Stars 6 – Coyotes 3: NHL Hockey Exhibition Game Excites in El Paso
The city of El Paso earned the title of Hockeyville USA in 2020, and after months of waiting for the right time following the pandemic, the Sun City was able to host an exhibition hockey game on Sunday at the El Paso County Events Center.
On the historic night—to which our own Duke Keith and Kevin Vargas called the entire game on 600 ESPN El Paso—the Dallas Stars prevailed with a 6-3 win over the Arizona Coyotes in a largely competitive contest. Check out the photo gallery below by Jorge Salgado.
However, it was the near 1,200 fans in attendance that left the real winners. Professional hockey touched down in the city for the first time. The Stanley Cup came to the 915 and fans had a chance to take photos with it earlier this week. A kids camp sandwiched all the events on Saturday to promote youth hockey. Plus, the teams had a skate-around with fans at the El Paso County Events Center ahead of Sunday's game. It was a week filled with events and excitement for the city.
The Coyotes got the scoring going for the night as Shayne Gostisberhere scored on a power play. Just under four minutes later, Dallas' Thomas Harley scored a goal of his own to tie things up, while Jamie Benn scored the go-ahead goal late in the first period to take the lead.
In the second period, Arizona was able to score a pair of goals by Liam O'Brien and Christian Fischer to retake the lead, 3-2. About 14 minutes into the period, Dallas' Ty Dellandrea scored the tying goal on the second assist of the evening by Alexander Petrovic.
The Stars took over the third period by scoring a total of three goals, including the go-ahead score by Joe Pavelski. Tyler Seguin scored almost 10 minutes later in the third period, while Radek Faksa made a goal on an empty net.
Dallas led the way with 34 shots on goal on the night, along with a trio of goals in the third period.
Aside from the Kraft Hockeyville NHL exhibition game, the El Paso Rhinos hockey program received $150K in arena upgrades that went toward new ice in the arena, a new roof and LED lights.