In Denver, Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog each struck twice in a 6-4 win for the Colorado Avalanche over the Dallas Stars.
Semyon Varlamov made 38 saves in the win.
Semyon Varlamov had 38 saves for Avs in win over Dallas – file photo courtesy of Lewis Bleiman
The Avs improved their record to 18-9-6.
Matt Calvert also scored for Colorado.
“We had one of the best first periods of the year,” Abs head coach Jared Bednar said. “We scored five goals, two of them get disallowed. What are you going to say? We wanted to make sure we’re getting there and breaking the goalie’s sight lines and making it hard to move us from the front of the net and getting gritty there. So I guess you get two goalie interference goals called back, you’re doing your job.”
A three-goal first period by the Avs took much of the fight out of the Stars.
“We know we were bad, we had an awful start,” the Stars’ Roman Polak said. “We need to be better and prepare better. They had a back-to-back and traveled all night. We weren’t ready. I think it’s unacceptable.”
Dallas dropped to 16-14-3 and lost all four games on the current road trip, all in regulation.
Tyler Seguin scored twice in the loss and Jamie Benn and Esa Lindell added single markers.
Despite trailing 3-0 after the first period, the Stars rallied to tie the game up at 4-4 in the third period.
“It shows that we have a lot of fight in us,” Stars head coach Jim Montgomery said. “You like the way everyone was battling. Every time we started to gain the momentum, we took unnecessary offensive zone penalties. That to me really was the thing that hurt us down the stretch.”
Nathan MacKinnon added an empty-net goal to close out the scoring.
“We were confident,” MacKinnon said. “We let them back in it to make it 4-4, but it’s encouraging. It’s kind of like last time we played them, we won it late. It’d be nice to just close them out earlier than what we did, but it was nice to end the losing streak.”
[WATCH: All Stars vs. Avalanche highlights]
Anton Khudobin got the start and was given the hook during the first intermission; he surrendered three goals and made 17 saves in a busy first period.
“We’re coming to these buildings on the road and you want to give yourselves the best chance to win, and you spot them three goals, take penalties throughout the game. Our top line — me, [Tyler] Seguin and [Alexander Radulov] — has to take a lot of blame. We just didn’t give ourselves a chance to win this game,” Benn said after the loss.
Ben Bishop took over the net to start the middle frame and who made 14 saves.
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