Rielly has goal, assist in Maple Leafs win against Stars

DALLAS -- Morgan Rielly had a goal and an assist, and the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Dallas Stars 4-1 at American Airlines Center on Thursday.

“I think it starts with the first period. I think if you look at our previous games up until this point, I don’t think we’ve started the way that we want to,” Rielly said. “So, I think that was probably the biggest difference from the start. And then as we got going, I thought we did a good job, especially in the third.”

Mitchell Marner and Tyler Bertuzzi each scored, and Joseph Woll made 31 saves for Toronto (5-2-0).

“He made a couple of massive saves,” Marner said about Woll’s performance. “He made a couple of big ones on our penalty kill for a couple of tip plays and stuff like that and didn’t give up a whole lot of second opportunities. Something you love to see from your [goaltender], and he’s been playing some great hockey for us.”

Mason Marchment scored, and Scott Wedgewood made 20 saves for Dallas (4-1-1), which lost in regulation for the first time this season.

“I think [Wedgewood] kept us in in a lot of that game and he played great,” Marchment said. “We had a lot of chances, just, they didn’t fall.”

Rielly scored at 9:49 in the first period to give the Maple Leafs a 1-0 lead on a tap-in off a backdoor pass by William Nylander.

“The story of the game for me was our start. The first 20 minutes were not nearly good enough playing one of the elite teams in the league coming in here, and we’ve got to get that fixed,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said. “Once we got engaged in the game in the second period, I thought we were really good, but you can’t play 40 minutes in this league.”

Marchment tied it 1-1 at 11:17 in the second period when Matt Duchene fed him a cross-crease pass from the slot.

“I think the second period tonight was the best period we’ve probably played all year,” Duchene said. “We haven’t been overly dangerous offensively for sustained time, and we looked really good there. We need more of that and to try and put 60 minutes of as much of that together as we can, and we’ll get rewarded. We have too much talent on this team not to.”

Marner gave the Maple Leafs a 2-1 lead at 18:07 on a shot from the bottom of the left face-off circle.

Bertuzzi extended it to 3-1 at 5:08 in the third period when he deflected a point shot past Wedgewood on the power play.

“I just thought we spent a lot of time on their half of the ice, and we didn’t have to get a whole lot from our defense in the first period,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. “Then, as it turned out, we needed our [defensemen] too much in the second and third period. I just thought we had enough gas in the tank because of the way we played in the first. Those guys grinded.

“You knew here in this building that their team was going to push, and they did, and obviously we didn’t break.”

Dallas had gone 17-for-17 on the penalty kill to start the season and was the last team in the NHL to allow a power-play goal.

“Just keep moving forward. We’ll stick together. We’re a good team in here,” Stars forward Craig Smith said. “We can generate chances. You see the zone time at times and puck possession and just being hungry on the puck, we’re creating a lot of good chances.”

John Tavares scored into the empty net at 19:49 for the 4-1 final.

“That’s a really good team over there, and they haven’t lost in regulation yet, so I think that was a big win for us,” Woll said. “Playing a Stanley Cup contender like that, I thought we came out in the first and played really hard, and then shut it down in the third.”

NOTES: Toronto defenseman Jake McCabe played 10 seconds in the game before exiting due to a lower-body injury. Keefe said it’s likely McCabe will be unavailable against the Nashville Predators on Saturday. ... Nylander and Tavares each extended his season-opening point streak to seven games, the seventh and eighth players in franchise history to reach that mark... Dallas forward Ty Dellandrea left the game with 4:24 remaining in the third after taking a puck to the side of the face. DeBoer said he believed Dellandrea will be fine but did not have an update from the medical staff.