Joe Cool

Stars beat Wild, likely securing home ice in playoff matchup

· Yahoo Sports

DALLAS – When all the shots, hits, punches, saves and goals were done, and the final horn sounded sending fans out into the warm Texas night, the message sent by the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars after 60 minutes of crazy, intense hockey was a simple one:

“Let’s get together and do this again next week.”

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When they do, it will almost certainly be at American Airlines Center after Jason Robertson scored the winner in the third period, lifting the Stars to a 5-4 comeback win over the Wild on Thursday.

The Wild got a trio of power-play goals, two of them by Kirill Kaprizov, and held a lead in every period but could not hold off repeated comebacks by Dallas. With the win, the Stars hold a four-point lead in the Central Division standings with three regular season games remaining, and will most likely host the Wild in the first two games of their best-of-seven playoff series which starts next week.

Filip Gustavsson had 15 saves for the Wild, who lost for the first time in April. It was clearly a playoff level of intensity, with double-digit penalty minutes on both teams, and a scrum of some sort after nearly every whistle.

“It’s a good appetizer, I guess you could say,” quipped Wild forward Nick Foligno, who spent 10% of the game in the penalty box. “I mean, it’s disappointing because we felt like we were in control of that game, and they’re gonna make their push. That’s playoff hockey.”

Dallas led early after the Wild made a fruitless early push. With the puck behind the net and Gustavsson looking the other way, Wyatt Johnston was able to pop a shot behind the goalie for his Stars-leading 44th goal of the season.

Minnesota tied it on a classic give-and-go play. Quinn Hughes hit Mats Zuccarello with a long pass at the offensive blue line, and Zuccarello gave it right back, allowing Hughes to sail into the offensive zone and beat Jake Oettinger with a rising wrist shot.

The goal gave Hughes 52 points with the Wild this season, since arriving in mid-December. That is a new franchise single-season record for points by a defenseman. He added a 53rd point with an assist in the second.

“We played pretty well, but they’re good too and I feel like that’s just how it goes sometimes,” Hughes said. “We’re gonna play those guys in a week and we might have games where they outplay is and we win and vice-versa. That’s gonna happen in a series. You’re not going to outplay someone for seven games.”

Worse than allowing a goal, for the Wild, was a fluke play with just under five minutes left in the first. Joel Eriksson Ek blocked a shot by Dallas defender Miro Heiskanen, only to have the puck roll up Eriksson Ek’s stick and hit the Wild center in the face. He left for the trainers room immediately but returned for the second period wearing a full-shield mask.

Johnston was whistled for tripping Matt Boldy in the final minute of the first, and the Wild power play needed just seconds to give them their first lead. Boldy grabbed a loose puck in the offensive zone and fed a pass to the net front where Kaprizov was waiting for a chip shot and a 2-1 Minnesota lead after 20 minutes.

Kaprizov’s second of the night came on their second power play, and involved a similar scenario, with Boldy again providing the feed. But Dallas answered a short time later, with Colin Blackwell making a nice move to elude Wild defenseman Brock Faber, then zipping a shot to cut Minnesota’s lead to one.

Blackwell’s post-goal celebration touched a nerve among the Wild players on the ice, and drew a rebuke. The ensuing scrum ended with Nick Foligno serving four minutes for roughing and Dallas on the power play.

Minnesota killed the penalty, but Dallas tied the game on a broken play late in the middle frame. Cameron Hughes, crashing the net after an initial save by Gustavsson, got his first NHL goal on the play. But the Wild took a lead into the third period on another power-play goal when Hartman tapped in a pass from Jared Spurgeon.

Dallas again tied the game early in the third when Stars top-liner Mikko Rantanen deflected a puck in with his skate — a play that withstood video scrutiny and was allowed to stand. The game winner came when Robertson ripped a puck through a crowd in front of Gustavsson.

“I would say a couple of the goals we gave up, there was just some structural, like, there were some mistakes,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “And you know, good on them. We made a mistake or didn’t have the right read or the timing on a certain play and it wound up in the back of the net. I think there’s lots we can take from there, for sure.”

