Five shots and no goals can make Wyatt Johnston’s night look unfinished. For the Dallas Stars, who beat San Jose 4-3 Saturday, that reading misses the two plays that helped decide the game. Johnston provided two primary assists, and each one supported a different kind of power-play finish.
Those two plays mattered for a Stars club that needed special teams to carry a large part of the scoring burden. Dallas went 3 for 5 with the man advantage, while San Jose scored twice at even strength against Dallas’ one. Johnston did not score, but his work helped create two of the three goals that supplied the margin.
The first sequence required a touch before it required a finish. At 9:16 of the opening period, Thomas Harley sent a shot from the point toward the net on a 4-on-3 power play. Johnston redirected it, Alex Nedeljkovic stopped the initial attempt, and Roope Hintz reached the loose puck near the left post to tie the game.
The assist belongs to Johnston, but the play involved three separate jobs. Harley put the puck toward traffic. Johnston altered its path. Hintz reacted first when the rebound came free. A box score compresses all of that into one primary assist; the sequence explains why Johnston’s contribution mattered. His stick helped turn a long-range attempt into a second chance in close, and Hintz converted it.
Johnston’s second assist came from a different spot in the attack. At the second period’s 14:30 mark, he moved the puck to Harley at the blue line. Harley quickly sent a one-timer under Nedeljkovic’s right pad, restoring Dallas’ two-goal advantage at 4-2. This time Johnston’s contribution was the pass that set up an immediate shot rather than a deflection that created a rebound.
Those plays gave Dallas two power-play goals with Johnston involved in two distinct ways: he redirected the first attack and initiated the pass on the second. That variety is more telling than simply noting that he had two assists. It shows a player contributing at different points in the same special-teams structure, even when the scoring column beside his name stayed empty.
The five shots reinforce that he was part of the attack throughout the night. They do not prove every attempt was dangerous, and one game should not be inflated into a season-long verdict. Still, Johnston finished with two points and 19:09 of ice time while helping Dallas build a lead it eventually had to defend.
Macklin Celebrini offered the sharper comparison in the middle of the game. San Jose’s young center collected three assists and six shots in 28:05, touching all three Sharks goals. He helped set up Michael Misa’s opener, participated in the second-period rush that produced Ivar Stenberg’s goal and earned a secondary assist on Will Smith’s 5-on-3 finish.
Celebrini’s production was easier to spot because every assist connected directly to a San Jose goal. Johnston’s contributions were quieter, yet they helped Dallas create the cushion that made the difference. The comparison is not an argument that Johnston outplayed Celebrini across the board; it is a reminder that assists can carry different visual weight depending on where a play begins and how it ends.
Dallas also needed Jamie Benn’s even-strength goal, created when Hintz worked the puck from below the goal line into the slot. Jason Robertson added another power-play finish 1:34 later, with Mikko Rantanen supplying the pass across the formation. But the Sharks answered twice in the second period, including Smith’s goal during a 5-on-3 after Dallas took two penalties.
That response kept Johnston’s night from becoming a tidy story about special-teams control. Dallas was outscored 2-1 at even strength, and San Jose had enough offense to turn a 4-2 deficit into a one-goal game.
