Stars defenseman John Klingberg goes down in opening minutes vs. Rangers

Editor’s note: This story has been updated.

NEW YORK – Stars defender John Klingberg ended Thursday’s 3-2 opening win in extra time with a lower body injury sustained in the first period.

After the game, Stars coach Rick Bowness said Klingberg was sore and that the Stars would re-evaluate Klingberg in Boston on Friday.

Klingberg was injured after just 3:26 in the season when he was hit high by Chris Kreider and his leg was trapped under Alexis Lafreniere. He went down the tunnel but returned to the ice seven minutes later. He played 4:28 of the second period, but was not on the bench at all in the third period.

He ended the night in a 10:21 game with a shot on goal and two hits.

“He tried to come back and it just didn’t get any better,” said Bowness. “I tried to play it through, but it didn’t work.”

Without Klingberg in the third third, Miro Heiskanen ate a few minutes from Klingberg and finished the game with 25:59. He also took the puck from Artemi Panarin in extra time before scoring the deciding goal in a hurry.

Even if the season is only one game old, the stars have already been bitten by the injury virus. Jason Robertson and Blake Comeau both did not travel to New York due to upper body injuries they sustained the preseason. Braden Holtby left the game on Thursday due to dehydration.

Now the stars are waiting for more information about Klingberg – whether and how long it will be out. Should Klingberg miss the time, the stars have a few options.

You could put Joel Hanley in the bottom pair and raise either Jani Hakanpää or Andrej Sekera. It would also mean that Dallas would have to split Ryan Suter and Miro Heiskanen in the power play without Klingberg forming a unit there as a quarterback.

The stars could also recall a player from the AHL subsidiary Texas. You currently have room on the list to do this, but it would need to make room for the cap. Dallas only has $ 746,667 in cap space, not enough to recall an AHL defender (Alexander Petrovic, Andreas Borgman, or Thomas Harley) without first knocking down a player or putting someone on long-injured reserve.

Dallas only has two waiver waivers left: Jacob Peterson and Joel Kiviranta. Peterson scored his first NHL goal on his debut Thursday night and won the trust of the coaching staff enough to begin overtime.

“He played tonight like he had played the whole training camp: very smart, very confident and confident with the puck, very skillful,” said Bowness of Peterson. “Scored a great goal for us and I really liked his game. But we liked him every day at training camp. He’s a good player. “

Kiviranta, meanwhile, played a game low of 6:29 on Thursday night and posted a cap hit of $ 1.05 million.

More star coverage from The Dallas Morning News can be found here.

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