Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Minnesota Wild 3, Dallas Stars 1

By Mark Stepneski of Andrew's Stars Page

The Dallas Stars' playoff hopes ended over the weekend. The Minnesota Wild, despite a 3-1 victory over the Stars at Excel Energy Center, saw their slim hopes take a hit Tuesday night.

The loss was the seventh in the last eight games for the Stars, who are at .500 on the season (35-35-10) with two games remaining.

“Some of our mistakes came back and bit us,” Stars coach Dave Tippett said. “We gave them some glorious chances and they capitalized. We have some guys putting in some hard honest work but we are going to need more of that.”

The victory kept the Wild within three points of the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, but there are only two games remaining and the Wild, despite the win, are now on the brink of elimination.

The Wild were briefly within one point of eighth place because of a Nashville regulation loss, but when St. Louis won 5-1 at Phoenix, it pushed the Blues into eighth place and the Wild to three points back again.

Fabian Brunnstrom scored the lone goal for the Stars and Matt Climie, getting his second NHL start, stopped 29 of 32 shots to fall to 1-1-0 since being called up from Idaho of the ECHL.

"Second period, he was under siege," Tippett said of Climie, who faced 17 shots in the second period and stopped 15 of them. "We could've protected him a lot better than we did."

Minnesota opened the scoring 14:26 into the game when Gaborik slipped a pass to Andrew Brunette off the rush, went to the front of the net and tapped a return pass past Climie to make it a 1-0 game.

The Wild took control of the game with two power play goals in the second period and Gaborik set up both of them. On the first one he got a way from Stars defenseman Darryl Sydor, put a shot on net and Eric Belanger scored on the rebound to make it 2-0 at 8;58 of the second.

The Wild scored again when Mikko Koivu got the puck to Gaborik, whose wide open shot from the slot was stopped by Climie, but Owen Nolan scored off the rebound at the 14:28 mark for his 25th goal of the season.

The Stars made it a 3-1 game at the 7:26 mark of the third period. After Climie made a great stop on Belanger, the Stars headed up ice and Mike Ribeiro set up Brunnstrom, who slipped the puck past Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom for his 15th goal of the season.

Vishnevskiy debuts

The game marked the NHL debut of defenseman Ivan Vishnevskiy, the Stars first round pick (27th overall) in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft.

"I didn’t take too many risks, I just kept things simple for my first game," Vishnevskiy said. "I am just trying to learn as I go.”

The 21-year-old Russian-born defenseman played 17:18, had no points, an even rating and two penalty minutes.

“Vishnevskiy was pretty good for a young kid, he jumped in some plays and did fine,” Tippett said.

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