Seguin scores as Stars beat Maple Leafs 3-2
TORONTO (AP) — Tyler Seguin snapped a 17-game goal drought, Ben Bishop made 27 saves and the Dallas Stars beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-2 on Thursday night.
Denis Gurianov and Radek Faksa also scored for Dallas (33-19-5), which earned its third straight victory.
Toronto (30-20-8) dropped to 2-3-1 over its last six. Auston Matthews scored his 41st goal for the Maple Leafs, and Zach Hyman got his 17th.
Toronto goaltender Frederik Andersen stopped 16 shots after missing four games with a neck injury.
Dallas opened a 3-1 lead after Leafs captain John Tavares was sent off for tripping early in the third. Making his NHL debut with veteran forwards Alexander Radulov and Joe Pavelski sidelined by injuries, Jason Robertson’s initial shot popped over to Seguin, who buried his 12th of the season in the arena where he used to watch games as a kid.
A native of nearby Brampton, Ontario, Seguin’s previous goal was Dec. 28, 2019.
Andersen stopped Gurianov on a breakaway midway through the third, and Bishop robbed William Nylander at the other end.
The Leafs pulled their goalie with three minutes to go and Hyman made it 3-2 on a rebound with 1:19 left. But Bishop and the Stars held on.
After giving up a goal on the game’s first shot in an opening period controlled by Dallas, the Leafs fell behind 2-0 on the initial shot of the second when Faksa moved in alone on Andersen and slid his 10th into the net.
Andersen, who was hurt in the first period of a 5-3 loss to Florida on Feb. 3, stepped up on back-to-back Dallas power plays before Toronto got a spark when bruising forward Kyle Clifford — acquired from the Los Angeles Kings last week — dropped the gloves with hulking Dallas defenseman Jamie Oleksiak.
The fight was the fourth of the season for the Leafs, and the fourth overall for Clifford, who took his 6-foot-7, 255-pound opponent to the ice, much to the delight of the Scotiabank Arena crowd.
With winger Andreas Johnsson done for the night after hurting his right knee in the first, Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe was forced to mix his lines and break up Matthews, Nylander and Mitch Marner — a super trio that accounts for nearly $29.5 million in average annual value on the salary cap, but failed to record a point in four periods of action.
The Clifford-Oleksiak tilt seemed to give Toronto a jolt before Matthews scored at 11:21 on the power play when he wheeled off the boards and snapped a shot past Bishop’s blocker.
NOTES: Stars C Andrew Cogliano, a product of the Toronto suburb of Woodbridge, played the 1,000th game of his NHL career. … Dallas D Roman Polak, who played parts of four seasons in Toronto, suited up for his 800th game.
UP NEXT
Stars: At Montreal on Saturday.
Maple Leafs: At Ottawa on Saturday,
