Johnston scores twice, Stars hold off Wild in Game 2 to even West 1st Round

DALLAS -- Wyatt Johnston scored twice, and the Dallas Stars defeated the Minnesota Wild 4-2 in Game 2 of the Western Conference First Round at American Airlines Center on Monday.

Matt Duchene had a goal and an assist, and Jason Robertson scored for the Stars, who are the No. 2 seed from the Central Division. Nils Lundkvist had two assists, and Jake Oettinger made 28 saves.

“(Oettinger)’s an unbelievable goalie, and he was awesome tonight and made so many huge saves. I think it was obviously a big win for the team, and obviously it was great to help try to get him the win. He’s just an unbelievable goalie, and we all love him. He’s a huge part of our team,” Johnston said. “(Playing consistent) is really important, especially come playoff time. Momentum’s huge. You’re never really going to play a full 60 (minutes) where you just dominate the whole time, so I think it’s important to just stick with your game. Get to your game as fast as you can and just stick with it as long as you can. I think we’re a dangerous team when we do that.”

Brock Faber scored his first two Stanley Cup Playoff goals for the Wild, who are the No. 3 seed from the Central. Quinn Hughes had two assists, and Jesper Wallstedt made 28 saves.

“They’re a good hockey team, right? It’s going to be a battle of a series, and we knew that coming in. We knew that they were going to respond this game,” Faber said. “I think we’re the tougher team. I think we have to be tougher mentally. That’ll only be good for us. We had our chances. We had our looks, and it’s onto the next. That’s how it is. We’re physically tougher, 100 percent. I think mentally the scrums and stuff that drains the life out of the bench and positivity. There’s a time and place for it, and I think they had the upper hand in that tonight. But still, again, we had our chances to win.”

Dallas evened the best-of-7 series 1-1. Game 3 will be at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Wednesday (9:30 p.m. ET; TNT, truTV, HBO Max, SN360, TVAS, Victory+, FDSNNO, FDSNWI).

“From our end, anyways, it was a playoff game. I thought they played two, we played one. It’s more of what we look like, more of the way we are, but you can still see how tight it is. You got good games from both teams, and it’s tight,” Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said. “We did try to clean up some things (on the penalty kill), but you could see a lot more, even in our whole game, a lot more connectivity. We looked at the goals. We know what happened there, studying these things for a long time. But a lot of it was battles and better awareness of what they were trying to do and taking it away. We were just a little quicker.”

Johnston gave the Stars a 1-0 lead at 8:58 of the first period. His slap shot from above the right face-off circle deflected off Wild forward Danila Yurov and then bounced off the end boards and in off Wallstedt's left arm.

“I’ve had a goal like that go in on me, too, that’s a tough bounce,” Oettinger said. “Like I said in Game 1, we got some bad bounces. We got a nice bounce there. We had one where I was behind the net, and the guy was shooting it in the net and our (defense) stopped it, so we got some good bounces. The way we played the last 40 minutes of the game, I think, didn’t give up much, had a ton of good chances offensively. The power play, we got looks and our (penalty kill) was great. If we kind of build off the game that we played the last 40 minutes, I think we should feel very good for the next few games.”

Faber tied it 1-1 at 11:33. He took a pass from Hughes, skated around Robertson in the left circle and cut to the slot, where his wrist shot ramped up and in off Oettinger.

Duchene put the Stars back up 2-1 with a power-play goal at 4:02 of the second period. Mikko Rantanen gained the offensive zone along the right boards and sent a backhand pass to Duchene, who snapped the puck between Wallstedt's pads from in front.

Robertson made it 3-1 at 7:09 of the third period when he tipped Lundkvist's wrist shot from the blue line past the right pad of Wallstedt.

“I think we got to do a better job, I mean, the odd-man’s, right? I thought we played a really good game. Probably their best game, you know, meaningful game. And, yeah, we didn’t get fazed by it. Was really good by us. Just got to be smarter in some areas, and we get to go back home and in front of our crowd,” Minnesota forward Marcus Foligno said. “They want (penalties). I mean, they're looking to play 5-on-4. I mean, that's their game. They can't hang with us 5-on-5. We got to just be smarter, and myself included. But it's a heated game out there. You're gonna have emotional swings and learn from it. We got a split series.”

Faber cut the deficit to 3-2 at 9:47, burying a wrist shot from the high slot to the blocker side for his second goal of the game.

Dallas was called for too many men on the ice with 3:44 left in regulation, but Minnesota, which finished 0-for-4 on the power play, was unable to find the equalizer.

“I thought it was a hard-fought game by both teams. They were going to play hard. I thought we played hard as well. So, I thought from a competitive aspect there wasn't much difference. With Kirill (Kaprizov) and those guys, I thought there were some good pushes in the third,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “Some of (their penalty kill success) I think was some of our execution, to be honest with you. Other than that, I think that they were a little bit more aggressive. I thought they were able to break up some plays with some sticks and they pressured a little bit. They won some more puck battles. When we were in the corners trying to recover pucks, they were a little bit better in that area than we were tonight."

Johnston scored an empty-net goal while on the power play at 19:10 to secure the 4-2 final.

“You don’t want to go down 2-0 in a series. It’s a mountain to climb. But I think it was good just to show each other what we can do and not get pushed out of the series. It was a great response from everyone in front of our fans. Our fans were great, especially with the late game. And we’re gonna try to ride the momentum into Game 3,” Robertson said. “Going on the road now in a tough building and a tough environment. We’re gonna have to have even higher desperation there. We’ll be all playing for each other there. It’s gonna be hostile, but it was a good performance tonight in terms of the battles and the races. It’s gonna be a long series.”  

NOTES: Johnston became the second Stars/North Stars player age 22 or younger to record 20 career playoff goals, joining Steve Payne (24). ... Only three defensemen in Wild history were younger than Faber (23 years, 241 days) at the time of their first career playoff goal: Mathew Dumba (20 years, 265 days), Jonas Brodin (22 years, 287 days) and Marco Scandella (23 years, 69 days). ... Minnesota forward Bobby Brink was minus-1 and had one shot on goal in 12:27 of ice time in his playoff debut. ... Wild forward Yakov Trenin left the game with 5:12 remaining in the first period after taking an open-ice hit from Stars forward Colin Blackwell. ... Minnesota forward Mats Zuccarello did not play after sustaining an upper-body injury when he was elbowed in the head by Dallas defenseman Tyler Myers in Game 1. There was no further update postgame.