In Dallas, the Stars came out to shine on Saturday afternoon in a 7-3 thumping of the Colorado Avalanche. 
Jake Oettinger made 32 saves in the Dallas win.
The Stars cruised to a 6-1 lead in the third period before the Avs made it a bit more respectable in the third.
“We’re not planning any parades,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said. “It was a really good effort, and now we have to keep building on it. I don’t want to undersell the importance of the win because it’s an important win, but that doesn’t mean all of a sudden we’re the best team in the league because we beat the Stanley Cup shampions 7-3 tonight. We’ve got a lot of work left to do. We know [Colorado] is better than how they played, and we have to keep building on this for the next 20 games until the playoffs start.”
Jason Robertson hit for a double and three points for Dallas, his first goal opened the scoring at 3:33 of the first for a 1-0 lead to Dallas, and Miro Heiskanen scored midway through the period to push the lead to 2-0.
“I think they came out hard and were physical and came after our [defensemen],” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “I didn’t think we did a very good job of handling their forecheck at the start of the game. Got slightly better as the game went on, but their pressure, and their forecheck pressure, you look at two of the first three goals we kind of turned pucks over and they came back and capitalized on those chances.”
The Avalanche got one back one a strike from Samuel Girard to trim the lead to 2-1, but Joe Pavelski replied for Dallas for a 3-1 lead headed to the third second period.
“We knew it was coming, it felt like it was coming for a week or two now,” Pavelski said of ending his goal drought. “When you’re going good, you never think you’ll find yourself in one of those. Hasn’t been the first one, probably not the last, so you try to focus on the little things and keep doing those things well, making the plays, finding yourself around the net. It’s good to see them go in.”
Mason Marchment broke a long goal drought to make it 4-1 for Dallas in the second period.
“It’s a good feeling, for sure,” Marchment said of scoring. “That was good. We’ve been grinding a lot this season and we’ve been through a lot together, so it’s good and we got one tonight.”
Colorado dropped to 34-21-5.
Dallas continued the offensive display with a marker form Radek Faksa just past the midway point of the second period for a 5-1 advantage.
In the third, it wasn’t much better as Dallas scored to make it 6-1 on a strike form Wyatt Johnston.
“It’s tough when you want to say a team outplayed you,” Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar said. “We didn’t play to our strengths, and that stuff happens. They were beating us in basically all battles of the game, the physicality aspect took a toll on us for sure tonight. Obviously, you take those checks and mark them down and hopefully meet these guys again at some point. Overall, we just have to be better as a whole group.”
The Avs scored twice in the third with Andrew Cogliano and Evan Rodrigues potting goals to make it 6-3, but Robertson scored his second of the afternoon into an empty net for the 7-3 final at 16:53.
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Alexandar Georgiev got the start and made 14 saves while surrendering five goals before getting the hook in the second period.
“I’m certainly not putting that on Georgiev,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “I just thought, we’re playing again tomorrow (against the Seattle Kraken at home), and I would like him to play again. … I wasn’t going to let him stay in the net if the game was getting out of reach. I just felt like we can give him a little bit of rest the rest of the way, and plus it gives us an opportunity to look at Keith now and figure out what we’re going to do when we need a start from somebody.”
Keith Kinkaid made eight saves in a mop up role.
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