NHL Capsules: Stars slip past Ducks 2-1
DALLAS (AP) — Brad Richards wasn't sure his third-period shot crossed the goal line. Then James Neal assured his Dallas Stars linemate that he didn't need to worry.
Richards scored his 200th career goal to break a tie after a video review midway through the third period and the Stars edged the Anaheim Ducks 2-1 on Tuesday night.
With the game tied at 1, Richards' shot from the left circle glanced off the post, and the referees initially ruled no goal at 8:24 of the final period.
Jonas Hiller controlled the puck to stop play, and replays showed that the puck fluttered over the goal line in the air.
"I wasn't sure," Richards said. "I thought maybe it was in. But James was right there and he thought for sure it was in."
The game marked the debut of Swedish referee Marcus Vinnerborg, who became the first European to work an NHL game. Vinnerborg made the announcement that the goal counted, much to the delight of the Stars.
"It was good to see," said Dallas' Steve Ott, who added a power-play goal. "I screamed like a 10-year-old girl with all the fans when I saw it on the (replay board)."
Richards greeted the news with a wide grin, and a Stars equipment man saved the puck for the Stars center.
"It's special," Richards said. "I never thought I'd get a chance to play this long. To get that many goals, I'm fortunate. Hopefully there's many more and there's another milestone someday."
Kari Lehtonen stopped 26 shots as the Stars returned from an 0-3 road trip to win their fourth straight at home.
Dallas managed three goals during the three road losses, but has 17 in the past four home games.
"We've had a lot of bad breaks, hit a lot of posts," Ott said of the road trip. "The last couple games, we had 1-1 games going into the third period and we lost 'em. This is the direction we need to go in."
Corey Perry scored on the power play and Hiller made 24 saves for the Ducks.
Anaheim was 1 for 6 with the man advantage, missing out on several prime scoring opportunities.
"We had our fair share of chances," Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said. "It wasn't like we were devoid of chances, we came up empty. Even more-so, we had lots of good chances on our power play, too. ... We're just not really sharp offensively. We got to think 'shoot more,' be a little more selfish."
The Stars got a break midway through the first period when Anaheim's Teemu Selanne rang a shot off the right post. Lehtonen made a glove save on Todd Marchant's short-handed breakaway with just under six minutes left in the opening period.
Only 12 seconds later on the same power play, Richards' pass sent Ott in alone, and Ott shot the puck between Hiller's pads to give Dallas the lead at 14:43.
"That's how it happens, you make a good save and something good happens on the other end," Lehtonen said. "I felt great after that, very confident, and that helped me through the game."
Anaheim was on its fifth power play of the game when Perry fired a loose puck past Lehtonen at 8:29 of the second period to tie it at 1.
Notes: The NHL hired Vinnerborg over the summer to referee primarily in the AHL, but he's also scheduled to get a few more NHL games. Vinnerborg is also assigned to officiate Wednesday night's San Jose at Colorado game. He previously worked in the Swedish Elite League and has handled a number of major international assignments, including the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. ... Anaheim won the first two meetings between the teams by a combined score of 9-4. ... Marchant returned to Anaheim's lineup after missing the previous game with an upper-body injury. ... Dallas C Mike Ribeiro remains without a goal in his first 16 games, the longest drought at the start of a season in a career spanning 11 seasons.
NHL Capsules: Price earns third consecutive shutout for Montreal
MONTREAL (AP) — Carey Price made 41 saves for his third shutout, Brian Gionta had a goal and two assists, and the Montreal Canadiens extended their winning streak to four with a 3-0 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night.
Price stopped 13 shots in the first and 20 more in the second on his way to his seventh career shutout, his second in four games. He stopped 34 shots one week earlier in a 2-0 win over Vancouver which began Montreal's current streak.
Gionta assisted on Michael Cammalleri's goal during a two-man advantage midway through the first period. The Canadiens' captain got his second assist on Tomas Plekanec's goal 13:48 into the second.
Gionta scored for the third game in a row when he added Montreal's second power-play goal 6:24 into the third.
Sergei Bobrovsky made 25 saves for Philadelphia, which lost in regulation for the first time in three weeks. The Flyers, who beat Ottawa 5-1 on Monday, had gone 9-0-1 since a 2-1 loss in Columbus on Oct. 25.
