Dallas peeled off four unanswered goals on Friday night, three on the power play, shooting the Stars to a 4-2 victory over the Canadians ahead of their three-game winter break.
Miro Heiskanen tallied the first two goals, with Dallas skating with the man advantage. Heiskanen’s second goal, his fifth this season, tied the game at 2-2 in the third period.
Montreal marched out to an early 2-0 in the game after Jake Evans scored a first-period goal before Michael Pezzetta a little over two minutes into the second.
The third frame of the contest was all Dallas.
Hintz got his first goal with 18 minutes left in the final frame, assisted by Jason Robertson and Jamie Benn on the power play.
Two minutes later, Hintz notched his second goal, again with the extra skater. This time, Jason Robertson and Joe Pavelski picked up assists.
Dallas rookie Wyatt Johnston scored the game-winner at the 13:27 mark after he picked up the rebound of his own shot and slapped it past Jake Allen in the net for Montreal.
Joel Kiviranta added an empty netter to ice the game after a dominant third period from Dallas.
Dallas had a streak where the team got 14 shots but limited the Canadians to none. The final shots on goal ended at 36-24, tilting toward the Stars.
WHAT TO KNOW
Denis Gurianov, 25, is on indefinite leave for family reasons, the Stars said this week. Gurianov is in his sixth season with Dallas.
Jason Robertson had two assists in the contest and is riding a four-game point streak, his second-longest streak of the season.
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BY THE NUMBERS
Wyatt Johnston, a Dallas rookie, has a three-goal scoring streak and became the youngest player in Stars history.
Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger (14-5-3) finished the night, stopping 20 straight shots after starting the contest by giving up two goals on the first four shots.
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WHAT THEY SAID
“They came ready to play,” Stars skipper Peter DeBoer said. “They were really good and, you know, put us in a hole, and we had to scrape and scratch, and you had to win all kinds of different ways in this league. Tonight, it was our power play, and, you know, it was an important two points.”
“It was awesome, just as always,” Johnston told Bally’s about the pre-Christmas crowd in attendance at the American Airlines Center. “Yeah, it’s a lot of fun to play in front of all the Stars fans, and we definitely feel the energy. The power play hasn’t gone off like that in a while.”
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NEXT UP
Dallas returns to the rink on Tuesday, December 26, when they travel to Nashville to take on the Predators at 7 p.m. CT.
The Stars head into the break with a Western Central best of 44 points. Dallas has a record of 19-9-6 and holds a one-point lead over the Winnipeg Jets (21-12-1, 43 points) in second and the Minnesota Wild (33-19-12) in third.
