Stars get double-overtime win on Corey Perry’s goal, stay alive in Stanley Cup finals

Perry’s second goal Saturday night, at 9:23 of double overtime, gave the Stars a 3-2 win over the Lightning in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals and let the Stars stave off elimination. Game 6 is Monday night in the NHL’s postseason bubble at Edmonton’s Rogers Place.

Perry has three goals in the past two games. On Saturday, he became the fifth player in NHL history to notch five or more career postseason overtime goals.

“Get one; keep going,” he said. “We start building here, and I think we’re starting to do something special.”

Earlier Saturday, Stars interim coach Rick Bowness alluded to the team’s resilience throughout the postseason and reiterated the “full faith” he has in his players. That mind-set carried over into Game 5 as the Stars withstood multiple late pushes from Tampa Bay, which was eager to close out the series and head home from the NHL’s unusual postseason amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“You love him on your team,” Bowness said of Perry. “I’ve coached against him long enough — I know he’s a pain in the butt.”

With a depleted lineup for a team that has taken an all-hands-on-deck approach to the playoffs, Dallas found some comeback magic Saturday night. Even after it managed only two shots on goal during the first overtime period, Dallas finally sneaked one past Vasilevskiy in double OT.

“We’ve played a lot of hockey the last 24 hours, and we’re having fun,” Stars forward Joe Pavelski said. “We’re not ready to go home quite yet.”

Before the game went beyond regulation for the second straight day, Pavelski saved the Stars in the third period with his tying goal with 6:45 remaining. Anthony Cirelli nearly had Tampa Bay hoisting the Stanley Cup after his shot beat Stars goaltender Anton Khudobin with about four minutes left, but it pinged off the post.

Tampa Bay appeared to have all the momentum heading into Game 5 after it went ahead 3-1 in the series with a 5-4 overtime win Friday night. But in the second game of the Stanley Cup finals’ first back-to-back since 2009, the Lightning struggled to get going offensively.

In a mostly stagnant opening period, Dallas got the scoring started with Perry’s tally under the arm of Vasilevskiy (30 saves) at 17:52. It was Perry’s fourth goal of the postseason.

Tampa Bay’s Ondrej Palat evened the score at 4:37 of the second, cutting in from the right wing and sliding the puck around Khudobin’s right pad. It was his 11th goal of the playoffs.

Defenseman Mikhail Sergachev gave Tampa Bay a 2-1 lead with a shot from the point at 3:38 of the third period off a drop pass from Brayden Point. But after his team came up empty during its second power-play chance, Pavelski gave Dallas the equalizer.

That was Pavelski’s 61st career playoff goal, the most by a U.S.-born player. Pavelski, who has 13 goals in 26 postseason games this year, had 14 goals in 24 playoff games while reaching the finals with San Jose in 2016.

Khudobin came out on top, continuing his surprising postseason run. With 39 saves Saturday, he became the fifth goaltender since 1955-56 to record at least 700 saves in a single postseason.

“For him to come in in [a] back-to-back and play like he did tonight and give us that opportunity to win just speaks volumes about his character, his compete and his willingness to do whatever he can to win the game,” Bowness said.

Still, teams that go up 3-1 in a best-of-seven series in the finals own a series record of 33-1. The only team to execute a comeback was the Toronto Maple Leafs, who won the Stanley Cup in 1942 after losing the first three games.

On Saturday, the Stars were without Roope Hintz (who suffered an injury on a hit from Tampa Bay’s Tyler Johnson in Game 4), Blake Comeau, Radek Faksa and Ben Bishop. Justin Dowling made his 2020 postseason debut, taking Hintz’s place in the lineup. With Comeau, Hintz and Faksa out, the Stars were missing three of their top five penalty-killing forwards.

Tampa Bay was again without its captain; Steven Stamkos has missed all but one game this postseason — Game 3 of this series, when he played 2:47 and scored on his first shot before exiting with an undisclosed injury. Stamkos is questionable for the rest of the series but has not been ruled out. Monday will also bring just the second Game 6 the Lightning will have played this postseason; it closed out its first- and second-round series in five games.

“We’ve been in this situation before,” defenseman Victor Hedman said. “We’re a resilient group. We know how to respond to adversity.”