subject: Edmonton Oilers Tickets - Oilers Beat Stars In So [print this page] Shawn Horcoff scored in the fifth round of the shootout and Jeff Deslauriers denied four of five Dallas shooters to give the Edmonton Oilers a 3-2 win over the Dallas Stars. Get Edmonton Oilers tickets and see Horcoff score the game-winning goal.
The Oilers entered the contest 3-21-1 in their previous 25 games in Dallas before picking up two points on this trip. Lubomir Visnovsky and Ladislav Smid scored for Edmonton during regulation, while Deslauriers stopped 33 shots in his eighth straight game. The goaltender filled in for the injured Nikolai Khabibulin.
James Neal and rookie Jamie Benn scored for Dallas, and Marty Turco made 34 saves. The Stars dominated the first period, building a 2-0 lead with an 18-10 shots advantage. Benn opened up the scoring at 15:51, knocking the rebound of Mike Ribeiro's shot past Deslauriers. Neal made it 2-0 with his team-best 13th goal when he fired a shot from the slot at 19:29.
Visnovsky got the Oilers on the scoreboard in the second period when his blast from the right point got through a screen and went past Turco. Dallas seemed headed for the victory with a 2-1 lead and the clock winding down, but Smid tied the game 2-all with 3:04 left in the game. The defenseman scored his first goal of the season and fourth of his career after he fired a shot from the right circle that got through Turco's pads. Smid snapped a 151-game goal-scoring drought with his equalizer. He told the press, "I didn't know it was 151 games. If I counted, I would be frustrated."
In the shootout, Oilers coach Pat Quinn used his most skilled shooters in the first four rounds before he turned to Horcoff. The forward got the game-winning goal and improved to six for 10 in career shootout chances. The Oilers came back from a two-goal deficit in the first period to send the game into overtime.
After OT, Edmonton's Patrick O'Sullivan gave his team the early edge by scoring in the first round of the shootout. Loui Eriksson evened the shootout for Dallas in the third round, but Dallas' Brenden Morrow hit the post with a shot in the fifth round to set the stage for Horcoff's winner that went off Turco's stick and into the net.
Horcoff noted that Turco poke-checked the puck away from two previous Oilers' shooters. The shooter explained what was going on in his mind before he skated in on Turco. "I have the same routine at the blue line where I make a decision on where I'm going to go," he said. "I thought about going high, but then I thought he was going to poke-check, so I went five-hole. He had his stick in an area where he can make a poke-check."
Shootouts haven't been good for the Stars, who fell to 1-6 in the tiebreaker this season. Dallas coach Marc Crawford acknowledged that the Stars shouldn't have let the game get to a shootout. Although the Stars are 4-0-2 in its last six games at home, they regretted not picking up the extra point against the Oilers.
