DALLAS — Joel Eriksson Ek scored his second goal of the game with 26 seconds to play and the Minnesota Wild rallied from a two-goal deficit to beat the Dallas Stars 3-2 on Friday night.
Eriksson Ek skated from behind the net to the right goalpost and put a wraparound behind Dallas goalie Ben Bishop for the winning goal.
Ryan Donato also scored for the Wild, and Devan Dubnyk stopped 31 shots.
Joe Pavelski and Denis Gurianov scored for the Stars, who led 2-0 early in the second period. Bishop finished with 27 saves.
Eriksson Ek and Donato scored less than four minutes apart to tie the score with less than eight minutes remaining in the middle period.
Before Friday, Eriksson Ek had not scored a point in nine career games against Dallas. His first goal came on a play when he barely touched the puck before it went in off a Stars player’s stick.
Dallas remained third in the Central Division. Central rival Minnesota moved up to a sixth-place tie with Chicago, just two points behind Calgary for the second wild card in the Western Conference.
Dallas came out strong early. Mattias Janmark hit the right goalpost barely a minute into the game, and the Wild killed a hooking penalty to Luke Kunin at 2:23 of the first period, with Dubnyk stopping two shots.
The Stars also finished strong in the first, taking the last nine shots on goal, including Pavelski’s goal on the power play. From low in the slot, he put in the rebound of a shot by Tyler Seguin with 4:32 left.
Dallas outshot Minnesota 16-12 in the first.
Each team killed a penalty early in the second, but 2 seconds after Eriksson Ek left the penalty box, Gurianov drilled a slap shot from the right faceoff dot past Dubnyk.
The Wild pulled within one at 8:25 of the second. Ryan Suter passed from behind the net and players from both teams touched the puck with Eriksson Ek credited with an unassisted goal.
At 12:09, Donato took a wrist shot from low in the right circle that squeezed into a small space between Bishop and the right post.
NOTES: Minnesota LW Zach Parise played in his 1,000th game. … Stars C Joe Pavelski has a four-game points streak with five points (four goals, one assist). He has three of his six power-play goals this season during that streak. … Dallas C Tyler Seguin has gone a career-high 15 games without a goal but picked up his eighth assist during that span on Pavelski’s goal. … Bishop earned his second assist of the season on Gurianov’s goal. … It was the final game between the Central Division rivals this season, with Minnesota going 3-1-0 and Dallas 1-2-1.
UP NEXT
Wild: Begin a three-game homestand on Sunday against Colorado.
Stars: At St. Louis on Saturday night.
The Associated Press