Game 7 of the West­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nal series was in the Avalanche’s injury-deplet­ed hands Fri­day after Vladislav Namest­nikov scored to give Col­orado a one-goal lead with 3:40 remain­ing in reg­u­la­tion at Rogers Place in Edmonton.

Then the Game 7 curse hit — again.

Dal­las Stars for­ward Joel Kivi­ran­ta, mak­ing his series debut, scored just 10 sec­onds after Namest­nikov to tie the game, then blis­tered a one-timer home on a behind-the-net feed from Andrej Sek­era at 7:24 of over­time to give Dal­las a 5–4 victory.

Kivi­ran­ta, who also scored the Stars’ sec­ond goal, replaced the injured Andrew Cogliano and became the first rook­ie in NHL his­to­ry to record a hat trick in Game 7. The Avalanche was denied its first trip to the con­fer­ence finals since 2002, when it lost to Detroit in Game 7. It was the Avs’ fifth con­sec­u­tive Game 7 loss.

Col­orado also lost Game 7 in the con­fer­ence semi­fi­nals a year ago to San Jose.

“I’m proud of how hard our guys played, the way they stuck with it,” Avs coach Jared Bed­nar said. “It’s unfor­tu­nate because it’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty lost and that’s not any­thing tak­ing away from Dallas.”

The Avalanche had sev­en play­ers “unfit to play,” includ­ing left wing/team cap­tain Gabe Lan­deskog, who was cut above the knee by a teammate’s skate blade in Wednesday’s Game 6.

“I would have liked to see our team ful­ly healthy, that’s for sure,” said Avs star cen­ter Nathan MacK­in­non, who is now 0–3 in Game 7s. “We lost a lot of key guys. That’s just the way it is. You can call it an excuse or what­ev­er you want, but that’s just the way it is … Obvi­ous­ly, it just (stinks). We caught the injury bug again. We’ve had it all year.

“But, yeah, it stings. Our moti­va­tion was to win this game, get guys back, keep mak­ing our run, keep push­ing. It’s unfortunate.”

Three play­ers in Game 7 had mul­ti­ple goals, includ­ing Namest­nikov when he gave Col­orado a 4–3 lead. But that advan­tage was wiped out sec­onds lat­er when Kivi­ran­ta put in a rebound past Avs third-string goalie Michael Hutchin­son to force overtime.

Alexan­der Radulov had two pow­er-play goals for the Stars, who fin­ished 2‑for‑2 with the man-advan­tage. Col­orado was again defeat­ed on spe­cial teams, going 1‑of‑4 on the pow­er play and fin­ish­ing 4‑of-32 (12.5%) for the series. Dal­las was 9‑for-23 (39%).

“Not good enough,” Avs winger Mikko Ranta­nen said of the pow­er play. “Every­body knows we could have done a bet­ter job. Too late now. We can’t look back any­more. Series is over, but for sure, it wasn’t good enough.”

MacK­in­non, the NHL play­off scor­ing leader, entered the game with a league play­off-high 62 shots but had just two in reg­u­la­tion. He had pro­duced a point in all 14 play­off games pri­or to Fri­day but was held pointless.

“We felt like we were out­play­ing them in over­time and it was com­ing. We felt good,” said MacK­in­non, who saw the win­ning goal unfold from the bench. “Just, I don’t know, we got hemmed in, the boys got gassed and they made a nice play. But, yeah, just tough. I mean, two straight years Game 7 loss­es, one-goal games, and it’s tough. We have to find a way to break through. There are no moral vic­to­ries here. We came here to win. We didn’t get the job done.”

Tied 3–3, Namest­nikov chipped a rebound over goalie Anton Khu­dobin to give Col­orado its third lead of the game in the wan­ing minute of reg­u­la­tion. Ten sec­onds lat­er, the Avs were a somber bunch, then near­ly allowed the win­ning goal in the final sec­onds of the third period.

Radulov tied the game 3–3 at 11:28 of the third with J.T. Com­pher in the penal­ty box for trip­ping the Russ­ian winger. Radulov redi­rect­ed John Klingberg’s shot from the point for Dal­las’ sec­ond pow­er-play goal in as many chances.

The Avs led 2–1 after the first peri­od and 3–2 fol­low­ing the sec­ond. Nazem Kadri’s pow­er-play goal 5:45 into the sec­ond broke a 2–2 dead­lock and Colorado’s 0‑of-12 skid with the man-advan­tage. The Avs were just 3‑of-29 in the series on the man-advan­tage before Kadri poked in a rebound in front of the left post.

Radulov’s pow­er-play goal 2:39 into the game gave Dal­las a 1–0 lead while Ranta­nen was serv­ing a trip­ping minor. The Avs answered just 1:09 lat­er with a goal from Namest­nikov, who redi­rect­ed Ian Cole’s shot from the point. And Col­orado took its first lead when Andre Burakovsky picked up a turnover by Stars defense­man Jamie Olek­si­ak and used his potent wris­ter from the left cir­cle for an unas­sist­ed goal at 9:43.

“We had a real good team, real good togeth­er­ness and belief in our room. I’m proud of all of our guys,” Bed­nar said. “Dis­ap­point­ing at the end but I can’t fault our effort. Our effort and com­mit­ment were real­ly good.

“We just (have to) find ways to get incre­men­tal­ly bet­ter as a team so next year we can get beyond this sec­ond round.”