Faksa, Stars top Avalanche for fourth straight win

DALLAS --Radek Faksa scored two goals for the Dallas Stars in their fourth straight win, 4-1 against the Colorado Avalanche at American Airlines Center on Tuesday.

Jason Dickinson and Corey Perry scored, and Ben Bishop made 36 saves for the Stars (8-8-1), who have won seven of their past eight games after starting the season 1-7-1.
"I think hockey's about confidence, and we have lots of confidence right now," Faksa said. "We knew we had a great team. We had to just put a puzzle together, and we did it the last eight games. We have to just keep going and keep winning because it's hard to make playoffs in this league."
WATCH: [All Avalanche vs. Stars highlights]
J.T. Compher scored, and Philipp Grubauer made 34 saves for the Avalanche (8-5-2), who are 0-4-1 in their past five games and have scored two goals in their past three.
"We haven't started well in the last four or five games," Colorado forward Matt Calvert said. "So it's nothing new to us. It's something we got to figure out in here as a team. We've got to raise the bar and expect more of ourselves."

After forcing a turnover by Avalanche defenseman Samuel Girard, Dickinson scored his first of the season 19 seconds into the first period to make it 1-0. Colorado coach Jared Bednar challenged the play for goaltender interference, but the call was upheld after video review.
"I think it's easy to say that those first five games, I wasn't playing my best hockey and I didn't necessarily deserve to get any bounces," Dickinson said. "But since then, I feel like I've been playing a lot of good minutes and playing hard hockey, so it's nice to finally be rewarded with the bounce that goes in."
Faksa made it 2-0 at 5:46, scoring on his own rebound in front after his shot was knocked up in the air and into the net off Grubauer's blocker.
Colorado didn't get its first shot of the game until 16:23 of the first period (outshot 12-1 at time).
"Right now, we are definitely not playing our best and we just can't find a way to win," Avalanche forward Andre Burakovsky said.
Compher scored in the high slot on the rush at 19:24 of the first to cut it to 2-1.
Faksa scored a power-play goal at 10:54 of the second period on a rebound in front to make it 3-1. Bednar challenged the play to review if Faksa scored with a broken stick, but the play did not fit into the applicable standards for a missed game stoppage event in the offensive zone, and the goal was upheld.

As a result, Colorado became the first team to be assessed a double-minor penalty for delaying the game for its second unsuccessful challenge.
"I challenged that when he touched the puck, there should've been a stoppage since he played the puck with a broken stick," Bednar said. "I had a couple of questions for the referee first. When you kind of read through later on in the rule, they can challenge it for the stoppage, but if it's a penalty, then they can't overturn the goal. That's my mistake. I take full blame for that one."
Perry extended the lead to 4-1 at 6:49 of the third period when he banked a shot off of Grubauer's back from behind the net.
Dallas went 1-for-7 on the power play. Colorado was 0-for-8.
"Special teams decides the games, and it was the same today," Faksa said. "We had great special teams. The power play was great, and we had great kills on the penalty kill. I think that decided the game."
Stars defenseman John Klingberg left the game in the second period with a lower-body injury. Coach Jim Montgomery said he will be out at least two weeks.

They said it

"I liked some of the things I was hearing on the bench, but our execution was just not good tonight. There's a lot of things I didn't like about the game. There were some positives, but not as many as we need at this point." -- Avalanche coach Jared Bednar
"Arrogance might be a strong word. We have swag, a little bit going on. Confidence is really good and we still have some guys that are still not at their level of their individual game. It's exciting about how much more room for growth we have just within our team." -- Stars coach Jim Montgomery

Need to know

Colorado has lost seven of its past nine games in Dallas (2-6-1). … Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon did not have a point for the second straight game after beginning the season with a 13-game point streak. … Stars forward Blake Comeau played in his 800th NHL game.

What's next

Avalanche:Host the Nashville Predators on Thursday (9 p.m. ET; ALT, FS-TN, NHL.TV)
Stars: At the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday (2 p.m. ET; TSN3, FS-SW, NHL.TV)