Dallas Stars game notes: Johnston’s cold as ice & an ugly game still ends with two points in OT win vs Flames

• Some line shuffling to start the third period. Hryckowian is up with Johnston and Rantanen, and the second line is Robertson, Duchene, and Mavrik Bourque.

• Line shuffling worked. First, Johnston scored, then Duchene raced to a loose puck — amongst two Flames defensemen skating right at him and leaving the slot wide open (again) — and chipped a pass over to Robertson, who just barely poked it over Cooley’s pad to tie the game. Calgary was getting away with horrendous defending earlier. Dallas made them pay on the past two chances.

• Calgary has allowed a power-play goal in five straight. Dallas has the second-best power play in the league. They are now 0-3 tonight. And the Flames are doing their best to give them a goal.

• Tyler Myers got danced inside out by Farabee. Oettinger made a huge glove save on a great chance in tight.

• Dallas got a bench minor for too many men with seven minutes to go in the third of a tie game. Yikes. They, including Stars coach Glen Gulutzan, were not happy about the call.

• Now Myers was given a major penalty for boarding. Ryan Strome went off bleeding. It looked like Myers left his feet and exploded up into Strome’s head from behind. But maybe the officials thought Strome turned at the last second… Because somehow, someway, they overturned the call and gave him no penalty. Wow. Stars could’ve been in some real trouble there.

• Rantanen is so good at hockey. Coming in 1-on-3, he still found a way to draw all three Flames to him and slip a between-the-legs pass to Johnston streaking through the slot. Wow.

• Bourque made a great play with a strong stick to win a battle in the neutral zone. Those are the little things he has really improved on.

OT

• Strome got his stick up high on Robertson in the same spot he took the hit from Myers earlier. Robertson’s nose was leaking all over the ice, and Dallas got a four-minute 4-on-3 power play.

• After a very deliberate sequence of chances, sending Duchene out to win faceoffs, then changing, Robertson getting cleaned up and returning quickly, timeouts from both sides, some saves by Cooley, and a whole lot of patience… Johnston got the puck at the goal line, sold the move to the middle of the ice, and quickly cut back to the backhand and chipped it over Cooley’s pad to win the game with his 43rd goal of the season.

• Duchene and Arttu Hyry were 22/27 on faceoffs tonight. Wow. Duchene went 84.6% in the dot. It was a big reason why Gulutzan kept sending him out to win face-offs on the OT power play. He won every draw and quickly got off for Robertson to come back out.

• It was not pretty, and they shouldn’t have needed to make a two-goal comeback in the third period against this team. But they did get two points and kept Minnesota as many away from tying them in the race for home ice. The game on Thursday should be a doozy.

“The third period helps you going into that next game because you had to re-focus and dig in,” Gulutzan said. “I don’t think there will be a lack of focus for the Minnesota game. But the dig in part was encouraging as we go into the Minnesota game because it makes you aware of what your mindset needs to be coming into that game.”

Stars 4, Flames 3 (OT)

Quotable

Stars forward Matt Duchene

“I don’t really care who we have (opponent) right now. I don’t think any of us really like a lot of the stuff we’re doing. Again, the third was better. But we’re not connected like we were on our long point streak. There are a lot of things that go into it, and we’ve got to get back to it.”