I’m not sure when the Dallas Stars and Florida Panthers became such rivals. Maybe it was when Dmitry Kulikov took out Tyler Seguin at the knee a few seasons ago, ending his hot streak of scoring and turning the tide of the season that year. Maybe it was just a desperate team (Florida) hoping to set a certain tone against one of the hottest division in hockey’s teams (Dallas).
Whatever it was, it made for a quite interesting – and eventful – game tonight. If you watched the first 20 minutes of this one tonight, you’d think these were divisional rivals that meet each other four or more times a season, not cross-conference teams that only see each other twice a season.