By Canadian Press

Hintz, Johnston score as Stars beat Kraken 2-1 in Game 7

May 15, 2023 | 8:59 PM

DALLAS (AP) — Roope Hintz and 19-year-old Wyatt Johnston scored goals and the Dallas Stars advanced to the Western Conference final with a 2-1 win over the Seattle Kraken in Game 7 on Monday night.

Dallas moves on to play first-year Stars coach Pete DeBoer’s former team, the Vegas Golden Knights. Game 1 of the West final is Friday night in Las Vegas.

DeBoer improved to 7-0 in Game 7s, this being the fourth different team he led to a win in the finale of a best-of-seven series that went the distance. Darryl Sutter and Scott Bowman are the only other coaches to do that.

It was the fourth time in five seasons the Stars got a Game 7 — the others were all away from home. They hadn’t won a Game 7 at home since 2000, when they made the Stanley Cup final. In the only other Game 7 they hosted at American Airlines Center, the Stars lost 6-1 to St. Louis in a second-round series in 2016.

Johnston made it 2-0 with 7:12 left, when he gathered a puck that ricocheted off the back boards to the left of the Seattle net. He then sent a shot that went off the shoulder and mask of goalie Phillip Grubauer before going into the net.

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Grubauer stopped 26 shots, two weeks after his 32 saves when Seattle won 2-1 at Colorado in another Game 7 to knock out last year’s Stanley Cup champion.

Hintz’s ninth goal of the playoffs was credited as an unassisted tally and came with 4:01 left in the second period, the deepest in this series any game got before a goal.

Oliver Bjorkstrand scored with 17.6 seconds left, preventing the shutout for 24-year-old Stars goalie Jake Oettinger, who finished with 21 saves.

It was exactly one year after Oettinger’s 64-save performance in another Game 7 — a 3-2 loss at Calgary after Johnny Gaudreau’s OT goal ended the first-round series.

The 24-year-old Oettinger improved to 5-0 after losses this post-season. He allowed four goals on 18 shots during Game 6 in Seattle on Saturday, when he was pulled 4 1/2 minutes into the second period.

Dallas and Las Vegas will meet in the Western Conference final for the second time in four seasons.

The Stars beat the DeBoer-coached Golden Knights in five games in 2020, the post-season that was played in the NHL’s bubble in Toronto and Edmonton during the pandemic.

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AP NHL Playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

By Stephen Hawkins, The Associated Press