Blackhawks double-up Stars

In Chicago, the Blackhawks hosted the recently eliminated Dallas Stars on Sunday.

Alex DeBrincat scored twice for his 31st goal of the season in a 4-2 win for Chicago over the Stars.

“A lot of times I’m not getting that last one or even that first one, but you know I’ll take them,” DeBrincat said. “Sometimes they’re just finding the back of the net and sometimes they don’t. I just got to keep improving all of the other areas of my game as well.”

Kevin Lankinen made 37 saves in the win.

“It wasn’t a perfect game structure wise,” Chicago head coach Jeremy Colliton said. “A lot of back and forth and things, but it’s probably what you’ve expected going into tonight. I thought again an opportunity for so many of our young players to be exposed to this level and playing against a really good team.”

The Stars got goals from Denis Gurianov and Mark Pysyk.

“Our guys were a very down group this morning, to wake up and know you’re out of the [playoffs] after everything we’ve been through,” Dallas head coach Rick Bowness said. “I could tell there wasn’t a lot of energy in the room in the meeting this morning because of that. They’re all really down that we’re out. So you start the game like that, you’re down 3-1, then we fought back … We had a really good second period, and we had enough scoring chances to get back in the game. [Lankinen] made some big saves and they get that fourth goal and the game’s over.”

MacKenzie Entwistle opened the scoring in the game when he popped in his first NHL goal to give the Blackhawks a 1-0 lead.

“It’s obviously a dream come true,” Entwistle said. “It felt awesome. You dream about it as a kid. I woke up this morning and called my mom for Mother’s Day. The one thing she said was, ‘Try to get me a goal.’ Mom, if you’re watching, I got one.”

Brandon Hagel also scored for Chicago.

“We kind of came out slow, but as the game went on, I think we did a good job of raising our intensity level,” Pysyk said.

Anton Khudobin made 21 saves in the loss.

“We had a job to do tonight, come to the rink, be professionals,” the Stars’ Jamie Benn said. “We had two games to play. It didn’t start very good for us tonight. We’ve got one more game here tomorrow to bring a professional effort.”