Patrick Eaves, Stars end losing streak

DALLAS -- Patrick Eaves scored two goals in his 600th NHL game to help the Dallas Stars to a 5-2 win against the Carolina Hurricanes at American Airlines Center on Saturday.
Eaves, who scored in the first and second periods, set an NHL career high with 21 goals. He scored 20 as a rookie with the Ottawa Senators during the 2005-06 season.

"It just kind of happened tonight, it's pretty cool," Eaves said.
WATCH: All Hurricanes vs. Stars highlights

The Stars (22-24-10) ended a four-game losing streak.
"Finally, we got a little bit of puck luck," Dallas coach Lindy Ruff said. "Hope we didn't use it all up in one game, but we've talked about finishing and getting a bounce here or there, and it doesn't come our way."
Esa Lindell and Curtis McKenzie also scored in the first period for Dallas. Lindell scored 51 seconds into the game on a 2-on-1 after he stole the puck from Jaccob Slavin. Eaves and McKenzie scored goals 22 seconds apart to give Dallas a 3-0 lead.
Eaves scored at 5:49 after a dump in by Jamie Benn took a hard bounce in the corner and Cody Eakin made a centering pass.
"Jamie made a great play at the blue line, I wasn't really sure what he was going to do there," Eaves said. "And [Eakin] was flying, I was just trying to keep up with him."

McKenzie scored at 6:11 when his pass banked off Hurricanes defenseman Matt Tennyson.
Sebastian Aho scored 5:06 into the second period for the Hurricanes (24-22-7) to make it 3-1 after a pass from Elias Lindholm.
"[Lindholm] and Jordan [Staal], they just find me and I just try to shoot," Aho said. "I should have scored like a hat trick today."
Eaves scored his second goal at 17:09 of the second period on the power play to give Dallas a 4-1 lead.
"We needed a kill there," Hurricanes coach Bill Peters said. "It was 3-1, we needed a penalty kill there. It wasn't good enough long enough. We didn't have enough guys going tonight."
Justin Faulk scored at 5:13 of the third period to make it 4-2. Adam Cracknell gave Dallas a 5-2 lead when he scored from behind the net at 10:19 of the third period.
Kari Lehtonen made 22 saves for Dallas; Cam Ward made 22 saves for the Hurricanes.

Goal of the game

Lindell's goal came off a surprising rush for the defenseman and provided an early spark for Dallas.

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Save of the game

Lehtonen stretched to make a difficult right-pad save on Jeff Skinner at 16:05 of the first period.

Highlight of the game

Eaves' second goal came on a perfectly placed shot after a sharp pass from Radek Faksa behind the net.

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Unsung performance of the game

Defenseman Stephen Johns had five hits and four blocked shots in 19:51 of ice time. He was paired with Jamie Oleksiak, who had a block and a hit. "It really gives you two guys that can physically dominate," Ruff said. "You're putting that together with the reach that both those players have, it's a tougher pair to play against."

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They said it

"Mr. Ilitch was a good man. He always treated me very well. When I had my concussion problems he would give me a call and check in and see how I was doing. That meant the world to me when you're kind of isolated from the team and recovering. For an owner to call a player, it boosted my spirits and helped me get through some pretty bad times. That's a sad loss for the city of Detroit and for both organizations there. Yeah, he was a good man." -- Stars forward Patrick Eaves, who played in Detroit from 2009-14, on the death of Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch

"It's going to be huge. We're going to lose ground as we're off for the week and it's going to look like a daunting task as you look at the paper, but you [have] to just dig in and find a way. You got to play well here coming down the stretch." -- Hurricanes coach Bill Peters on their upcoming five-game homestand

Need to know

Oleksiak returned to the lineup after missing 13 games with a hand injury sustained Jan. 10 against the Anaheim Ducks. ... Ruff said injured forward Jason Spezza will travel on the upcoming road trip but defenseman Johnny Oduya (ankle) will not.

What's next

Hurricanes: Host the Colorado Avalanche on Friday (7:30 p.m. ET; FSN-CR, ALT, NHL.TV)
Stars: At the Nashville Predators on Sunday (6 p.m. ET; FS-TN, FS-SW, TVA Sports, NHL.TV)