Oettinger had 27 saves for Dallas, which won the season series with Minnesota 2-1-1.

The Wild’s final road trip of the season continues on Saturday afternoon, when they visit the Nashville Predators for a 4 p.m. game.

Briefly

With his second period assist on Hartman’s goal, Spurgeon now holds the career record for assists by a Wild defenseman with 315.

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ARTEMIS II SPLASHDOWN: What you need to know about crew’s dramatic return to Earth

· Toronto Sun

The crew of the Artemis II will be making its much-anticipated return to Earth on Friday.

The four astronauts — Canada’s Jeremy Hansen along with NASA’s Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman — are set to conclude their historic 10-day journey around the moon after travelling farther than humans have ever gone before, surpassing the record distance by Apollo 13.

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The Orion capsule is set to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere Friday evening.

Here’s what you need to know:

The splashdown

The Orion capsule, about the size of a minivan, is set to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere Friday evening, beginning at 7:53 p.m. ET.

The astronauts will hit the top of Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 400,000 feet (121,920 m), travelling about 30 times the speed of sound before hurtling towards Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego, where they are expected to splashdown at 8:07 p.m. ET.

The entire sequence of events will take only 14 minutes.

“Riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound, as well,” Glover said in a press briefing on Wednesday. “I’m gonna be thinking about and talking about all of these things for the rest of my life.”

NASA will begin streaming the crew’s return at 6:30 p.m. ET.

Prior to splashdown

The crew has already established its cabin configuration for re-entry, which began at 1:50 p.m. ET, while a correction burn will take place about an hour later (2:53 p.m. ET) to calibrate the capsule’s trajectory back to Earth.

For the last 10 days, the European Space Agency’s European Service Module has been providing power to Orion. That needs to separate prior to re-entry, which happens only about 20 minutes before re-entry begins.

But before that, the crew will need to tweak Orion’s trajectory, with the capsule conducting a few roll manoeuvres that will take it farther from the service module.

The spacecraft will end up being about 16,000 km from its landing site.

“That’s when the fun really begins,” Artemis II flight director Rick Henfling said in a press conference on Wednesday.

When the spacecraft hits the Earth’s atmosphere in a “fireball,” the re-entry boom could be so loud it may shake windows in San Diego, according to the US Geological Survey.

“A sonic boom is expected as the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere and could potentially be felt and heard throughout Southern California between 5 p.m. and 5:15 pm. (PT) local time,” the USGS posted on X.

Also, communication between the astronauts and NASA ground control will be lost for about six minutes.

“Once that six-minute blackout is done, Orion is going to be about 150,000 feet (45,720 m) — so, still falling pretty quickly,” Henfling detailed.

“We’ve got two drogue parachutes that will deploy,” he added. “It’ll be at about 22,000 feet (6,705 m). That’ll slow us down to about 200 miles an hour (322 km/h).”

At about 1,800 metres, the three main parachutes will deploy and slow the spacecraft down to just 32 km/h, before it splashes down in the Pacific.

Post-splashdown

The USS John P. Murtha Navy recovery vessel will be standing by to assist with removing the astronauts from the capsule and will provide them with immediate medical evaluations.

“After ensuring the area is safe, they’re going to go ahead and open the Orion hatch and help the astronauts from their seats to a large inflatable raft that we call the front porch,” Liliana Villarreal, Artemis II landing and recovery director, said in Wednesday’s press conference.

“Once all four astronauts are on the front porch, we will tow the capsule away from the front porch, and the team will wait,” she continued. “Two helicopters are going to rotate, picking up all four crew members before they return to the recovery ship within a few minutes of each other.”

The plan is for Koch to exit first, followed by Glover, Hansen, then finally, Wiseman.

Once the medical evaluations are completed, the astronauts will return to the Johnson Space Center in Houston where a news conference is scheduled at 10:30 p.m. ET.

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