Stars put Avalanche game away from elimination with pair of offensive outbursts

Two brief stretch­es buried the Avalanche on Sun­day, putting its play­off hopes in dire straits.

Ral­ly­ing from a hor­ri­ble first peri­od and a 3–0 deficit, the Avs got to with­in 3–2 head­ing into the third peri­od and had all the momen­tum. Then, begin­ning with Tyson Jost’s trip­ping penal­ty 5:32 into the third, the roof caved in — just like it had with­in a five-minute stretch of the first peri­od — and the Dal­las Stars were again in charge in Edmonton.

The Stars emerged 5–4 win­ners in Game 4 of the West­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nal series to take a com­mand­ing 3–1 lead. Dal­las can send Col­orado home and advance to the con­fer­ence finals with a vic­to­ry in Monday’s Game 5 at Rogers Place.

The Avs, who took sev­en penal­ties and allowed three pow­er-play goals, scored the last two goals of the game — the lat­ter with 3.6 sec­onds remaining.

“It feels like they score in bunch­es right now. They’re very oppor­tunis­tic,” Avs cen­ter Nathan MacK­in­non said. “Obvi­ous­ly, some of that’s on us. When they get one, they get two or three right now. We got to lim­it that. You know, the series isn’t over. We’re going to be ready for Game 5.”

Trail­ing 3–2 but hav­ing dom­i­nat­ed the sec­ond peri­od and ear­ly play in the third, Jost tripped Stars defense­man John Kling­berg against the end boards in Dal­las’ zone — 200 feet from Colorado’s net. Roope Hintz scored Dal­las’ third pow­er-play goal with two sec­onds remain­ing on Jost’s penal­ty. On the next shift 32 sec­onds lat­er, Avs star rook­ie defense­man Cale Makar made a rare turnover and inad­ver­tent­ly placed the puck at the top of goalie Pavel Francouz’s crease, where Denis Guri­anov tapped it in to extend Dal­las’ lead to 5–2.

Fran­couz, who seemed to strug­gle most of the game, was pulled for third-string goalie Michael Hutchin­son at that point.

Avs for­ward Valeri Nichushkin scored his sec­ond goal of the game, and the play­offs, short­ly there­after, but Col­orado couldn’t fur­ther solve goalie Anton Khu­dobin until the final sec­onds when Vladislav Namest­nikov struck.

“We got to shake it off. I thought we played good enough to win,” MacK­in­non said. “We out­shot them every game but one this series. We’ve had lots of leads. We’ve scored plen­ty of goals.”

The Avalanche’s poor puck man­age­ment in the first peri­od led to two failed pow­er plays and its first shot came with just 94 sec­onds left in the frame. By then they trailed 3–0.

The Avs stormed back to get with­in a goal with an excel­lent sec­ond peri­od. They out­shot the Stars 17–8 and got goals from Nichushkin and Makar. The tal­lies came at 13:24 and 19:34 — the lat­ter on a 5‑on‑3 pow­er play short­ly after Dal­las’ Jamie Olek­si­ak and Blake Comeau were assessed penal­ties at 19:23.

Makar, who took a cross-crease pass from MacK­in­non and one-timed the puck past Khu­dobin, assist­ed on Nishushkin’s rebound goal with a shot from the point. Makar had a team-high five shots through two peri­ods, and MacK­in­non was unusu­al­ly qui­et with just one.

Col­orado came out flat — part­ly because the Stars checked every­thing in white. The Avs played the puck like a hot pota­to against Dal­las’ blood-and-guts attack, mak­ing poor pass­es and far too many turnovers to cre­ate sus­tained pos­ses­sion in any area of the ice. Their first shot on Khu­dobin didn’t occur for the first 18:26 of the game. They fin­ished with five shots in the first peri­od, com­ing in the final 90 sec­onds, but Khu­dobin stood strong.

Dal­las, mean­while, was sharp and oppor­tunis­tic in the open­ing frame. It got a grit­ty goal in the paint at 6:18 from Kling­berg after Fran­couz couldn’t smoth­er what seemed like a rou­tine shot in his chest. Then the Stars got pow­er-play goals from Radek Fak­sa and Jamie Benn at 8:33 and 10:45 — both com­ing with the Avs’ Nazem Kadri in the penal­ty box, the first for rough­ing on Corey Per­ry and the sec­ond for high-stick­ing on Benn.

Dal­las fin­ished 3‑of‑6 on the pow­er play.

“It’s the penal­ties that we’re tak­ing and their pow­er play is feed­ing their offense and their ener­gy right now,” Avs coach Jared Bed­nar said. “We take a cou­ple penal­ties ear­ly and they cap­i­tal­ize on them.”

He added: “I give our team cred­it for bat­tling back and scratch­ing and claw­ing through the sec­ond peri­od, but, I say it all the time — catch up hock­ey is los­ing hock­ey. We got to have a bet­ter start than that and (few­er) penalties.

“They’re too dan­ger­ous. We got to stay out of the box.”

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