Hintz scores two goals, Stars defeat Avalanche

DENVER -- Roope Hintz scored two goals and Anton Khudobin made 38 saves for the Dallas Stars in a 2-1 win against the Colorado Avalanche at Pepsi Center on Friday.

"It was a great team win tonight, on the road," said Hintz, who has scored five of his nine goals in his past seven games. "We have to keep playing from here. I don't know if I'm doing anything different, just trying to shoot. Today, it went in, so it's good."
Nathan MacKinnon scored a second-period power-play goal for the Avalanche to extend his point streak to 13 games, the fourth-longest to begin a season in Avalanche/Quebec Nordiques history. He has 18 points (eight goals, 10 assists).
The Stars (6-8-1) have gone 5-1-0 after a 1-7-1 start.
WATCH: [All Stars vs. Avalanche highlights]
"The last [six] games we've been playing pretty good," Dallas defenseman John Klingberg said. "I mean, from mistakes you learn as well. We still have a lot of stuff that we need to improve and that we're going to work on, but it's good to come out with a win."
Philipp Grubauer made 27 saves for the Avalanche (8-3-2), who have gone 1-3-1 after a 7-0-1 start.
"It's simple for me, we weren't mentally engaged in the game," Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. "Our lack of focus and execution was terrible for the first half of the game. We started getting engaged physically, mentally, and then we took it over. By my count we had nine, maybe 10 scoring chances in the second half of the second period. Up until that point we had three. You're not going to win if you don't play 60 minutes, I don't care who it's against."

Khudobin has won his past three decisions, which includes a 6-3 win against the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday in relief of Ben Bishop.
"When you're not playing as much, then you start thinking too much," he said. "You're not feeling the puck, you don't see the puck as well and stuff like that. But when you're in rhythm, I like it. I'm not saying it's easy, but you're really into a rhythm when you just played a couple days ago, and you just keep going."
The Stars took a 1-0 lead at 18:06 of the first period on Hintz's first goal. After accepting a pass from Denis Gurianov, Hintz shot from the right circle, continued to the net and put the rebound between Grubauer's pads.
Hintz made it 2-0 at 5:39 of the second period, shooting five-hole on a shorthanded breakaway off a pass from Mattias Janmark.
"I think the speed and the pure power of his speed, really, it's what draws everybody to open your eyes," Stars coach Jim Montgomery said of Hintz. "He's got a great release, it's a heavy shot, and he's a heavy body and he wins a lot of battles for us."
The Avalanche closed to 2-1 at 9:54 of the second on MacKinnon's power-play goal. He moved from the right point to the middle of the circle, used Stars defenseman Taylor Fedun as a screen and shot five-hole.

A goal by Colorado's Nazem Kadri was overturned at 9:24 of the period when a video review determined a post came off its mooring before the puck entered the net.
"That was the turning point where we decided to start playing and from there on out we dominated the rest of the game," Kadri said. "Their goaltender made a few nice saves. It was a little too late."

They said it

"I thought everybody battled really hard. We won battles, it was a good hockey game and we were able to come away with a victory. We went on the road against a first-place team and we played well. We came out and had a lot of purpose and intent to our game." -- Stars coach Jim Montgomery
"I don't think we were ready to go the first half of the game. We looked a little slow, we weren't really engaged. Once we started playing our game halfway through the second period, we got going and pretty much dominated. You win a couple, you lose a couple and hopefully you learn from those mistakes. We move on and we have to make sure we get the next one." -- Avalanche goalie Philipp Grubauer

Need to know

MacKinnon's season-opening streak is the longest in the NHL since the Detroit Red Wings' Henrik Zetterberg had a 17-game streak Oct. 3-Nov. 11, 2007. Zetterberg had 27 points (13 goals, 14 assists). ... Kadri had his 200th NHL assist. ... Stars forward Joe Pavelski has four points (one goal, three assists) in the past two games.

What's next

Stars: Host the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday (7 p.m. ET, CITY, SNE, TVAS, FS-SW, NHL.TV)
Avalanche: At the Arizona Coyotes on Saturday (9 p.m. ET, FS-A PLUS, ALT2, NHL.TV)