Stars defeat Sharks, keep pace in wild card race in West

DALLAS -- Michael Raffl scored a shorthanded goal, and the Dallas Stars kept pace in the Western Conference wild card race with a 2-1 win against the San Jose Sharks at American Airlines Center on Saturday.

"We got the job done in the third period," Dallas coach Rick Bowness said. "That was our best period. They're hard to play against, the teams that are out of the playoffs. They have a lot of speed over there, a lot of young players, and they made it hard for us to play. We battled through. That's all that matters. Find a way to win."
Tyler Seguin scored, and Jake Oettinger made 23 saves for the Stars (43-27-5), who are 3-0-1 in their past four games and remained tied for the first wild card with the Nashville Predators, who defeated the Chicago Blackhawks 4-3 earlier Saturday.
"We know the type of road trip we have ahead of us, obviously three good teams (Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames)," Oettinger said. "All three are either in the playoffs or fighting for their lives. We had to take care of business here at home and set ourselves up for a great road trip. If we take care of business on the road, the last week of the season we won't really need to rely on anyone (to qualify for the playoffs)."

Timo Meier scored for the Sharks (29-34-11), who have lost nine in a row (0-6-3). Kaapo Kahkonen made 24 saves.
"There's no moral victory," San Jose forward Sasha Chmelevski said. "It [stinks] to lose how many we've lost straight now. It doesn't matter that we were close or not, we didn't win."
Seguin gave Dallas a 1-0 lead at 5:55 of the first period when he drove the net and redirected a backdoor pass from Ryan Suter.
"A lot of the tips was actually just working on it with a buddy on an outdoor rink back when I was recovering from my surgery (a right hip arthroscopy and labral repair on Nov. 2, 2020)," Seguin said. "This little tiny rink, just working on everything I probably wouldn't usually because I had so much time to kill and couldn't really skate around much. He'd be shooting pucks at me and I'd be working on tips, and they've been working."

Raffl made it 2-0 at 13:32 of the second period, one-timing a backhand cross-ice pass from Luke Glendening on a 2-on-1.
"I thought tonight we played exactly how we want to play in this building against an urgent team," Sharks coach Bob Boughner said. "We know how important this game was for Dallas, and we tried to match that urgency early. I thought we did. I thought we played with good structure."
Meier scored to cut it to 2-1 at 19:23 of the second when he shot through traffic from above the circles.
"Losing is losing, no one wants to lose," Sharks forward Nick Bonino said. "Personally, I'm proud of the way we've battled the last eight. We don't look like a team that is out of the playoffs. Our hunger and our effort and our execution, we're playing well. We're just not scoring as many goals as the other team is."