Once looking like a snoozer of a series, the Stars have fought their way back into the mix and have the ability to force a Game 7 with a win over the Golden Knights.

Let's take a look at a few of my favorite ways to attack what should be an exhilarating affair.

Golden Knights (+110) @ Stars (-130)

The Golden Knights and Stars have consistently played low-scoring games. Of their eight meetings this season, six featured five goals or fewer. These teams just don't score a ton against one another.

I don't expect that to change in Game 6. For one, the Stars have actually done a very good job of limiting chances in this series.

Jake Oettinger was among the team's problems over the first few games. With his performances back to norm and settled, we shouldn't expect fireworks.

On the other end of the ice, the Golden Knights have done a nice job of limiting expected goals. Of the teams to crack the final four, only the Stars fare better in that regard.

These teams can defend. Oettinger has it in him to steal games, and Adin Hill has played much better than anybody could have anticipated.

Not to mention, this is an elimination game. Those tend to be played tighter to the vest, with neither team wanting to get overly antsy and make a mistake when the stakes are so high.

Through the last game of each series thus far, the Stars and Golden Knights' closeout affairs have combined for five goals or less in three of four contests.

I expect that trend to continue on Monday night.

Bet: Under 5.5 (-110)

Jonathan Marchessault over 0.5 points (-135)

Marchessault is scorching hot. Dating back to the last series against the Oilers, the highly skilled offensive winger has registered at least one point in seven of nine games - including four in a row against these Stars.

He has been extremely prolific during that period, producing 14 points. That's good for an average of 1.55 per contest.

Win or lose, I like Marchessault's chances of getting involved offensively in this game. He has registered at least three shots on target in nine of the past 10 games, giving him a real chance at finding the back of the net each night.

He also plays on a line with the Golden Knights' most talented player - Jack Eichel - at five-on-five and on the top power play. There's no role that would serve him better in an effort to find the scoresheet.

Look for Marchessault to stay hot in Game 6.

Jason Robertson over 3.5 shots (-105)

It took a while but Robertson has finally come alive as a shooter. Normally reliant on the power play, Robertson has been pretty quiet in these playoffs as extra-man opportunities have continued to dry up. Until now.

We're not seeing a bunch of power plays - quite the contrary - but Robertson is starting to fire from anywhere and everywhere at even-strength. Even more so on home ice, where Game 6 will be played tonight.

The Stars have played two home games in this series. Robertson attempted double-digit shots in each of them, combining for 12 shots on 24 attempts.

Home cooking has been the theme of Robertson's season. Playoffs included, he has a 61% hit rate in Dallas. That number drops to 40% on the road.

With home ice in his back pocket, and the Stars' season on the line, you can bet they'll be trying to get the puck in the hands of their top finisher as much as possible. Expect a handful of shots.

Todd Cordell is a sports betting writer at theScore. Be sure to follow him on Twitter @ToddCordell.

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Players choke in every sport. They brick shots, botch kicks, muff passes, flub catches, blow coverages, forget assignments, and misread the scoreboard at the worst times. Some balk at handling the ball, dishing it off like a hot potato and placing the onus on a teammate to triumph or fail. Coaches perplex and enrage fans with the weird decisions they make as stress mounts and the clock tick, tick, ticks …

Certain kickers and fielders are best remembered for screwing up royally in the postseason. Some player is bound to make a costly mistake in the upcoming NBA Finals or Stanley Cup Final.

Choking is inescapable elsewhere in life too. Public speakers stammer. Test takers freeze. Even monkeys wilt under pressure. Scientists in Pittsburgh found those animals acted cautiously and consequently performed worse when the reward they were offered for nailing a complex reaching task became monumentally big.

Neuroscience explains this is inevitable: Brains are wired to choke.

"If you have a system that works optimally in the usual circumstance, it's going to work suboptimally in exceptional circumstances," said University of Pittsburgh bioengineering professor Aaron Batista, who was part of the research team that studied choking in monkeys.

