The Winter Classic was down south in Texas for the first time in NHL history and featured two southern teams in the Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators which was the second highest attended game in NHL history with 86,000 people attending.
The Game itself was a treat to watch with hard hits goals and excellent defensive plays and goalie save to get you on the edge of your seat. The big headline from this game is Stars Forward Corey Perry being ejected almost 3 minutes into the game for elbowing Nashville defenseman Ryan Ellis. Which lead to a 5 minute major penalty and then while Nashville struggled on the powerplay initially they were gifted a 5 on 3 opportunity by a delay of game on Blake Comeau. Nashville then promptly added two goals on the power play one by Matt Duchene who finished a brilliant one timer past Ben Bishop. The other was on a spectacular pass from Duchene to Dante Fabro for the Predators to go up 2-0.
By the end of the first period though the stars were already clawing back as they had pulled within a few shots on goal and Nashville barely led in that statistic while still leading 2-0. After a back and forth 2cd period which featured another power play for Nashville which was not even close being successful this time thanks to a solid stars penalty kill the stars had a great chance to get on the board on a long pass to Tyler Seguin coming out of the box but he missed the shot as it went wide right of the net. However the stars would find the back of the net on a long Ben Bishop pass to Jason Dickenson who flew behind the net and delivered a great shot past Pekka Rinne to get the stars on the board. Before the end of the second period Nashville took another penalty and more than 1:50 would be left for the Stars entering the 3rd period.
Entering the 3rd period the stars took control early and didn’t look back as they pressured Nashville and eventually got it through on a great shot from the Blue line by defensemen John Klingberg it was deflected in by foward Mattias Janmark. Then Nashville took another penalty and the stars cashed in quick as off the Captain Jamie Benn got it to Klingberg who delivered it to the left face off circle where Alexander Radulov buried it top shelf past Rinne and the Cotton Bowl exploded in cheers. Then on the ensuing faceoff the stars had a chance with Janmark putting a pass in front for Andrew Cogliano who missed but defensemen Andrej Sekera tapped it in to make it 4
straight goals for the stars who then played lockdown defense for the final 8 minutes.
This was an exciting game and showed that hockey is thriving and growing in popularity down in the south and it was one outstanding hockey game to watch as two bitter rivals went at each other.
