With seven minutes left in the second period, the Blue Jackets and Stars were locked in a fast, physical 1-1 game at American Airlines Center.
Columbus, on the second game of a back-to-back, had checked well, skated well and done a solid job limiting the Stars’ chances off the rush and kept their high-octane offense in check. The only damage, to that point, was a floater from the left wing boards early in the second period, and Scott Hartnell had answered it with a power play goal.
And in a span of 3:54, the dam broke for Dallas and the league’s top team blew the game wide open.
The Blue Jackets’ fourth line got caught out on a long shift (that nearly resulted in a goal for Columbus), but with the long change in the second period, they couldn’t get to the bench and had to defend down at the other end.
Alex Goligoski capped off a whirlwind sequence, scoring a long rebound off the lively end boards behind rookie goaltender Joonas Korpisalo, giving Dallas a 2-1 lead with 6:58 left in the middle frame.
A few minutes later, the Blue Jackets went for a wholesale line change and the Stars caught them red-handed.
John Klingberg hit Tyler Seguin, who was fresh off the bench, with a 150-foot pass and he was in all alone on Korpisalo. Seguin gave the rookie goaltender a quick pump fake and slid it through the pads, increasing the Stars’ lead to 3-1 at 16:26.
Then, 30 seconds later, Seguin found himself alone in the slot with a point-blank look at Korpisalo, and in the blink of an eye, it was a 4-1 Dallas advantage. All the work the Blue Jackets had done early in the game (out-shooting the Stars 16-8 in the first period and controlling long stretches) and through the midway mark of the second was undone in an instant, and they were faced with a steep uphill climb in the third.
“They surged. That’s one of their strengths,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said. “That six or seven minutes buried us. I thought our first period was probably the best period we’ve played all year, but they surge and they score the goals and our chances, we just didn’t finish. You wonder what happens if you finish on some of our chances.”
Down three goals entering the final 20 minutes, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for the Blue Jackets to make the game interesting. A week ago, in this same building, the Stars blew a 5-1 lead to Carolina before scoring the game-winning goal on the power play with less than 20 seconds remaining.
It was doable, but the Blue Jackets had to get one early. Instead, the Stars did.
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