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DALLAS — Travis Boyd scored his 16th goal 1:43 into overtime on Wednesday night, lifting the Arizona Coyotes to a 4-3 win over the Dallas Stars.
It was Boyd’s second consecutive game-winning goal in as many nights, as he provided the margin of victory for Arizona Tuesday at Minnesota. Wednesday’s goal came against former Coyotes goalie Scott Wedgewood, who had 33 saves against his old team.
The Coyotes trailed 3-0 in the third period before mounting an impressive comeback in their next-to-last game of the season. Anton Stralman scored his eighth goal for Arizona with 16:37 left in regulation, about four minutes before Shayne Gostisbehere’s unassisted goal. Barrett Hayton tied it at 3 with 8:02 left on a 5-on-3 power play.
The night was still a success for Dallas despite the loss, as the one point recorded by the Stars was enough for them to wrap up the Western Conference’s final playoff spot.
Jani Hakanpaa scored on the first shot of the game for Dallas, and Joe Pavelski had two assists to reach a career high in points at age 37.
After a seven-round shootout victory at home over Vegas on Tuesday night, the Stars needed only one point to join Nashville in the two wild-card spots.
Dallas has 96 points, one more than the idle Predators, who have games remaining at Colorado and Arizona. The Stars, who close the regular season at home Friday night against Anaheim, will have to finish ahead of the Predators to take the top wild-card spot since Nashville holds the tiebreaker with more regulation wins if the team tie in the standings.
Hakanpaa, the defenseman with one goal his previous 39 games, scored on a sniper shot from just inside the blue line 4:42 into the game, and only seconds after a faceoff, that went off a Coyotes player on the way to the net. Pavelski had secondary assists on goals by Tyler Seguin and Miro Heiskanen, whose score came with a two-man advantage early in the second period.
Pavelski has a team-high 81 points (27 goals, 54 assists) to surpass his previous career high of 79 with San Jose in 2013-14. He had already bested the 46 assists he had 11 years ago, and last week became the 22nd American-born player to reach 500 career assists.
The Stars missed the playoffs in the shortened 56-game season last year. They went to the Stanley Cup Final in the 2019-20 season that stretched into late September after a COVID-19 pause and finished in an NHL bubble in Canada.
Dallas led 2-0 late in the first when 40-goal scorer Jason Robertson’s shot ricocheted off the left post and slid across the crease behind Harri Sateri before Seguin knocked it in for his 24th goal.
Sateri stopped 26 shots, and Dallas had several others bang off the posts.
Heiskanen’s one-timer from the top of the circle came only 14 seconds into a 5-on-3 opportunity, and made it 3-0.
The Coyotes host Nashville on Friday night in their final home game at Gila River Arena in Glendale, where they have played home games since 2003. The Coyotes will play at Arizona State’s new multi-purpose arena for at least the next three seasons.
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