Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz both scored twice in three-point performances to lead the Dallas Stars to a 5-3 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Friday.
Oskar Back also scored for the Stars, who have won four straight games. Goaltender Jake Oettinger delivered an excellent 26-save performance, especially over the first two periods.
Conor Garland, Jake DeBrusk and Carson Soucy replied for the Canucks, who saw their three-game winning streak snapped hours after trading away impact forward J.T. Miller. Goalie Thatcher Demko stopped 11 shots.
With the score tied 1-1, Robertson’s power-play goal at 16:29 of the second period put Dallas ahead for good. After some strong puck movement in the offensive zone, Robertson was fed a pass in the slot and immediately snapped the puck home.
Dallas went into the game with the league’s worst home power play.
Hintz extended the Dallas lead to 3-1 at 4:04 of the third period. After the Canucks failed to score on an odd-man rush, Hintz was sprung on a breakaway and neatly slipped a five-hole shot into the net.
Hintz added a short-handed empty-net goal with 3:27 remaining, finding the twine from his own zone while the Canucks had the goalie pulled with the man-advantage.
DeBrusk scored a power-play goal on the same advantage with 2:09 remaining, but Robertson sealed the game with another empty-netter in the final minute.
Soucy rounded out the scoring with a meaningless goal with four seconds remaining.
Back opened the scoring at the 9:12 mark of the first period, converting an open opportunity from the slot after Colin Blackwell won a puck battle at the end boards and sent a perfect pass to the front.
Garland replied 5:08 into the second period when he finished a seeing-eye pass from Nils Hoglander during an odd-man rush and threaded a sharp-angled shot into the cage.
Before puck drop, the Canucks traded away Miller along with defenseman Erik Brannstrom and prospect Jackson Dorrington to the New York Rangers for forward Filip Chytil, defenseman Victor Mancini and a conditional 2025 first-round draft choice. Miller had long been rumored to be on the move, with stories of him and Elias Pettersson not getting along.
