Stars stay hot, defeat Flyers for 6th straight win

PHILADELPHIA -- The Dallas Stars won their sixth straight game, 4-1 against the Philadelphia Flyers at Wells Fargo Center on Thursday.

Mavrik Bourque, Roope Hintz, Wyatt Johnston and Miro Heiskanen scored for Dallas (26-13-1), which also won its fourth straight on the road. Jason Robertson had two assists, and Casey DeSmith made 27 saves.

"Our big guys are starting to score, Roope Hintz and Robertson and Johnston," Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. "The power play didn't get one tonight, but has been starting to heat up lately. And then the other thing is, we've been in a lot of games late into the third period where it's been tied or close, and we've just stuck with it. We've shown good maturity to our game and found a way to win a lot of games in those situations."

Morgan Frost scored for Philadelphia (17-20-5), which lost for the fourth straight game (0-3-1). Samuel Ersson, who had missed the previous three games because of a lower-body injury, made 19 saves.

"We don't play many bad games, even though our record is what it is," Flyers coach John Tortorella said. "We have not played many bad games. We played bad tonight."

The Stars scored on two of their first three shots.

Bourque scored his first goal since Dec. 6 to give the Stars a 1-0 lead at 1:45 of the first period, tapping in a backdoor pass from Mathew Dumba.

He had an assist in a 5-4 overtime win against the New York Rangers on Tuesday to give him points in back-to-back games after he had one assist in his previous eight.

"I've played some good games this year, but I knew I had to show I can play a good game back-to-back," Bourque said. "I felt good and I'm just trying to turn things around here and going to build on the last two games."

One of the keys, Bourque said, is trying to get more involved physically.

"The last few games I feel engaged more in the game early in the game," he said. "Every battle matters here, and the more battles you win, obviously the more pucks you're going to get. So that's what I'm trying to do.

Hintz made it 2-0 at 9:38, finishing a give-and-go with Evgenii Dadonov.

Johnston pushed the lead to 3-0 at 8:41 of the second period, finishing a 3-on-1 rush with a shot from the left face-off circle.

"One of the things that's been strong within our concept here the last little while is our third man," Tortorella said. "And we gave up more odd-man rushes tonight than we have in probably seven or eight games."

Frost cut it to 3-1 at 6:47 of the third period. Travis Konecny's shot was tipped wide of the net, and Frost scored on a carom off the boards.

That was the only mistake DeSmith made in his first start since Dec. 31.

"What a great luxury to have, when you can rest Jake [Oettinger] and you know you're going to get a performance like that," DeBoer said.

It was DeSmith's third start since Dec. 2, but Dallas has 11 games in 21 days starting against the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday, so he likely will start to see more action.

"I have a good amount of confidence going right now, and the team is making it easy on me," DeSmith said. "We played great tonight I thought in every end of the ice. We really dictated play. We played our game and played offensively without selling the farm for offense, and we're just doing a great job of finding that balance, night in, night out."

Heiskanen closed the scoring with an empty-net goal at 16:47. It was the defenseman's first goal since Nov. 25.

"I thought for the last stretch of games, even thought we haven't been winning or getting points, I felt we've been playing pretty good," Frost said. "Good enough to get a point out of a game or win the game. Tonight wasn't the same. Just lacked energy throughout the game and couldn't string plays together. Just got to refresh the mind and come back next game and hopefully we can go on a streak here."

NOTES: The Stars' winning streak is their longest since going eight straight from March 16-April 3 last season. Their road winning streak is their longest since a seven-game run March 5-30 last season. ... Stars captain Jamie Benn had an assist on Johnston's goal to give him four points (three goals, one assist) during a four-game point streak. ... Dumba had gone 10 games without a point before his assist on Bourque's goal, and was back in the lineup after being scratched Tuesday. ... Johnston now has 30 points (10 goals, 20 assists). He joined Benn (15) and John Klingberg (eight) as the only Stars players in the past 15 years to have at least 30 points in each of his first three NHL seasons. ... Dallas' 26 wins is tied for its second-most through 40 games of a season (also 2005-06 and 1998-99), behind the 28 wins it had after 40 games in 2015-16. ... Flyers forward Noah Cates had his four-game point streak (four assists) end.