Trade-dead­line acqui­si­tion Michael Hutchin­son, a 30-year-old jour­ney­man goal­tender, helped save the Avalanche’s sea­son Mon­day night in his NHL play­off debut — thanks in large part to an over­pow­er­ing offen­sive attack that gave him a five-goal lead to work with.

Called upon as sec­ond-string goalie Pavel Fran­couz was declared “unfit to play,” Hutchin­son made 31 saves — 17 in the third peri­od — in Colorado’s 6–3 vic­to­ry over Dallas.

The Avs trimmed the Stars lead in the West­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nal series, 3–2, with Game 6 on Wednes­day in Edmon­ton. Hutchin­son will again prob­a­bly be in net.

“It’s what you work for as a kid, and you dream about when play­ing in the back­yard, is to play in the Stan­ley Cup play­offs,” Hutchin­son said. “I was excit­ed and look­ing for­ward to the opportunity.”

With the Avs’ injury list grow­ing by the day, per­haps they were the only ones who knew they had a chance against the healthy Stars, whom they near­ly skat­ed off the ice with a 5–0 blitzkrieg in the first peri­od. That cush­ion was more than enough for Hutchin­son to bring the vic­to­ry home.

Rapid-fire scor­ing had been the Stars’ secret through­out this series, but on this night, the Avs near­ly rewrote the record book in scor­ing in bunch­es. They bom­bard­ed No. 1 goalie Ben Bish­op — who came off the injured list to make his series debut — scor­ing four times in a span of 2:36 in the first peri­od, to stave off elimination.

The Den­ver-born Bish­op was pulled after the Avs’ fourth goal, play­ing just 13:43 before Anton Khu­dobin stepped in. Colorado’s fifth goal was its sev­enth con­sec­u­tive in the series. It scored the lat­ter two in Game 4’s 5–4 loss.

The Avs set club records in goals (five) and shots (23) in a play­off peri­od, and the four goals in 2:36 was one sec­ond shy of the NHL’s all-time play­off record, set by the Mon­tre­al Cana­di­ens in 1944.

Pierre-Edouard Belle­mare, Andre Burakovsky, Nathan MacK­in­non, Nazem Kadri and Mikko Ranta­nen each scored first-peri­od goals at even strength, and Burakovsky scored his sec­ond late in the sec­ond peri­od after the Stars got with­in 5–2.

“We knew we had show our best self,” said Belle­mare, a French­man. “Not hap­py about the game we start­ed (Game 4). When you’re in this sit­u­a­tion, we knew it was do-or-die. I felt like we start­ed pret­ty well, maybe because of it.”

Thir­teen-of-18 skaters had points for the Avs, includ­ing Burakovsky’s team-high three. MacK­in­non, who assist­ed on Burakovsky’s sec­ond goal, was plus‑4 and led a lethal offen­sive attack that out­shot Dal­las 23–4 in the first peri­od and 38–16 through two.

Bish­op had over­come a knee injury and was play­ing for the first time since Aug. 13 in Game 2 against the Cal­gary Flames in the first round. He allowed four goals on 19 shots.

“We were shoot­ing a lot of pucks, we were going to the net, we were mak­ing it tough for (Bish­op),” Burakovsky said. “Tough start for him to not being able to play for a while and to come in and face a lot of shots. I think we did a real­ly good job there.”

Col­orado took a 6–2 lead into the third peri­od despite hav­ing gone 0‑of‑6 on the pow­er play up to that point. It fin­ished 0‑of‑7. Dal­las’ sec­ond goal came on a pow­er play after the Avs took con­sec­u­tive unsports­man­like penal­ties by Nazem Kadri and Sam Girard.

Dal­las made it 6–3 with 5:48 of the third but it was far too lit­tle, too late.

Avs coach Jared Bed­nar said he knew Fran­couz couldn’t play Sun­day night after he was pulled for Hutchin­son late in the game. He was backed up Mon­day by Hunter Miska, who joined the team in the bub­ble after Philipp Grubauer went down with a low­er-body injury in Game 1.

“I talked with Hutch and Miska (Sun­day) night and made sure they were both ready to go and knew what to expect,” Bed­nar said.

Bed­nar asked for the best game of the series from his team and he def­i­nite­ly got that. The Avs, who didn’t pro­duce their first shot in Game 4 until late in the first peri­od, jumped on Dal­las from the first drop of the puck. They didn’t need Hutchin­son to be great because he was rarely test­ed at times.

Fran­couz, had allowed 15 goals since replac­ing the Grubauer in Game 1, was often beat with in-tight redi­rec­tions and rebounds from the Stars — par­tic­u­lar­ly in Game 4.

But Hutchin­son had much more sup­port Mon­day until lat­er in the game when the Avalanche got in penal­ty trou­ble. Hutchin­son, who is a pend­ing unre­strict­ed free agent, played one reg­u­lar-sea­son game for the Avs after being acquired Feb. 24.

“I’m real hap­py for Hutch,” Bed­nar said. “Since the day we got him, he’s come in every day and went about his busi­ness. He’s a real qui­et guy in the lock­er room. Just a great human being and talk­ing to him last night when I was telling him he was going to start, I just want­ed him to be relaxed and go be him­self — just have a fun night. He’s a con­fi­dent guy. He’s been work­ing real hard. He’s a zero main­te­nance guy in our room.”