DALLAS — At one point late in the second period, the Columbus Blue Jackets were playing without both members of their top defensive pair, Zach Werenski and Dante Fabbro, as well as their top-scoring forward, right winger Kirill Marchenko.
It was a rough-and-tumble 48 hours for the Blue Jackets on the injury front, but their biggest complaint coming out of Sunday’s 5-3 loss wasn’t aimed at the hockey gods or the Dallas Stars, but with NHL officials.
The Blue Jackets led 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 before their grip slipped late in the third period before 18,532 in American Airlines Center. The Stars scored twice in the span of 4:25 late in the third to pull away, snapping the Jackets’ three-game winning streak.
Cole Sillinger, Adam Fantilli and Ivan Provorov scored for the Blue Jackets, who finish this four-game, four-time-zone road trip on Tuesday in Buffalo.
“Our guys are competing their asses off and trying to do all the right things regardless of the score, regardless of the adversity and regardless of the calls or non-calls,” Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason said.
The Blue Jackets were furious over the Stars’ first goal of the third period, scored on a redirection by forward Evgenii Dadonov at 11:22 to make it 4-3. Dadonov elevated his stick to deflect a wrist shot by Thomas Harley, sending the puck under the right arm of Columbus goaltender Elvis Merzlikins.
After a replay, the goal was allowed to stand.
DADDY’S GOAL IS GOOD! pic.twitter.com/JMXe05TnjB
— Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) February 3, 2025
“We got a really, really terrible break,” Evason said. “We’re hanging on with a lot of injuries and a lot of stuff going just to get a tie and maybe get it to overtime.”
Then he corrected himself.
“It’s not a bad break, it’s a bad call,” Evason said. “It’s a high stick. I just don’t understand it. At least from our angle, it’s 100 percent a high stick. We’ll have to wait and hear back (from the NHL) about what angles they don’t have that maybe we do. But it’s unfortunate that we grind and we battle and we compete, and we lose a hockey game on something like that.”
The NHL’s rule (37.5) states that contact with the puck must occur at a point on the player’s stick that is below the crossbar, even if a portion of the stick is above the crossbar. The NHL situation room, in a statement to the media, said that replays showed Dadonov’s “stick was at or below the height of the crossbar.”
“It looked like a high stick from our end,” Blue Jackets defenseman Ivan Provorov said. “From (the Stars’) reaction, it even looked like they thought it was a high stick. But we’re not the ones making the call.”
Evason took exception to at least two other calls / non-calls.
Just before the Stars’ first goal, replays showed Dallas forward Mason Marchment landing an elbow flush to Fabbro’s face as they battled for the puck. The hit left Fabbro dazed, and he slammed his stick on the ice in frustration seconds later when Marchment (of all people) scored.
Fabbro finished the first period, but did not return to the game. Evason indicated the Fabbro is already out for Tuesday’s game in Buffalo and perhaps beyond.
“He gets elbowed square in the face and they score,” Evason said. “That’s a tough injury to … I don’t know what to say. There were a couple of things that happened in this game that are really frustrating, but our guys kept pushing and grinding.”
The other beef was on the goal that allowed the Stars to tie the score at two at 6:03 of the second period.
Harley pressured Blue Jackets forward Kent Johnson in his own zone, spinning Johnson around and turning the puck over for a two-on-one that Dallas’ Logan Stankoven finished. Johnson was just getting up off the ice when Stankoven scored.
Johnson and Merzlikins glared at officials after the goal.
GRANNY SHARES AN APPLE AND STANK TAKES IT HOME 🚨 pic.twitter.com/aIBUb5u4al
— Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) February 3, 2025
Evason laughed when asked about the non-call.
“I don’t think you should be able to grab a guy’s hip and spin him around so he falls down and they get a two-on-one,” Evason said. “I don’t think that should happen, either.”
There may have been more Blue Jackets players in the training room than in the dressing room after the game.
Werenski returned to start the third period. But Marchenko, who was struck by a puck on the Blue Jackets bench, opening a nasty cut on his chin, did not return.
This, along with Fabbro’s injury, comes about 48 hours after James van Riemsdyk’s awful injury during Friday’s game in Utah.
Van Riemsdyk was crosschecked by Utah’s Ian Cole, sending him off the ice with a trail of blood and directly to the dentist’s chair in Delta Center for work. He lost four teeth and needed more than 30 stitches to close the cuts so that he could return to the game.
Then, after the game, he had more work. An X-ray revealed that one of the lost teeth was still wedged in his bottom lip, so stitches were removed, the tooth was dislodged and and the lip was sewn back together. It was still badly swollen on Sunday, but he played with a protective device on his helmet.
If anything epitomized the weekend for the Blue Jackets, it was the scene in the closing seconds of the game. The Jackets trailed 5-3 and had an empty net as the clock ticked under 10 seconds.
Rather than let Dallas’ Matt Duchene get a clear shot at an empty-net goal from just inside the blue line, Provorov, who played 29:30, threw his body in front of Duchene’s shot and blocked it with his right leg. He limped off to the bench as the final buzzer sounded.
(Photo: Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
