Texas Stars Rally Late as Kole Lind's OT Winner Beats Gulls 6-5

Kole Lind ended a wild back‑and‑forth night 62 seconds into overtime, breaking free from the Stars blue line and racing down the ice, sending the puck into the top of the net while he was being hauled down to give Texas a 6-5 victory over the San Diego Gulls at H‑E‑B Center at Cedar Park.

The game featured multiple lead changes and heavy scoring across three periods. Texas was credited with the win and Arno Tiefensee picked up the win after stopping 18 of 23, while Tomas Suchanek took the overtime loss after giving up six goals on 36 shots. Those goalie lines conflict with a Gulls report that listed San Diego with 24 shots and the Stars with 29, a discrepancy that requires verification with the official box score.

San Diego opened the scoring two minutes into the first when Sam Colangelo converted on the power play with a sharp angle shot from the left face-off circle. Roughly seven minutes later Nikolas Brouillard was called for hooking and Texas cashed in on the man advantage when Cameron Hughes found the back of the net from high in the slot. Tyson Hinds then struck late in the frame with a short‑handed odd‑man rush, sending the puck between Tiefensee’s legs with 1:31 remaining to make it 2-1 Gulls.

Jeremie Poirier tied the game 4:18 into the second, blasting a shot from the right point over Suchanek’s right shoulder; Poirier now has scored in back-to-back games and has three points (2-1, 3) in his first three games since joining the Stars. San Diego answered quickly when Brouillard sniped a shot from between the circles at 5:51, and 48 seconds later Yegor Sidorov turned over the puck in the slot and dumped a backhander past the glove side of Tiefensee. Antonio Stranges lifted a puck over Suchanek’s blocker with 1:42 left in the middle frame to pull Texas within one at intermission.

Texas flipped the script early in the third when Artem Shlaine scored twice in the first five minutes, both goals set up by Cameron Hughes. Hughes finished with a season‑first four‑point night, 1-3, 4, and his two assists on Shlaine’s quick pair gave the Stars a 5-4 lead. Brouillard struck again at 11:21 of the third to knot the game for the fourth time and force overtime, where Lind finished the rally.

Nikolas Brouillard, who scored twice and drew the hooking penalty early, offered a defense‑first read after the game: "I think that's our identity to play a real sound defensive game," Brouillard said. "So, if we keep doing what we did, placing puck behind our D's, always having their forwards in front of us, not making any turnovers at the blue lines or at the red lines, we're going to be just fine, and we're going to do the same as we did tonight."

Special teams played an outsized role: Colangelo’s opening power‑play goal and Hinds’ short‑handed tally bookend a slate of penalties and advantage‑play scoring described in the Stars’ recap. The Gulls’ site, however, called it "a disciplined game with only a single penalty called through 60 minutes of play," a direct contradiction of the penalty and power‑play events reported elsewhere. That inconsistency joins the conflicting shot totals as items that should be resolved against the official AHL gamebook.

The result split the back‑to‑back series: San Diego won the opener 2-1 on Feb. 27, then Texas answered with the overtime victory on Feb. 28. Texas now leaves Cedar Park with the extra point from an overtime win, while both clubs will await the official box score to clear up the shot, save, and penalty logs from a game that never lacked drama.