one in throughout the entirety of the game’s second period, the Dallas Stars exploded for four unanswered goals, all being scored in the game’s final frame.
Jamie Benn would score his team’s first goal just over two minutes into the period which kickstarted the frame for the hometown Stars which would result in an explosive twenty minutes. Radulov would score his team’s second goal with an absolute bomb right past Antti Raanta after Andrej Sekera dished the puck to Radulov with what would be a beautiful no-look pass.
Roope Hintz completed the Stars comeback, scoring the game-winning goal with just under five minutes left in the game. The Dallas Stars leading goal scorer recorded his 13th of the season, this bringing the game to a close and handing the Coyotes their third straight loss. Mattias Janmark would then score an empty netter to add some salt to the wound for Arizona.
The Stars ended off 2019 with two big back-to-back wins from both of their goaltenders. The Dallas Stars next game will open the 2020 calendar year in the NHL on New Years’ Day against the Nashville Predators. The Stars will have an advantage over the visiting opposition as the Predators are currently coming off of back-to-back losses to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Alexander Radulov has been one of the Stars key players as of late. Sunday nights matchup against the Arizona Coyotes saw Radulov continue a point streak of eight games. Through those eight games, Radulov has been on fire scoring three goals and adding eight helpers for a total of 11 points. Tyler Seguin has also been performing quite well, recording nine total points in his last eight games.
With the help of their All-Star players, Dallas currently holds the third place spot in the Central Division. As of now, they sit two points back of Colorado for the second place spot, however, the Avalanche do have a game in hand despite falling to the Stars on Saturday night. With a win on New Year’s Day for the Stars and a loss for Colorado on New Years Eve, the Stars would tie the Avalanche in points, however, Colorado would still likely sit above Dallas in the standings due to their higher goal differential.