EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) -- Benoit Hogue could scarcely believe his good fortune. Edmonton Oilers defenseman Janne Niinimaa couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Niinimaa's defensive lapse at 13:07 of overtime sent the puck into the hand of Hogue, who drilled a shot past Oilers goaltender Curtis Joseph for a 1-0 win Monday night and a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 Western Conference semifinal.
Game 4 is scheduled for Wednesday at the Edmonton Coliseum.
"You don't look for the fancy play in overtime," said Hogue, who has become more of a checker than a scorer since going to Dallas two years ago from Toronto.
"If you get the shot you take it and see what happens. I had a shot in the slot, I took it and it went in."
Hogue said the hard-fought win will go a long way in regaining the emotional edge in the series for Dallas, something Stars coach Ken Hitchcock said has been lacking on his team.
"We played on emotion all season and we've lacked that in the playoffs," Hogue said. "It's the emotion we have to get out there and I think this will be a big push for us."
Niinimaa -- who has been a tower of strength for Edmonton -- botched a clearing attempt from his own corner. He tried to get the puck high and down the ice to relieve the fearsome forecheck of the Stars.
Instead, the puck didn't get up and Hogue made no mistake with his shot, which he drilled over Joseph's left shoulder.
"I had a long shift, I was tired and I didn't know what I was doing," Niinimaa said. "I should have gone off the glass. I made a stupid, stupid play."
Niniimaa, however, said he'll bounce back on Wednesday.
"I let my teammates down today, but it won't happen again, " he said.
Stars goalie Ed Belfour made 28 saves for the shutout. Joseph, who shut out the Stars 2-0 Saturday, made 27.
The Stars and Oilers decided nothing through three periods of regulation as the teams battled to a scoreless tie.
Edmonton, fueled by a roaring sellout crowd of 17,099, came out hard in the first period, outskating, outhitting and outshooting Dallas.
The second period saw Dallas rebound from a dismal first as the Stars outshot Edmonton 10-3.
Mike Modano nearly gave the Stars the lead with 13 minutes gone in the second when his low blast from outside the blue line fooled Joseph, but the puck rang off the post.
"A lot of people in Canada have us losing the series, they have us as the underdog," said Modano, whose team was tops in the league with 109 points in the regular season compared with Edmonton's 80 points.
"That's fine with us. We know we haven't proved anything the last couple of years. But we felt we'd get a game here."
Joseph was forced to make a couple of tough stops in the second. His best came when he snaked out a leg to stop a wicked drive from Dallas defenseman Sergei Zubov.
The Oilers held a huge territorial advantage to open the game, firing 13 shots at Belfour, who kept Dallas in the game with his first-period heroics.
Belfour first stopped consecutive shots from close range by the Oilers' Bill Huard.
Once again, Belfour came up with big saves for the Stars to hold Edmonton scoreless. Edmonton center Doug Weight got in behind the Dallas defense and found himself all alone in front of Belfour with the puck.
Weight tried to fake out the Dallas goaltender, but Belfour stood his ground, making a glove save.
#3 DETROIT RED WINGS vs #4 ST. LOUIS BLUES
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- So much for inspiration.
On a night when the St. Louis Blues got big nights from two defensemen who had been doubtful with injuries, the Detroit Red Wings got the big goal. Brendan Shanahan, once a star in St. Louis, scored at 11:12 of the second overtime as Detroit overcame a fluke goal at the end of regulation with a 3-2 Game 3 victory Tuesday night.
"It was a roller-coaster game," said Red Wings goaltender Chris Osgood, responsible for the long night after getting beat from the red line by Al MacInnis in the final minute of regulation. "I enjoyed it. It was fun."
The Blues got MacInnis back from a groin injury and Chris Pronger from a slap shot to the chest that landed him in a Detroit hospital for a night and had him strapped to a heart monitor for a second day.
"I felt better in the fifth period than the fourth," Pronger said after playing 41 minutes and 35 seconds. "Maybe it's that IV."
And it appeared St. Louis was primed for a storybook ending when MacInnis scored his second goal of the game on his blast with 54.4 seconds left in regulation. Pronger assisted on the goal, extending his playoff scoring streak to seven games.
Instead of blaming Osgood, the Red Wings rallied around him.
"We just went up and told him there was a lot of hockey left," Shanahan said. "In overtime, he made a couple of good saves. He showed us something."
The Red Wings dominated the first overtime, outshooting the Blues 10-5. St. Louis had been carrying play in the second overtime before Shanahan, traded from the Blues to Hartford for Pronger in 1995, got his fourth goal of the playoffs. Shanahan took a backhand feed from Igor Larionov and found himself alone at the right side of the net and beat Grant Fuhr for his first goal of the series.
The Blues were short-handed on the play after Pierre Turgeon broke his stick and headed to the bench for a replacement.
"He made a few good saves on me already this series and it was frustrating," Shanahan said. "It felt good to finally get one past him."
Darren McCarty and Tomas Holmstrom also scored for Detroit, which took a 2-1 series lead and regained the home-ice advantage it lost in a 4-2 Game 1 loss at Joe Louis Arena.
The Blues were 3-0 at home against Detroit in the regular season. Game 4 is Thursday night in St. Louis.
Detroit and St. Louis, meeting for the third straight season in the playoffs, went to overtime twice in 1996. The Blues won Game 3, but Detroit wrapped up the series with a victory in double-overtime in Game 7 on a goal by Steve Yzerman.
MacInnis had to be helped to the locker room near the end of the game after contorting his body to avoid a hit by Kirk Maltby. But coach Joel Quenneville said it was just cramps.
"He's all right," Quenneville said. "He hadn't skated in a while."
A sellout crowd of 20,621, the largest of the season at the Kiel Center, hoped to keep Osgood rattled by chanting his name as the overtime began, but the Red Wings responded by outshooting the Blues 10-5 in the first extra period.
The Blues didn't get off a shot for more than six minutes, but came close to ending it when a shot from Craig Conroy hit inside the left goal post at 9:49, a play so close it had to be reviewed.
McCarty and Holmstrom scored on odd-man rushes. After Holmstrom scored at 1:36 of the second period, the Blues' only real pressure the rest of the way came on an early second-period power play when they got off five shots.
The Red Wings also kept Fuhr busy on defense with about a dozen other odd-man rushes that didn't connect.
Pronger got an ovation from early-bird fans when he was the last player on the ice for pregame warmups. The roar was deafening when he was announced as a starter, and when his face appeared on the Jumbotron scoreboard during the national anthem.
Pronger was his usual irascible self, cross-checking McCarty gently in the opening seconds and deliberately slowing down to make contact with Sergei Fedorov late in the period. He also took a holding penalty in the first when he grabbed Fedorov's jersey and spun him around in the Blues' zone.
McCarty's second goal of the playoffs gave the Red Wings the early lead at 3:10 of the first period. After converting a pass from Steve Yzerman, he barreled head-first into the net, taking out Fuhr in the process.
MacInnis tied it with a slap shot on a St. Louis power play at 9:15, putting a high drive past Osgood.
Holmstrom's third goal of the series and fourth of the playoffs put the Red Wings ahead at 1:36 of the second. Fedorov started the play with an outlet pass and Holmstrom scored into an empty right side off a feed from Slava Kozlov.
