{"id":529173,"date":"2026-03-29T11:38:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T11:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/529173\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T11:38:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T11:38:26","slug":"stars-6-3-penguins-mar-28-2026-game-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/529173\/","title":{"rendered":"Stars 6-3 Penguins (Mar 28, 2026) Game Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

PITTSBURGH — \u2014 Mikko Rantanen<\/a> had a goal and an assist in his return from injured reserve and the Dallas Stars<\/a> pulled away from the undermanned Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> 6-3 on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Jason Robertson<\/a> reached the 40-goal plateau for the third time in his career and assisted on Rantanen’s goal with a slick cross-ice feed to the right circle that Rantanen \u2014 who hadn’t played<\/a> since getting hurt on Feb. 20 while playing for Team Finland at the Milan Cortina Olympics \u2014 powered past Stuart Skinner<\/a> for his first NHL tally since Feb. 2.<\/p>\n

Mavrik Bourque<\/a> scored a pair of empty-net goals late after the Penguins had pulled within one. Justin Hryckowian<\/a> and Lian Bichsel<\/a> also scored for the Stars, who snapped a four-game losing streak. Jake Oettinger<\/a> stopped just nine shots, but that was enough to improve to 7-1 in his career against the Penguins.<\/p>\n

Erik Karlsson<\/a>, Anthony Mantha<\/a> and Noel Acciari<\/a> scored for Pittsburgh, who played without franchise cornerstones<\/a> Sidney Crosby<\/a> (lower body) and Evgeni Malkin<\/a> (upper body), both of whom coach Dan Muse described as \u201cday to day.”<\/p>\n

Skinner, making a second consecutive start following a solid outing in a shootout victory in Ottawa on Thursday, finished with 20 saves but couldn’t stop the Penguins from being leapfrogged by the New York Islanders<\/a>, who moved into second place in the Metropolitan Division with a victory over Florida<\/a> earlier Saturday.<\/p>\n

Robertson and Rantanen gave the Stars the lead when they scored 3 minutes apart in the second period, each assisting on the other’s goal. When Bichsel’s shot from the point beat Skinner less than two minutes after Rantanen’s marker, Dallas had a two-goal lead.<\/p>\n

Up next <\/p>\n

Stars travel to Philadelphia on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Penguins visit the New York Islanders on Monday.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH — \u2014 Mikko Rantanen had a goal and an assist in his return from injured reserve and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5,4,118,1469,100,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-529173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-penguins","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","13":"tag-pittsburghpenguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}