The Dallas Stars power play struck for two goals, and two-point nights from Kevin Connauton, Travis Morin and Tyler Seguin helped lead the team to a 4-2 preseason victory over the St. Louis Blues at the Sprint Center in Kansas City.
It was Blues first-round pick Roddy Fabbri who opened the scoring early in the first period after a slick backhand pass from T.J. Oshie. Branden Troock answered quickly for the Stars to knot the game at 1 off a Jamie Oleksiak assist..
The other big action of the first period involved former Stars pest Steve Ott, who nailed Matej Stransky with a check and drew the ire of a Stars player for the second consecutive game. This time, it was current Stars agitator Antoine Roussel who answered the bell, picking up an instigator and misconduct as well as the fighting major for responding to the hit. Ott was also penalized with an interference for the original hit.
A power play goal by Morin from Seguin and Connauton gave the Stars their first lead of the game early in the second. Dallas got a second power play goal later in the period from Derek Meech, who was set up by McKenzie and Morin. But the two-goal lead didn’t last very long as Paul Stastny picked up his first preseason goal for the Blues at even strength shortly thereafter.
It’s hard to really get a sense of the game, especially as there was no real-time shot tracking to imply which team had the puck at any give time. We know that the Blues outshot the Stars 7-6 in the first, having two power plays to the Stars none, and 12-8 in the second even though the Stars had a few power plays to work with.
The Stars got their two-goal lead back in the third when Connauton got a shot past Blues goalie Jordan Binnington with assists from Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin.
Given the lack of stats available from the game, it appears Anders Lindback played the whole evening for Dallas with Jussi Rynnas as his backup. The win brings the Stars to 3-1-0 in preseason while the Blues have yet to pick up a preseason win.
The Stars get a break tomorrow before starting a home back-to-back set Monday with a game against the Florida Panthers at the American Airlines Center.