Stars Edge Avalanche as Posts Bite Colorado

Colorado carried the run of play, but Dallas left with the win. The Avalanche led the shot-attempt battle 63-50 and had the better chances by expected goals — Colorado at 2.67 to Dallas’s 2.04 — yet the scoreboard stayed thin and tilted to the Stars.

Why it looked closer than the flow: iron and goaltending. There were four shots off the post, with a hefty 2.14 worth of expected goals stuck on the frame. Among them, Nazem Kadri and Gavin Brindley for Colorado, and Arttu Hyry and Mikko Rantanen for Dallas, each rang iron. Between the pipes, Casey DeSmith turned aside 25 of 27 for Dallas, and Scott Wedgewood stopped 20 of 22 for Colorado, keeping it tight despite the chance gap.

Colorado’s top groups did the driving. The first line of Artturi Lehkonen–Nathan MacKinnon–Martin Necas pushed play, while the second unit of Kadri–Gabriel Landeskog–Brock Nelson supplied the finish, with Landeskog and Nelson scoring and Kadri posting two assists. Dallas, meanwhile, found balance the box score won’t shout: one of their two goals came from depth, a real bottom-group contribution on a night their top line didn’t carry the load.

Both power plays came up empty (Colorado 0-for-4, Dallas 0-for-2), leaving this one to five-on-five process — which favored Colorado — and the bounces, which favored Dallas.