Arttu Hyry stole the puck from Cale Makar and finished on his backhand with 1:20 gone in the third period. Dallas was short-handed. Colorado had the extra skater and still found itself trailing 2-1.
The short-handed goal put the Stars ahead 2-1, and Dallas eventually beat the Colorado Avalanche 3-2 in a shootout Wednesday at Ball Arena. The Stars’ power play finished 0-for-2, while their penalty kill denied all four Colorado opportunities. In a game where neither team converted its own power play, Hyry’s goal became the clearest special-teams separator.
The timing made it more valuable than a routine insurance marker. Dallas had just taken a tripping penalty at 21 seconds of the third period, giving Colorado the extra skater. Hyry won possession and carried the chance the other way and finished with an unassisted backhand.
The goal did not come after the penalty expired; it came while Dallas was still short-handed. That is a rather dramatic way to make a penalty-kill shift pay dividends.
It was Hyry’s first goal this season. The modest personal milestone carried immediate value for Dallas: a penalty-kill shift had put the Stars ahead instead of merely keeping the score tied.
That distinction matters because the Stars’ offense at even strength was hardly overwhelming. Miro Heiskanen had tied the game 1-1 at 15:03 of the second period, with assists from Mikko Rantanen and Thomas Harley. Heiskanen’s wrist shot restored Dallas’ footing after Gabriel Landeskog put Colorado ahead at 4:55, but it did not create much separation.
Hyry supplied the second regulation goal from a situation usually associated with damage control.
Colorado answered at 8:21 of the third, when Brock Nelson scored on a wrist shot assisted by Artturi Lehkonen and Nazem Kadri. That tied the game and removed the immediate benefit of Hyry’s strike. Still, the sequence showed why the goal mattered: Dallas had produced a lead without a power-play goal, and Colorado had to erase it rather than simply build on its own advantage.
The Avalanche also had more attacking volume. Colorado put 27 shots on goal to Dallas’ 22. The Stars blocked 19 shots, compared with Colorado’s 17, and won 54.4% of the faceoffs.
Those figures do not describe a Dallas barrage. They describe a team that had fewer chances to spend and needed one mistake, one read and one finish to count for a great deal. Hyry’s goal did exactly that.
