Six goals on 22 shots is spectacular arithmetic, and Dallas will not sustain a 27 percent conversion rate simply by wishing hard at the next scoreboard. Yet the Stars’ 6-5 victory over Washington offered something more useful than an eye-catching percentage: their goals came through several different routes.
One began with a rebound, another with a deflected intended pass, and Jason Robertson supplied three finishes that demanded more than a friendly bounce.
That mixture gives the result a firmer foundation than the raw rate. It also gives Dallas a better question to ask when the shooting cools: are the chances still arriving in varied forms?
The opening goal, scored by Joel Kiviranta 8:56 into the opening frame, was the classic second-opportunity play. Radek Faksa hit the post, and Kiviranta backhanded the loose puck into the net. Faksa was not credited with a shot on goal, but his attempt still changed the sequence enough for Dallas to get another chance. Thomas Harley and Faksa received the assists.
A post is not a repeatable offensive system. Neither is every loose puck going to land where a teammate can immediately use it. But the goal did show the value of continuing a possession after the first attempt fails to score. Dallas did not need the initial shot to be perfect; it needed someone ready to handle what came next.
Robertson then supplied the night’s clearest case against treating the entire six-goal haul as luck. He scored three times across 5:20 of the second period, and the three goals looked different in both location and circumstance.
At 23 seconds, with Dallas on the power play, Robertson finished from the left circle with a wrist shot. At 3:18, he worked free of Jakob Chychrun near the right-side boards and released from the upper part of that circle at even strength.
Then, at 5:43, he sent a wrister sent between bodies from high in the zone, with the puck entering off the right post.
The common element was Robertson’s finishing ability, not a single manufactured pattern. One goal came with an extra skater, one followed a release created along the wall, and one used distance, bodies in the lane and a fortunate deflection off the post.
He finished with five shots, three goals and an assist, the seventh hat trick of his NHL career and his third with no intervening goal by anyone else.
That performance is the opposing evidence to any explanation built entirely around bounces. Dallas benefited from a rebound and later from a puck changing direction off Washington defenseman Martin Fehervary, but Robertson repeatedly put the puck in places where a save was not guaranteed. His night was efficient, though the underlying reasons were not identical from goal to goal.
