In Montreal, Joe Pavelski hit for a hat trick on Saturday and led the Dallas Stars to a 5-2 win over the Canadiens. 
“It’s incredible what he’s doing,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “He looks exactly like he did five, six years ago, like the clock stopped. And he looks like he could do it for another five years. It’s hard to explain. He’s just a special athlete.”
Jake Oettinger made 32 saves in the Dallas win.
Arber Xhekaj scored his first career NHL goal for the Canadiens.
“I think we understand what that team is over there,” Pavelski said. “They have a lot of firepower. They’re playing fast, they’re playing with some confidence, so the challenge for us was, it’s early, we’ve been playing good, don’t take these guys light because they’ve put it on some teams early. If you mess around with the puck they can turn and burn and get to you. And you saw that at times. When they had the momentum, they were coming.
“‘Jakie’ was solid, made all the saves, calmed it down a bit there, and I think our forecheck kind of took over the game there at times.”
Mike Hoffman tied the game 1-1, after Pavelski scored to give the Stars a 1-0 lead.
“It wasn’t a consistent 60 minutes from our team,” Canadiens forward Jonathan Drouin said. “They were consistent for 60 minutes and they won more battles.”
Jason Robertson scored off the power play to add to Pavelski’s first two goals for a 3-1 lead.
“It’s a great story for all kids out there,” DeBoer said. “I mean, this is a guy that was a late draft pick. Everyone told him he was too small, too slow. Just keeps rolling out there and proving everybody wrong every night.”
Dallas’ Esa Lindell scored with 17 seconds left in the middle frame for a 4-2 lead.
Pavelski finished his hat trick in the third for the 5-2 final.
Jake Allen made 25 saves in the Habs loss.
“It felt good, but obviously we were down a goal there and I got scored on right after, so that kind of killed it a bit,” Xhekaj said.
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