Choking is a paradox. When the incentive to perform peaks, execution worsens. To probe the roots of this phenomenon, Batista and his colleagues devised a kinematic experiment.

The researchers trained monkeys to control a cursor on a screen, as if the animals were playing a Wii game, and reach when prompted for a small target that appeared somewhere beside, above, or below their hand's starting point. The monkeys were shown a cue that indicated the size of the reward - small, medium, large, or "jackpot," delivered in the form of sips of juice or water - they'd receive if they hit and held the target before a timer expired.

The monkeys' success rate over thousands of trials followed an inverted-U arc, the researchers first noted in the scientific journal PNAS in 2021. Each animal was imprecise with the small reward at stake, often overshooting the target seemingly out of carelessness. Locking in, the monkeys performed better when the medium reward was obtainable. They were maximally accurate with the large reward on the line.

The jackpot reward rattled the monkeys, though: The prize appeared for 5% of the trials, and when it did, their performance cratered. Suddenly, the motivation to succeed was debilitatingly high.

"There's a whole spectrum where incentives can help you dial in precise behavior," Batista said. "But at either end, things go awry."

Every monkey in the study showed the propensity to choke, said researcher Steven Chase, a biomedical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University. They choked consistently, faltering at the beginning, middle, and end of sessions. The monkeys frequently didn't reach far enough on jackpot attempts, betraying their apparent overcaution, though they occasionally erred for other reasons.

"Some of them would try to cheat toward the target slowly. Some of them wouldn't be able to hold the target when those jackpot rewards came up. They were jittery at the end," said Adam Smoulder, a Carnegie Mellon biomedical engineering PhD candidate who was one of the study's lead authors.

"There were (these) weird little idiosyncrasies that we saw, which is something I like relating to humans."

Concluding that monkeys and people might share neural mechanisms that spur choking, the researchers set out to chart what happens in the brain when a huge reward is proffered.

They conducted more reaching trials, tracking how reward magnitude influenced the activity in a monkey's motor cortex. Their observations, posted online in April, have yet to be peer-reviewed by independent experts. The scientists posit that monkeys choke when reward cues cause a deficit in the information they use to plan their movements.

The researchers reported seeing neural activity conform to the same inverted-U arc as performance. The monkeys' brains processed more information about the target as the reward increased from small to medium to large.

That changed when the jackpot reward surfaced. Motivational signals appeared to overload the system, clouding the information the monkeys used to plan their reach, before they reliably undershot the target.

"On those jackpot reward trials, those planning signals are weaker. They have less information about what's about to happen than if the reward is just large," Chase said. "If the reward is large, those planning signals are as big as they get."

What does this mean for mankind - and for how we perceive chokers?

For one thing, maybe fans ought to be more lenient in their treatment of players who fold in the clutch. Their brains set them up to fail.

On the other hand, a key difference separates us from the animals: Monkeys always choke, but that isn't true of people. Some players, Chase said, seem to be able "to outwit the system - to think of strategies or ways to approach those high-pressure events that allow them to be calmer and succeed."

The scientists' choking research continues. They received grant funding to investigate if dopamine is the neurotransmitter that floods the motor cortex and inhibits motor planning. In the meantime, they'll applaud any athlete who enters the zone and is able to hit the jackpot.

"There's majesty and power and beauty to being someone who's managing all these feelings and still performing at the absolute top of their game," Batista said. As a viewer, he added, "It keeps you riveted."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

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The Arizona Coyotes were just minding their own business, likely lamenting another lengthy offseason and wondering about the future of their franchise. Then, Bruce Cassidy caught them with a stray.

"To me, the (biggest indicator of our lack of) desperation was we had 24 giveaways tonight," the Golden Knights head coach said after the Dallas Stars defeated his club 4-2 in Game 5 of the Western Conference Final to cut Vegas' series lead to 3-2.

