Jamie Benn Draws Attention as Stars Score Through Game 3
stars score, but the bigger story through Game 3 was Jamie Benn's repeated involvement in dangerous plays against Minnesota. The Dallas Stars captain was tied to incidents in all three games of the series, and through those first three games he had yet to be penalized for similar situations.
Benn and Boldy
In Game 2, Benn slew-footed Matt Boldy in the neutral zone, and the play went uncalled. In Game 3, he injured Boldy again while the Wild were already without Mats Zuccarello and Yakov Trenin, and Boldy needed help to the bench before he went down the tunnel.
Boldy later returned for the second and third period and said he was fine. Before that, he showed the officials a video of the cross-check he received from Benn, and Wild head coach John Hynes called Gord Dwyer and Pierre Lambert over after the play.
Game 1 Pressure
The pattern started in Game 1, when Benn took runs at Quinn Hughes and Kirill Kaprizov on multiple occasions. Wyatt Johnston also speared Kaprizov in a spot the article said you don't want to be speared in, and Marcus Foligno drew a four-minute penalty in Game 2 for an incident involving Thomas Harley.
That sequence left Benn at the center of the series without a penalty on any of the plays described. The article's view was blunt: repeated incidents like this stop looking like coincidence and start looking like a league issue.
NHL Response
The article said the NHL has to step in, either through the officials in real time or the Department of Player Safety after the fact. It also warned that repeated uncalled plays can lead to actual injuries on both sides, and it said nobody wants that to take away from what could be the best series in the NHL.
Benn's own numbers added another layer to the picture. The Stars captain had one goal in his last 21 playoff games, but his value in this series has come from the attention he draws around the puck and away from it, with Minnesota trying to absorb that pressure without losing more bodies.
