Stars defeat Blackhawks, tie for 2nd in Central Division

CHICAGO -- Jake Oettinger made 17 saves for the Dallas Stars in a 4-1 win against the Chicago Blackhawks at United Center on Tuesday.

Tyler Seguin, Colin Miller, Joe Pavelski and Luke Glendening scored for the Stars (40-20-14), who moved into a tie with the Colorado Avalanche, who have one game in hand, for second in the Central Division, one point behind the Minnesota Wild.
"I think, especially early on, we executed well coming out of our end, things we needed to clean up," Pavelski said. "It felt like there was a lot of good support all over the ice. We got a lead. We played hard. We stayed within ourselves and kind of took what was given for the most part."
Dallas was coming off a 3-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday.
"I thought our execution was good tonight," Stars coach Peter DeBoer said. "Details were good most of the game. We came in and did what we had to do and got two points. We were coming off a pretty poor effort, so that was a much better effort by us. Everything was much better than it was the last game. We've just got to continue with those habits for the last eight games."

Tyler Johnson scored, and Alex Stalock made 26 saves for the Blackhawks (24-44-6), who have lost six in a row. Stalock received a game-misconduct at 16:23 of the third period and was replaced by Petr Mrazek, who made three saves.
"I thought the first period, we just weren't great," Chicago coach Luke Richardson said. "We couldn't string together two passes, just sloppy on our part. When that started like that, we just kind of stopped moving our feet. I think it was by the end of the second period, we had a couple of shifts that finally got us going and gave us a little life for the third period, and we skated a little bit. But obviously it was a little too late by then. That was one of the few games this year we didn't have the skating legs and we just didn't look good."
Seguin put the Stars ahead 1-0 at 5:45 of the first period.
Jani Hakanpaa
passed the puck from the right boards to Seguin, who scored five-hole from the slot.
"It was great," Seguin said. "[Hakanpaa] faked out the goalie and put it in a good spot. Happy it went in."

Miller scored with one second left on a power play at 18:59 to make it 2-0. He took a cross-ice pass from Evgenii Dadonov and scored on a wrist shot from the top of the left face-off circle.
Pavelski's tip-in of Joel Hanley's shot from just inside the blue line gave Dallas a 3-0 lead at 11:24 of the second period. It was his fourth goal in five games.
"We were on the inside more often than not," Pavelski said. "It was a road game where you were able to roll all four lines all night and use everybody. It's a big part of this team's identity."

Glendening scored short-handed on a 2-on-1 break with Ty Dellandrea to extend the lead to 4-0 at 7:04 of the third period.
Johnson scored on a rebound at the top of the crease at 10:33 for the 4-1 final, his first goal since Feb. 27 (15 games).
"Obviously it's been a tough stretch, but [I] would rather score when it actually matters, so I don't really care, to be honest with you," Johnson said. "It's been pretty difficult, obviously. It's tough all the way around. You're not getting the results. The road trip we were on (1-4-0 from March 16-25), it just kind of seems like everything is just building up and you have a lot on your shoulders right now, but we've got to relax a little bit. Instead of getting upset and mad, you kind of have to just find it within each other to play for each other and be happy and make things a little bit more fun."
NOTES: Blackhawks defenseman Alex Vlasic had two shots in 19:53 in his season debut after being recalled from Rockford of the American Hockey League on Monday. … Chicago defenseman Wyatt Kaiser had an assist, his first NHL point in his fourth NHL game. … Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews took part in the morning skate. He has not played since Jan. 28 and announced Feb. 21 he was stepping away to deal with effects of long COVID-19 and Chronic Immune Response Syndrome, which kept him out the entire 2020-21 season.