Stars rally past Blue Jackets

COLUMBUS -- Matt Duchene scored and had two assists, and the Dallas Stars rallied with five straight goals to defeat the Columbus Blue Jackets 5-2 at Nationwide Arena on Thursday.

The Stars trailed 2-0 less than nine minutes into the game, but Duchene gave them a 3-2 lead at 16:34 of the second period. He missed Dallas’ last game, a 3-2 loss to the Boston Bruins on Monday, with an upper-body injury.

Tyler Seguin had a goal and an assist, Nils Lundkvist had two assists, and Jake Oettinger made 27 saves for the Stars (8-3-1), who had lost two straight.

“Columbus came out hard,” Duchene said. “They were the better team in the first period. It could have been worse.

“That’s why we’re lucky to have Jake back there. You need your goalie to bail you out sometimes. We know that. We’re never going to get shelled back there unless we’re really bad.”

Boone Jenner and Kirill Marchenko scored, and Spencer Martin made 26 saves for the Blue Jackets (4-6-3). They have lost seven of eight (1-4-3).

“We had a great start,” Columbus coach Pascal Vincent said. “We're moving, we're fast, we’re playing with pace. The structure is right and then individual mistakes that we don't need to make -- they made us pay every time.

“Then there's a shift in the momentum of the game. Just momentum shifts. But it's created by us. Small mistakes that become big momentum changes during the game, so we’ve got to get away from that. We’ve got to make sure that we stick to the plan. We need to show some composure.”

Jenner made it 1-0 at 1:08 of the first period off a pass to the slot by Johnny Gaudreau, and Marchenko extended the lead to 2-0 at 8:43, converting a pass through the slot to the right post by Adam Fantilli on an odd-man rush.

“I thought we capitalized on our chances early and we were coming out with pace and we were playing the way we wanted to play,” Fantilli said. “Somewhere along the line we got away from it quick and they buried a couple breakdowns that are fixable.”

Mason Marchment cut it to 2-1 at 9:29 with a wrist shot from between the circles. 

“Our line’s had some good games,” Seguin said of Marchment, Duchene and himself. “I feel like we haven’t been rewarded. We’re getting better and we were rewarded tonight.”

Fourth-line forward Craig Smith tied it 2-2 at 10:20 of the second on the rebound of Radek Faksa’s shot on a 2-on-1.

“When you have depth that’s what you need, different lines on different nights,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said.

After Duchene put the Stars ahead by slipping the puck through Martin’s pads on a breakaway, Seguin made it 4-2 at 3:47 of the third period.

“He’s driving play for us right now,” DeBoer said of Duchene. “He’s been our best player for a few weeks. 

“Every time he hits the ice, he’s demanding the puck and he’s attacking the middle of the ice and holes in the defense and creating room for other people. He’s playing at a high level right now.”

Jason Robertson scored into an empty net from deep in his own end at 17:04 for the 5-2 final.

“We’ve just got to stick to our game plan for 60 minutes,” said Jenner, the Columbus captain. “I liked our start but the final 40 is not good enough to get wins in this League, and that's what happens. A good team, they come back and they get it done.”

NOTES: With an assist on the final goal, Dallas forward Joe Pavelski tied Pat LaFontaine for the 10th-most points in  NHL history by a United States-born player (1,013; 454 goals, 559 assists). He has six points (two goals, four assists) in his past five games. … It was the Stars’ first multigoal comeback win this season. … Robertson has nine points (four goals, five assists) in his past seven games against the Blue Jackets. … Faksa returned after missing four games with an upper-body injury. … Marchenko has four points (three goals, one assist) in a four-game point streak.