Stars align to force a Game 7 vs. Flames

Joe Pavelski and the Stars were skating with urgency in the third period. If not, it could easily have been their last one of the season.

Miro Heiskanen scored the go-ahead goal late in the second period and the Stars recovered after blowing an early two-goal lead, beating the Flames 4-2 on Friday night to force a deciding Game 7 in their first-round Western Conference series.

“The message was we’ve got to have a good third. We haven’t always had good thirds at times with the lead, and we wanted to kind of try to turn that,” Pavelski said. “The other night, they came out hard in the third and we didn’t handle it well enough. And tonight was one of those situations where I think everyone bought in. We took a step in the right direction of doing it.”

The Flames were in position to close out the wild-card Stars after a 3-1 home win in Game 5 on Wednesday, when the Pacific Division champions scored all of their goals in the third.

This series instead is going back to the Saddledome for a deciding Game 7 on Sunday night.

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