3 Shoot Outs In The NHL Last Night

Added on Dec 11, 2010 by J Merrill in

NHL

A close night of action in the NHL this past Friday night where three games went into overtime, and all three of those went into the shoot out round. This is a quick recap on how they all went down.

Stars 2 Hurricanes 1

The Dallas Stars squeaked a win over the Carolina Hurricanes in a 2-1 shutout win. Brad Richards and Goalie Andrew Raycroft saved the day for Dallas. Richards had the lone goal of the shootout and Raycroft made 22 saves before stopping all three shootout tries he faced as the Stars beat Carolina 2-1 on Friday night, keeping the Hurricanes winless in Dallas since moving from Hartford in 1997. The Hurricanes haven’t won in Dallas since February of 1996, when they were still the Hartford Whalers. Dallas is 9-0-1 in the 10 meetings since the move.

Andrew Raycroft came up big as he stepped off the bench to take the place of Kari Lehtonen. Lehtonen is currently injured, and is having back spasms. Raycroft is going to be there go to goalie because of the injury. Stars coach Marc Crawford said “Andrew Raycroft was just outstanding. What can you say about Brad Richards? He just finds a way to score and it’s such an important element in today’s NHL, that you’ve got the shootout. Tonight, we only needed the one goal, so that’s great when you’ve got your goaltender playing as well as Andrew Raycroft played for us. It’s a huge two points.”

The Dallas Stars (17-9-2, 36pts) will face Phoenix (13-8-6, 32pts) in Arizona on Saturday, and The Hurricanes(11-12-4, 26pts) are in St. Louis (14-9-4, 32pts) as well.

Oilers 4 Lightening 3

Jordan Eberle scored the shootout winner, but Swedish rookie Linus Omark’s clincher in the Edmonton Oilers’ 4-3 victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday night was the goal that left the sellout crowd at Rexall Place buzzing. Omark sent the 16,839 fans home happy in his NHL debut by scoring a spectacular goal that started with a spin move before he reached the blue line and ended with a wrist shot through Ellis’ legs that gave the Oilers their fifth win in six games.

Nikolai Khabibulin was not only in great form in the shootout, but he looked good during regulation as well. Khabibulin made 38 saves through regulation and overtime, plus two in the shootout. In the end, though, Omark stole the show. Omark said of the wild goal after the game, “That’s my game. I do stuff like that. Why should I stop at this level? I knew that if I scored, we win the game, so I took the chance.”

The Edmonton Oilers (11-12-5, 27pts) will face Vancouver (15-8-3, 33pts) at home on Sunday, and The Lightening (15-10-4, 34pts) will play the Canucks on Saturday.

Ducks 3 Flames 2

For the third straight game, the Anaheim Ducks squandered a two-goal lead and had to decide things in a shootout. Its a good thing for them they have Corey Perry waiting in the wings to provide the finishing touch to his 400th NHL regular-season game. Perry came up with the tie breaking goal for the seventh time in his career. Jonas Hiller made 37 saves, and the Ducks overcame third-period goals by Olli Jokinen and David Moss to beat Calgary 3-2 on Friday night for their 12th straight home victory over the Flames.

Hiller felt there were positives, and negatives in the game. He said after the shootout “The good part is we won tonight. The bad part is we had a two-goal lead and we gave it up again. It shouldn’t have happened. The problem is we start thinking too much about it, instead of just playing. We’re thinking about what could happen. It’s a mental game. We have to do better in the third, and we’re going to work on it.”

The Flames have only manage to win once in their past 22 meetings in Anaheim, and thats including three ties. The last they won was 2004. Coach Brett Sutter said after the game, “Man for man, from our goalie right on out to our defense to our forwards, everyone played hard. That’s the effort we needed to have. We had quality scoring chances. We took pucks to the net and everybody was engaged in the game right from the opening faceoff. We probably deserve better. But when you get to a shootout, anything can happen.”

The Calgary Flames (12-15-3, 27pts) will face Columbus (15-11-1, 31pts) at home on Monday, and The Anaheim Ducks (15-13-4, 34pts) will face Minnesota (12-11-4, 28pts) at home on Sunday.