Stars Suffocate Blue Jackets From Puck Drop, Win 3-1

Dallas needed just 2:16 to break the ice and never looked back, beating Columbus 3-1 on the strength of a dominant two-period stranglehold. Jake Oettinger was nearly untouchable, stopping 25 of 26 shots while Jet Greaves was left exposed behind a Columbus team that generated almost nothing.

The tone was set before the first period was two and a half minutes old. Mikko Rantanen snapped home his seventh goal of the season at 2:16 of the first, with Wyatt Johnston and Jason Robertson picking up assists, and that opening strike looks, in hindsight, like the moment this game was decided. Dallas didn't let Columbus breathe from there. With 59 seconds left in the first period — at 19:59 — Thomas Harley added a snap shot of his own, his first of the season, with Arttu Hyry and Miro Heiskanen assisting. Two goals, two periods of hockey still to play, and Columbus had managed just a handful of shots on net. The Blue Jackets were in a hole they dug themselves into by going quiet at exactly the wrong time.

The second period came and went without a goal, and Columbus entered the third down two with precious little to show offensively. Damon Severson gave the Blue Jackets a pulse at 6:21 of the third — a snap shot, his second of the season, set up by Zach Werenski and Kent Johnson — but that's as close as it got. Dallas answered with an empty-netter in the most emphatic way possible: Arttu Hyry scored at 19:59 of the third, his fourth of the year, with Jamie Benn and Miro Heiskanen assisting, to seal the 3-1 final. Heiskanen finished with two assists on the night, quietly orchestrating from the blue line in the way that appears to be becoming a nightly habit for him.

The story of the night was the goaltending split. Oettinger faced 26 shots and allowed one — a .962 save percentage that made Columbus's lone goal feel almost cosmetic. Greaves, on the other side, faced just 17 shots and gave up three. That shot differential — Dallas generating 17 against Columbus's 26 — tells you everything about how the game was managed. Columbus is also dealing with roster turbulence off the ice; a veteran defenseman was placed on waivers recently, per Yahoo Sports, which adds another layer of instability to a team that looks, right now, like it's running out of answers. Dallas, by contrast, looks like a team that knows exactly what it is: structured, deep on the back end, and with a goaltender who makes the margin for error very small for anyone trying to come back against them.