Fagemo's overtime winner lifts Moose past Stars in playoff-chasing clash

Manitoba’s 4-3 overtime win over Texas did more than add two points to the Moose’s ledger. It swung a playoff-chasing clash at Canada Life Centre and left the Stars in a tougher spot, with Texas no longer controlling its own path to the Central Division’s third seed because Manitoba held the tiebreaker through regulation wins.

Samuel Fagemo delivered the moment that mattered most. He tied the game in the third period, then ended it 2:12 into overtime on Sunday afternoon in Winnipeg, giving Manitoba a 4-3 victory that stretched all the way to 62:12. Fagemo also reached his 150th career AHL goal in the process, a milestone that gave the swing moment even more weight for a Moose team trying to bank every available point down the stretch.

The game was tight, physical and fast-moving from the start. Manitoba outshot Texas 42-30 overall and dominated the extra session 3-0, but the Stars kept answering every time the Moose tried to pull away. Colby Barlow and Jacob Julien scored Manitoba’s other goals, while Jaret Anderson-Dolan had two assists and helped fuel both the late push and the overtime finish. Domenic DiVincentiis turned aside 27 of 30 shots for Manitoba, while Rémi Poirier stopped 38 of 42 for Texas in a night that asked plenty of both goaltenders.

Texas still left with a point after a comeback that made the afternoon uneasy for Manitoba. Cross Hanas, Dylan Hryckowian and Curtis McKenzie scored for the Stars, and Antonio Stranges set up two of those goals with a pair of assists. The Stars had already been working from behind in the broader standings picture, and this result only sharpened the pressure: a close game, a road point, and a missed chance to flip the leverage in a race that has little margin left.

The second period turned especially heated when Curtis McKenzie and Tyson Empey each drew fighting majors, a sign of how much was riding on a mid-April game that drew 5,462 fans and ran from 2:10 p.m. to 4:52 p.m. Ashton Sautner had framed the stretch as “two big games,” and Manitoba treated it like one, using depth scoring, goaltending and Fagemo’s finish to claim a win that felt bigger than the final score.