Texas Stars top Ontario Reign in heated contest

The Texas Stars entered the HEB Cedar Park Center needing to make a statement.  The team had lost games four in row, including one on the road to tonight’s opponent, the Ontario Reign. 

The Stars play was sluggish and fraught with penalties in Tuesday’s loss to the San Antonio Rampage.  But a different team skated onto the ice, a team with higher energy, constantly pushing the play, and with few penalties. 

Texas’s Julius Honka started the scoring early in the first period.  Ontario quickly responded, and took the lead late in the period.  Matej Stransky evened the score for Texas in the opening seconds of the second period.   And a power play goal by Andre Bodnarchuk gave the Stars the lead midway through the period.  Back and forth scoring continued on both sides of the ice, including goals by Travis Morin, and a bookend goal by Julius Honka to win the game. 

Final score was Texas Star 5, Ontario Reign 4.  Winning goaltender was Maxime Lagace with 27 saves on 31 shots on goal.