Forward scores 3 goals for 1st time since 2017, Dallas moves within 1 victory of Western Final
WPG at DAL | Recap | Round 2, Game 4
DALLAS — Mikael Granlund scored a hat trick for the Dallas Stars, who pushed the Winnipeg Jets to the brink with a 3-1 win in Game 4 of the Western Conference Second Round at American Airlines Center on Tuesday.
It was Granlund’s first career hat trick in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It was also just the third time in his NHL career he has scored three goals in a game, and the first since Dec. 29, 2017, when he played for the Minnesota Wild.
Dallas leads the best-of-7 series 3-1. Game 5 will be in Winnipeg on Thursday (9:30 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX).
“When you pass all the time, you know, you’re going to surprise the goalie maybe once in a while to shoot the puck,” Granlund said. “The job is not done. We have a lot of work to do. So you know, a good win, and we have a tough game ahead of us in Winnipeg.”
WPG@DAL, Gm4: Granlund posts first playoff hat trick of his career
Jake Oettinger made 31 saves for Dallas, which is the No. 2 seed from the Central Division. Miro Heiskanen, who was playing in his first game since Jan. 28 because of a knee injury, had an assist in 14:52 of ice time.
“Tonight was the first night we’ve actually had our full team together, and everyone is still not 100 percent, but a nice feeling to have. I hope we can keep everybody in a healthy place, we can keep this going for a little bit,” Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. “I got goose bumps when the crowd cheered, when they announced [Heiskanen’s] name. That’s a great shot of energy for our group tonight. It’s always toughest to win two in a row. You knew [the Jets] were going to push. They pushed hard. I thought they played hard all night. We needed a little bit of a shot of energy, and we got it from Miro, we got it from Granlund, we got it from [Oettinger].”
Nikolaj Ehlers scored for Winnipeg, which won the Presidents’ Trophy as the team with the best record in the regular season. Connor Hellebuyck made 21 saves.
“Just win one game, leave it all out there,” Hellebuyck said. “I leave it all out there every night. I’m doing my best. Sometimes it’s a heartbreak, but all it takes is one little change, one little bounce and things can start going our way. We’re a good team, so we can really rack [the wins] up, but we’ve just got to worry [about] one at a time.”
WPG@DAL, Gm4: Ehlers knocks one by Oettinger to tie it up early in the 2nd
Granlund gave Dallas a 1-0 lead at 8:36 of the first period. He skated through the neutral zone and into the high slot before scoring glove side through Neal Pionk for a power-play goal.
Ehlers tied it 1-1 at 1:02 of the second period. He took a pass along the right boards and scored with a sharp-angled shot that deflected in off Oettinger two seconds after a power play expired.
“I actually thought we played a really good game. I think at the end of the day, we got to score on our chances. It’s as simple as that,” Ehlers said. “They scored and we didn’t. We need to find a way to get some better looks and get pucks through, get the rebounds. We need to be harder on pucks. They’re hard on pucks when they get in the battles, and we need to be harder and get those pucks out. And that’s where we’ve been able to create a lot of chances throughout the regular season. So, we need to be a lot harder.”
Granlund responded to put Dallas back in front 2-1 at 17:52 of the second. He skated in on a 2-on-1 rush and roofed a shot over Hellebuyck’s glove from the inside edge of the right circle.
Oettinger then preserved the one-goal lead at 5:19 of the third period by making a save with his left pad on a short-handed breakaway chance by Kyle Connor.
“We feel like when we have everyone we’re going to be a tough out. We got all our guys back healthy, different guys are stepping up every night. We feel like when we play the right way and focus on our net first, we’re going to be tough to beat,” Oettinger said. “We’ve been right there the last two years. The ball is in our court now, we’re up 3-1. It’s on us to play a mature game up in Winnipeg. We don’t want to have to come back here and play again. We’ve all been talking about how bad we want to get back to the conference final, now it’s our turn to show up.”
Granlund completed the hat trick during the same power play to make it 3-1. He roofed a one-timer glove side on Hellebuyck from the outside edge of the right circle at 7:23.
“I thought we played a good hockey game. We had 70 shot attempts and scored one goal. We’re not going to, if we can’t find more than one goal, we’re not going to win hockey games, especially against this hockey team,” Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said. “I liked a lot of what we did 5-on-5, I liked a lot of the opportunities that we created. I loved our first period. We got off to a great start, had them hemmed in, had some great looks. Oettinger made some big stops. But like I said, we had 70 shot attempts. We’ve got to get more than that, more than one goal off of those. Maybe [we need to start] driving harder than that, finding those rebounds, screening, whatever it is. We’ve done it. We’ve done it in the past and we’ve got to find a way to do it in the next game.”
