A day after his stick-swinging tirade following a heartbreaking 2-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues, Dallas Stars coach Rick Bowness was fined $25,000 for his actions by the NHL.
Bowness grabbed a stick and angrily slashed it around the bench twice, having watched the Blues rally with two power-play goals in the last minute of regulation while getting the benefit of some questionable officiating on Sunday.
Bowness’ fine money, provided he doesn’t appeal to the decision, will be paid to the NHL Foundation.
Goals by Blues forwards Ryan O’Reilly and Jordan Kyrou 18 seconds apart gave St. Louis a 2-1 win in front of a delirious home crowd.
Bowness was chiefly frustrated by a missed penalty call on Blues forward Brayden Schenn, who grabbed the stick of Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen and tripped him up before O’Reilly’s tying goal with 47 seconds left. After being taken down and before the goal, Heiskanen slashed Kyrou and received a delayed penalty. St. Louis scored the game-winner on the ensuing power play.
“If you’re watching the game, you saw what happened,” Bowness said. “They clearly pulled Miro down. Clearly grabbed his stick and pulled him down. That’s my opinion. They got lucky.”
His players concurred.
“Coach told us after the game that it was almost a perfect road game for us,” Stars forward Jason Robertson said. “We had a bunch of chances, we tried to limit their chances. It’s just hockey at the end of the game. We’re trying to build on being a good road team, and this was something to build off.”
O’Reilly scored with Stars defenseman Jani Hakanpaa in the penalty box for a hooking infraction that he took with 1:52 remaining in the third period. Since Heiskanen’s delayed penalty was called while the Stars were short-handed, Hakanpaa left the penalty box after the O’Reilly goal, only to be replaced by Heiskanen for having slashed Kyrou.
As fate would have it, Kyrou scored the game-winning goal with 29 seconds left in regulation by banking the puck off of Hakanpaa and into the Dallas net.
“It was just mayhem,” O’Reilly said.
Bowness said the Stars deserved a better outcome from their effort on the road in St. Louis. “Broken stick on a penalty kill, second goal goes in off our feet,” he said. “That’s the breaks of the game. We played a hell of a hockey game. We deserved a lot better than that. We did. We played a hell of a road game for our third game in three and a half days. We battled hard. We deserved a lot better than that.”
Bowness praised the work of St. Louis goalie Jordan Binnington (26 saves) in keeping them in the game. “He gave them a chance to win,” he said. “They took advantage of the breaks they got at the end of that game.”
The loss ended a four-game winning streak for Dallas. It was the fourth win in five games for St. Louis.
