That was quick. Johnston's goal 9 seconds in fastest ever for Dallas Stars to start a playoff game

DALLAS (AP) — Wyatt Johnston saw just a little opening and figured why not take a shot on the opening shift.

That snap decision became the quickest goal ever to open a playoff game for the Dallas Stars, who got that score from Johnston only 9 seconds in and went on to a 6-2 win in Game 5 of their first-round series against the Colorado Avalanche on Monday night.

“Got lucky,” Johnston said. “I’s the biggest cliché. I hate to say it, but when you get pucks on net good things happen. Sometimes you see something, and you try it. You never know.”

That was the first goal this postseason for the 21-year-old Johnston, who added another one and also had an assist as the Stars took a 3-2 series lead.

Game 6 is Thursday night in Colorado, where the Stars wrapped up their second-round series against the Avs last season.

Johnston’s record-setting starter goal came on a shot from the immediate left of the net. The 21-year-old forward already in his 43rd career playoff game was skating toward the back wall and passing the red line when he took the shot that ricocheted off goalie Mackenzie Blackwood.

“It was nice to throw something on net and go in,” Johnston said.

Blackwood saw the puck coming and thought it was in a good spot — “It just found a fluky little hole,” he said.

The previous fastest goal for the Stars to open a playoff game was Jeff Halpern scoring 24 seconds into Game 2 of a first-round series against Vancouver on April 13, 2007.

Only seven other players in NHL history have scored within the first 9 seconds of a playoff game. The record was set by Don Kozak for the Los Angeles Kings, when he scored 6 seconds into a quarterfinals game against Boston on April 17, 1977.

Johnston got his assist in the final minute of the first period, which came on Thomas Harley’s goal that Blackwood initially blocked with his right arm. But the puck popped up in the air and came down behind the goalie, bouncing off his back and into the net.

“I’ve had bad goals go in before. It sucks that there were two in the first period in a playoff game,” Blackwood said. "That’s unfortunate, but there’s not much you can do about it now. You just try and reset.”

AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Dallas Stars center Wyatt Johnston (53) celebrates after scoring during the second period of Game 5 of a first-round NHL hockey playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche in Dallas, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

Colorado Avalanche goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood (39) stops a shot during a first-round NHL hockey playoff game against the Dallas Stars in Dallas, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

Dallas Stars center Wyatt Johnston skates after scoring during the first period of Game 5 of a first-round NHL hockey playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche in Dallas, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

Dallas Stars left wing Jamie Benn, left, celebrates with center Wyatt Johnston, right, after Johnston scored during the first period of Game 5 of a first-round NHL hockey playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche in Dallas, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he plans to meet with Danish officials next week after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take over Greenland, the strategic Arctic island that is a self-governing territory of Denmark.

Since the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump has revived his argument that the United States needs to control the world’s largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenland counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, had requested a meeting with Rubio, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website. Previous requests for a meeting were not successful, the statement said.

Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers that it was the Republican administration’s intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force.

The remarks, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were made in a classified briefing Monday evening on Capitol Hill, according to a person with knowledge of his comments who was granted anonymity because it was a private discussion.

On Wednesday, Rubio told reporters in Washington that Trump has been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term. “That’s always been the president’s intent from the very beginning,” Rubio said. “He’s not the first U.S. president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.”

The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in issuing a statement this week reaffirming that the mineral-rich island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, “belongs to its people.” Frederiksen warned that a U.S. takeover would amount to the end of NATO.

“The Nordics do not lightly make statements like this,” Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But it is Trump whose very bombastic language bordering on direct threats and intimidation is threatening the fact to another ally by saying, ‘I will control or annex the territory.’”

Rubio, who was on Capitol Hill for a classified briefing Wednesday with the entire U.S. Senate and House, did not directly answer reporters’ questions about whether the administration was willing to risk the NATO alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option regarding Greenland.

“I’m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, I’ll be meeting with them next week, we’ll have those conversations with them then, but I don’t have anything further to add to that,” Rubio said. He added that every president retains the option to address national security threats to the United States through military means.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that using the military to acquire Greenland was an option, though she told reporters Wednesday that “the president’s first option always has been diplomacy.”

Some Republican senators said they saw strategic value in Greenland, but they stopped short of supporting military action to acquire it.

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said he hoped "we can work out a deal,” while North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said some of the discussion about taking Greenland by force has been “misconstrued.”

“One of the things about President Trump, you may have noticed, is he keeps our adversaries off balance by making sure they don’t know what we’re going to do,” Hoeven said.

But Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she hated “the rhetoric around either acquiring Greenland by purchase or by force," adding, “I think that it is very, very unsettling.”

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, said the U.S. needs to honor its treaty obligations to Denmark.

“Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend," the senators said in a joint statement.

Thomas Crosbie, an associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defense College, said an American takeover would not help Washington's national security.

“The United States will gain no advantage if its flag is flying in Nuuk versus the Greenlandic flag,” he told the AP. “There’s no benefits to them because they already enjoy all of the advantages they want. If there’s any specific security access that they want to improve American security, they’ll be given it as a matter of course, as a trusted ally. So this has nothing to do with improving national security for the United States.”

Denmark’s parliament approved a bill in June to allow U.S. military bases on Danish soil. It widened a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, in which U.S. troops had broad access to Danish air bases in the Scandinavian country. Denmark's foreign minister has said that Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the U.S. tries to annex all or part of Greenland.

In the event of military action, the U.S. Department of Defense operates the remote Pituffik Space Base, in northwestern Greenland, and the troops there could be mobilized.

Crosbie said he believes the U.S. would not seek to hurt the local population or engage with Danish troops.

“They don’t need to bring any firepower. They don’t need to bring anybody,” Crosbie said Wednesday. “They could just direct the military personnel currently there to drive to the center of Nuuk and just say, ‘This is America now,’ right? And that would lead to the same response as if they flew in 500 or 1,000 people.”

The danger in an American annexation, he said, lies in the “erosion of the rule of law globally and to the perception that there are any norms protecting anybody on the planet.”

He added: “The impact is changing the map. The impact I don’t think would be storming the parliament.”

Kim reported from Washington. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Mark Carlson in Brussels, and Ben Finley, Joey Cappelletti and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives for a classified briefing with senators on the situation in Venezuela, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Danish military forces participate in an exercise with hundreds of troops from several European NATO members in the Arctic Ocean in Nuuk, Greenland, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

FILE - A plane carrying Donald Trump Jr. lands in Nuuk, Greenland, Jan. 7, 2025. (Emil Stach/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, file)

FILE - United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller reacts on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein), File)

CORRECT THE ORDER OF SPEAKERS, FILE - Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, right, and Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, left, speak on April 27, 2025, in Marienborg, Denmark. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)