Griffins Edge Stars in Weekend Finale

Oct 30, 2022

CEDAR PARK, Texas – The Texas Stars, American Hockey League affiliate of the NHL’s Dallas Stars, fell by a final score of 4-3 to the Grand Rapids Griffins Sunday night at the H-E-B Center at Cedar Park.

 

The Stars and Griffins skated to a 2-2 tie in period number one to open Sunday night’s action. Claiming the game’s first goal was Stars’ captain Curtis McKenzie, who chipped in a net-front rebound on the power play to give Texas a 1-0 lead at the 5:41 mark. In a similar fashion to McKenzie, Dominik Shine evened the score 1-1 at 10:04 by swatting in a bouncing puck five-hole to beat netminder Anton Khudobin. Roughly two minutes later, Rhett Gardner received an outlet pass from Riley Tufte before scoring a shorthanded goal on a breakaway to put the Stars back on top 3-2. First-period scoring concluded with the Griffins evening the score at two thanks to a seeing-eye shot by Eemil Viro. With the game even after 20 minutes of play, Texas led Grand Rapids 14-6 in shots on goal.

 

The second period saw the Griffins take their first lead with a goal 37 seconds in on a one-timer off the stick of Jonatan Berggren after a feed from Joel L’Esperance. A second goal for Grand Rapids by Austin Czarnik at 6:24 put the Griffins up 4-2 and forced a goaltending change for Texas as Matt Murray took over in goal. Fredrik Karlstrom cut the deficit to one when his attempt at a pass from the right dasher hit a Griffin defender’s skate before sliding through Jussi Olkinoura’s five-hole. That concluded scoring for the middle period as Grand Rapids claimed a 10-4 shots advantage in the second frame while still trailing 18-16 in total after 40 minutes.

 

The Stars rallied to outshot the Griffins 12-5 in the final period and claim a 30-21 shots advantage, but were ultimately unable to score the equalizer as Grand Rapids skated away with a 4-3 victory to salvage a split of the two-game series.

 

Picking up the win in goal for the Griffins, Olkinuora stopped 27 of 30 shots. For the Stars, Khudobin was handed the loss after making seven saves on 11 shots before Murray entered the game and stopped each of the 10 shots he saw.

 

Next on the docket, Texas heads north of the border into Canada next weekend to take on the Manitoba Moose Friday, Nov. 4 at 7:00 p.m and Sunday, Nov. 6 at 2:00 p.m. in Winnipeg.

Photo Credit: Andy Nietupski

Game Info	Shots	Goaltenders	3 Stars (Xerox Business Solutions Southwest)
Boxscore	TEX: 30	W: Olkinuora (GR)	1: Edvinsson (GR)
Photo	OPP: 21	L: Khudobin (TEX)	2: Czarnik (GR)
Video			3: Gardner (TEX)