Late Tuesday: Stars clinch 1st playoff trip since 2016, beating Flyers 6-2

Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 4, 2019

DALLAS (AP) — The Dallas Stars clinched their first trip to the playoffs in three years Tuesday night, getting two goals and two assists from Alexander Radulov in a 6-2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night.

The Stars were just a point shy of the postseason and could have made it with an Arizona loss in a later game.

Instead, they left little doubt with four goals in the final 24 minutes, including a pair 10 seconds apart, for just their third Western Conference playoff berth in 11 seasons.

Jason Dickinson, Esa Lindell, Tyler Pitlick and Blake Comeau also scored for the Stars, who hold the first wild-card spot with 91 points and are unlikely to get into the top three in the Central Division. Dallas last made the playoffs in 2016, losing a Game 7 to St. Louis in the second round.

The Stars missed the playoffs a year ago because of an eight-game losing streak late in the season, the first six of those on the road. This time, they moved to the brink of the postseason by earning seven points on a four-game Canadian swing before coming home to face Philadelphia.

It was a satisfying surge for a club that worked through a tumultuous midseason stretch after team CEO Jim Lites profanely ripped the play of captain Jamie Benn and fellow star forward Tyler Seguin.

The Stars actually held the last playoff spot in the West in late December when Lites used plenty of profanity along with “terrible” and “embarrassing” to describe the way his high-priced forwards were playing while saying the team was underachieving.

First-year coach Jim Montgomery, making the rare transition from college, joined the chorus not long after Lites’ strong words, saying he was trying to end the franchise’s “culture of mediocrity.”