Johnston scores 3 power-play goals, Stars defeat Blues

DALLAS -- Wyatt Johnston scored three power-play goals for the third hat trick of his career, and the Dallas Stars snapped the St. Louis Blues’ four-game win streak with a 6-3 win at American Airlines Center on Sunday.

“It’s really cool to have a chance to do that and see the hats falling on the ice,” Johnston said. “I think confidence is a huge thing. As a power play, just the way it feels right now, everyone just kind of has that swagger. When we go out there, it feels like we’re going to score every time.”

Roope Hintz had a goal and three assists, Mason Marchment and Matt Duchene each had a goal and an assist, and Thomas Harley had two assists for the Stars (39-19-2), who have points in 11 of the past 14 games (10-3-1). Jake Oettinger made 39 saves.

“Guys scored on our chances and we played pretty well after that second period and closed it out the right way. You’re up by one and you need guys to step up and give you some breathing room, and we did that,” Oettinger said. “They threw everything at the net. Sometimes it’s almost nice when you’re getting a lot of rubber and in the rhythm of that. I would almost rather have what I had than what their guys had. You never know what is going to get thrown at you.”

Zack Bolduc, Dylan Holloway, and Nathan Walker each scored for the Blues (29-27-6). Joel Hofer allowed three goals on nine shots in the first period before being pulled. Jordan Binnington allowed three goals on 12 shots in relief.

“We didn’t execute. We weren’t as aggressive as we have been, and you give a good power play like that time and space, they’re going to make tic-tac-toe plays and they did that to us,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “Our 5-on-5 game was pretty good, our special teams game we didn’t match.”

Marchment gave the Stars a 1-0 lead at 1:56 in the first period on the power play on a shot from the top of the right face-off circle.

“Nice to get back on the board. Starting to feel a little bit more like myself. Not too many games played in the last couple of months. Just nice to kind of feel back to normal,” Marchment said.

Bolduc tied it 1-1 at 3:22 when he stuffed in a loose puck that was behind Oettinger in the crease.

Duchene restored the Stars’ lead on a one-timer from the bottom of the right face-off circle to make it 2-1 at 13:28.

Holloway tied it 2-2 with a power-play goal from the point through traffic.

Johnston gave the Stars a 3-2 lead at 19:58 of the first period on a wrist shot from the slot.

“I can’t remember us being outshot like that in a long time, so credit to St. Louis. I thought they played heavy and hard and desperate, like we knew they were going to be,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “You’ve got to find different ways to win, and tonight it was our special teams and our goalie were the difference. We don’t ask either of those things to win us games every night, so, once in a while you need that. We got that tonight, particularly the power play.”

Hintz extended the lead to 4-2 at 1:06 of the second period off a cross-ice pass from Jason Robertson.

Walker cut the lead to 4-3 at 8:02 when he batted a rebound out of the air past Oettinger.

“I think we can take the positives out of it. I think our 5-on-5 game was pretty good, just got to tighten up our special teams,” Walker said. “I think we’re doing a good job taking care of the puck and playing the right way. It’s shown over the last four or five games or so. I liked our 5-on-5 game tonight and we’ve just got to keep that going in the next one.”

Johnston put Dallas up 5-3 at 9:14 of the third period on the power play when he finished off a tic-tac-toe passing play on the right side of the crease.

“I thought, in the first two periods, we did a really good job of it. I thought in the third, once we fell behind, we tried to make too many east-west plays and we didn’t stick with [the game plan], and it’s a learning opportunity for us to know that we have to play to our identity,” Montgomery said.

Johnston completed the hat trick at 11:11 of the third on a shot from the high slot for the 6-3 final.

“We were playing great hockey. We were working hard everywhere and in all three zones. We had a lot of shots on net. Overall, 5-on-5 was a good week for us,” Blues forward Alexey Toropchenko said. “We just need to clean up some special teams. We need to forget about this game. We came off a good stretch and forget about it and move forward.”

NOTES: Blues forward Robert Thomas extended his point streak to 10 games (four goals, 10 assists) with an assist on Walker’s goal. ... Johnston became the ninth active player to have three or more hat tricks before the age of 22 (Patrik Laine, 8; Steven Stamkos, 5; Alex DeBrincat and Connor McDavid; 4 each; Matt Boldy, Tyler Seguin, Taylor Hall and John Tavares; 3 each). … Hintz has eight points in the past two games (1-7—8). He is just the second player in the past 40 years in Dallas franchise history to post consecutive four-point games (Seguin, 2018-19.)