"I'm not sure you're beating the Arizona Coyotes in January with 24 giveaways," Cassidy continued. "No disrespect to Arizona, but it's not the right way to play. ... We're trying to go to the Stanley Cup Final against a desperate team, so to me, that's the whole game right there."

Vegas committed 15 more giveaways than Dallas on Saturday night, with defenseman Zach Whitecloud coughing up a game-high four. Forward Chandler Stephenson, who scored in the second period, made three.

Jason Robertson - who answered Stephenson's goal with one of his own - committed two giveaways for the victors. No other Stars skater committed more than one.

The Golden Knights took a pair of leads in the loss, but the Stars tied it quickly both times - first on Luke Glendening's first-period tally less than two minutes after Ivan Barbashev opened the scoring, and then on Robertson's marker two minutes and nine seconds after Stephenson gave Vegas a 2-1 advantage.

Ty Dellandrea then potted a pair of goals in under 90 seconds midway through the third period to propel the Stars to victory.

Vegas did have more takeaways than Dallas in the game, winning that category 14-7.

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Sammy Blais' two-goal performance propelled Canada to a 5-2 victory over Germany in Sunday's IIHF World Championship gold-medal game.

The victory is Canada's 28th gold medal at the Worlds, breaking a tie with Russia to become the winningest nation in the tournament's history.

Tied 2-2 entering the third period, Canada pulled away with goals from Blais and Tyler Toffoli. Scott Laughton added an empty-netter to seal the victory.

Canada last won the World Championship in 2021.

Germany has never won gold at the Worlds. The silver medal is the nation's best result since 1953, when West Germany finished runner-up to Sweden. The Germans upset the United States in overtime in the semifinals to reach Sunday's gold-medal game.

Latvia shocked the U.S. in the bronze-medal contest earlier Sunday for the country's first-ever podium finish at an IIHF event.

Vancouver Canucks prospect Arturs Silovs won tournament MVP for his performance in the Latvian net. The 22-year-old posted a .921 save percentage and a 7-3-0 record in 10 games.

Buffalo Sabres forward J.J. Peterka and Calgary Flames defenseman MacKenzie Weegar were named the tournament's top players at their respective positions.

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Latvia shocked the United States 4-3 in overtime in Sunday's bronze medal game at the IIHF World Championships.

Kristians Rubins fired home the game-winning goal 1:22 into the extra frame to capture Latvia's first medal at an elite-level IIHF event.

The former Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman also tied the contest with 5:39 remaining in the third period.

After dropping its opening two contests of the tournament against Canada and Slovakia, Latvia won six consecutive games before losing to Canada in the semifinals.

Latvia got on the board first Sunday with a goal from Roberts Bukarts, only to be answered less than two minutes later by USA's Rocco Grimaldi. Janis Jaks put Latvia up 2-1 before Grimaldi scored his second goal with 57 seconds remaining in the first frame.

After a goalless second period, Matt Coronato gave the Americans their first lead of the clash just 6:19 into the third. Then came Rubins' heroics.

The 25-year-old blue-liner joined Latvia after being eliminated in the Calder Cup Playoffs with the Calgary Wranglers. He had just two goals at the Worlds in 21 career contests over four tournaments, and he scored only three goals in 51 AHL games this season.

Vancouver Canucks prospect Arturs Silovs made 26 saves in the victory.

Canada faces Germany in the gold-medal game at 1:20 p.m. ET.

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Ty Dellandrea scored two goals in under 90 seconds to break a third-period tie as his Dallas Stars prevailed 4-2 over the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 5 of the Western Conference Final on Saturday night.

The Stars cut the Golden Knights' series lead to 3-2, with Game 6 scheduled for Monday.

Dellandrea gave Dallas a one-goal advantage just over halfway through the final frame before burying a loose puck to pad the lead.

Dellandrea posted his first career multi-goal game, including both regular-season and playoff contests.

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