Blues even series on Backes’ OT game-winner, beat Stars 4-3

“They got a lucky bounce in the end and scored the game victor”.

The series matching the Western Conference’s top two teams switches to St. Louis for Game 3 on Tuesday night.

The St. Louis Blues will be coming home with their second round series tied up 1-1.

Stars rookie center Mattias Janmark had a breakaway goal 4 1/2 minutes into the third period, and Dallas was nearly immediately on the power play after the ensuing faceoff. “But we can’t have that excuse in Game 2, we need to take a game in this building”. “We knew it wasn’t going to be an easy series”, St. Louis netminder Brian Elliott said. An exciting overtime filled with fantastic saves and huge breakaways finally ended courtesy of Blues captain David Backes, who got his second career overtime victor in the playoffs.

So though Lehtonen didn’t have the flashy statistics, the 15 high-danger saves of Elliott (he had nine) according to war-on-ice.com, the Stars goaltender was the one with the victory at the end.

Long before they were on their home country’s coaching staff for the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics, Hitchcock was coach of the Stars when the franchise won its only Stanley Cup in 1999, complete with a disputed clinching goal in triple overtime of Game 6 against Ruff’s Buffalo Sabres. “We completely turned that around”. “We went into attack mode and stayed on it the whole time”. When they needed a hero on Sunday the puck fell to Backes’ stick, and now perhaps we see the irony here. “And if he didn’t get it up I could turn around and find a rebound”, said Backes, who entered these playoffs without ever having scored a playoff OT victor, and now has two.

Dallas will likely be without right wing Patrick Eaves, who late in the opener got hit on the lower leg by a teammate’s shot and struggled to get off the ice before hobbling to the locker room.

Jamie Benn, Alex Goligoski and Mattias Janmark scored in regulation time for the Stars, who got two assists from Cody Eakin. And by 9:02, Backes buried a rebound from Alexander Steen’s point blast to tie the series at one game apiece as it shifts to St. Louis on Tuesday.

St. Louis Blues goalie Brian Elliott (1) stops a shot by Dallas Stars center Mattias Janmark (13) during the first period in Game 1 in the second round of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs Friday, April 29, 2016, in Dallas.

The Blues, once again, showed their resiliency in this postseason by recovering from a blown lead to pull off the win in overtime. “We had our power plays and didn’t do a good enough job”. Heck, it took two power plays before Niemi was finally beaten. On top of that they have also scored a power-play goal in each of the three games at Scottrade this year (3/12, 25%).

Backes was quick to praise the play of Pietrangelo and Steen for making those small plays that win tight playoff games. But the Stars were 0 for 4 with the extra man, and are now 1 for 20 on power plays at home this postseason.

The overtime period was a close fought affair with both sides trading opportunities, and St. Louis edging Dallas 8-5 in shots.

“I saw some of the effects of that the first two periods”, DeBoer said.

“We just hope that winning a series does for him what it should do to other players”.