Maple Leafs 5, Predators 4
TORONTO (AP) — Kris Versteeg scored second-period power-play goals 59 seconds apart and Toronto overcome an early three-goal deficit in a win over Nashville.
Nikolai Kulemin's goal late in the second period completed a big comeback as Toronto scored four power-play goals in the second period.
The Leafs lost starting goaltender J.S. Giguere to an apparent injury early in the third period.
However, they managed to hold on for their first win since Oct. 26 with backup Jonas Gustavsson making six saves.
Toronto had dropped eight straight entering the game. Overall, it had gone 1-8-3 since opening the season with four straight victories.
Luke Schenn and Mikhail Grabovski also scored for the Maple Leafs, who went 4 for 8 on the power play.
J.P. Dumont, Jordin Tootoo, Marin Erat and Marcel Goc scored for Nashville.
Coyotes riding high after three-game win streak
GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) — They bumped and jostled for every inch, knocking the goal off its moorings and each other to the ice, the sounds of bodies slamming into the boards echoing through the empty arena.
Charged up by a hat trick-infused winning streak, the Phoenix Coyotes seem to have put their early-season struggles behind them and they want more, which was made evident by their teammate-crunching practice on the eve of a three-game road trip.
"There's little things we still need to work on and are working on every day," Coyotes defenseman Derek Morris said, sweat dripping down his face after the spirited practice on Monday. "You've got to go hard in practice. That's the best time to work on it, in practice at full speed, full tilt."
The Coyotes' season finally seems to be going full-bore after a rough start.
Coming off the best season in franchise history, Phoenix was maddeningly inconsistent to start this season. The defensive-minded Coyotes struggled with injuries, couldn't keep traffic from in front of goalie Ilya Bryzgalov and had more trouble than usual scoring, opening the season 4-5-5.
An unusual amount of goals coming from unusual sources has changed their fortunes.
The three-goal game by Lee Stempniak on Oct. 21 against Los Angeles wasn't too much of a surprise; he scored 27 goals for St. Louis in 2006-07. Still, it was his first career hat trick.
A head-scratcher came next. Defenseman Ed Jovanovski, known more for dumping opponents to the ice than pucks into the net, added his first career hat trick against Nashville on Nov. 3.
Two hat tricks so early in the season for a team that had two the previous two seasons combined? Not bad.
But the hats kept flying.
Vernon Fiddler, a self-proclaimed mucker, notched his first career hat trick in nine NHL seasons in a 5-4 win over Calgary on Friday.
The next night, Ray Whitney, a veteran signed as a free agent in the offseason, scored his first goal of the season and added two more in a 5-3 win over St. Louis, giving the Coyotes hat tricks in consecutive games for the first time since 1999.
So what if the final two hat tricks were finished off by empty netters? It's given Phoenix three straight wins and an NHL-best four three-goal games just 17 games into the season.
"We're trying to stimulate the economy, selling hats. Cabela's over there, they're getting low," Coyotes coach Dave Tippett joked. "But it's funny how it's gone. Sometimes you just have things that happen and we've been fortunate to have some guys step up and do well."
Some of that fortune has been generated within.
The Coyotes aren't a finesse team, aren't going to score a lot of pretty goals, so they have to grind out in front of the net, get tip-ins and putbacks. That wasn't happening early in the season, despite Tippett harping on it.
Phoenix has been a bit more assertive in front of the net over the past week or so and it's paid off, leading to 10 goals the past two games. The Coyotes still aren't where Tippett would like them to be in the gritty goal department, but they're getting there and building confidence as they do it.
"We always talk about you have to earn confidence and one way to earn confidence is win," Tippett said. "There's still a lot of work to be done in our game. There's some areas I'd really like to see us get better in, but that said, full credit that our guys are scratching and clawing trying to find a way to get a victory."
Even in practice.
-- John Marshall
'Canes make waiver claim on RW Bodie
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The Carolina Hurricanes have claimed right winger Troy Bodie on waivers from the Anaheim Ducks.
In announcing the move Tuesday, general manager Jim Rutherford called Bodie "a gritty player who gets up and down the ice well" and says he will make the forwards more physical. He is expected to add depth to Carolina's corps of forwards.
The 25-year-old Bodie had one assist and seven penalty minutes in nine games with the Ducks this season before he was waived Monday. All three of his NHL seasons were with Anaheim.
