DeSmith saves 34, Stars hold off Utah Hockey Club

It was DeSmith’s first win since October 24th.

“My (defenders) boxed great, there were very few shots that I couldn’t see clearly,” DeSmith said. “It’s easy to feel good when you see it, so great job from all my (defenders) boxing, getting on the sticks, all that good stuff.”

Evgenii Dadonov and Jamie Benn scored in the second period for the Stars (16-8-0), who have won three straight, including 3-1 over the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday.

“You could see we ran out of gas a little bit in the second half of the game, but we found a way,” Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. “(We) built a lead, defended well around our net and Casey was our best player, which is what we needed today.”

“In the conference, in the division, we fight with a lot of teams. They circle this on the calendar because it’s three (games) in four (days), back to back. Normally you don’t score points in a game like this, so this was a brave performance from our group.”

Nick Schmaltz scored a goal and Karel Vejmelka made 19 saves for Utah (10-11-4), ending its three-game point streak (2-0-1).

“Dallas is a really difficult team to beat when it comes to O-zone time,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. “Today we had a lot of sustained offense, a lot of shots from the slot, a lot of passes to the slot and a lot of opportunities to break up the game. Unfortunately we didn’t finish.”