A major penalty should give an attack time to change a game. Dallas got a narrower opening Friday because another call arrived alongside it. At 2:49 of the third period, St. Louis defenseman Brandon Carlo received a five-minute kneeing major and a game misconduct. Dallas defenseman Thomas Harley was penalized for cross-checking at the same stoppage.
Those calls offset for two minutes, creating four-on-four hockey. Only after that shared penalty time expired did Dallas receive nearly three minutes of five-on-four power-play time. For the Stars, whose opener ended in a 4-0 loss to the Blues at American Airlines Center, that was the cleanest recoverable opening of the night. It disappeared without a goal.
The offset reduced the opportunity, without removing it. They lost a shortened advantage in a 2-0 game, then watched Tyler Seguin take a high-sticking double-minor at 7:29 of the third, sending St. Louis to the power play instead. The two teams finished 0-for-4, but Dallas’ special-teams failure carried the more obvious game-state cost: it never changed the scoreboard.
Joel Hofer deserves substantial credit. The Blues goaltender stopped all 25 Dallas shots, including four during Dallas power plays, for his ninth NHL shutout. A penalty kill still needs a goalie who handles the shots that arrive, and Hofer did exactly that. His performance explains why the Stars’ chances produced no reward, even if it does not excuse the lack of a finish.
The chance mattered because Dallas had already accumulated a manageable deficit through two damaging sequences. Mason McTavish opened the scoring 1:34 into the game by putting in a rebound after Jake Oettinger stopped Colton Parayko’s first attempt. In the second period, a puck Oettinger tried to play behind the net wound up with Pius Suter.
Suter moved it to Philip Broberg, who found Dalibor Dvorsky for a goal at 13:05 while Oettinger was unable to regain the crease cleanly after contact with Roope Hintz.
Those were different kinds of breakdowns, but both made the next controllable opportunity more valuable. Dallas did not need the power play to repair every flaw. One conversion during that advantage would have cut a two-goal deficit in half. Instead, the minutes passed without Dallas scoring, and Hofer preserved the lead.
The third period also contained a favorable ruling for Dallas. St. Louis’ Adam Jiricek appeared to score during a Blues power play early in the period, but Dallas successfully challenged the play for offside and the goal was overturned. That was a useful defensive win, not evidence of a Dallas scoring chance.
It kept the margin from growing, which made the subsequent five-on-four opportunity even more consequential. The Stars had been handed a reprieve; they could not convert their own opening afterward.
