Johnston stays red hot, Stars surge past Predators for 7th win in row

Wyatt Johnston scored for the sixth straight game, and the Dallas Stars extended their winning streak to seven with a 5-1 victory against the Nashville Predators at American Airlines Center in Dallas on Thursday.

Johnston, who has six goals during his streak, has the longest active run in the NHL.

“Once we start playing the right way, we can roll four lines and we’re deadly,” Dallas forward Mason Marchment said. “It’s awesome when you can trust all four (lines) going out and all pairs of defenses going out. It makes it easy.”

Marchment had a goal and an assist, and Matt Duchene, Mikko Rantanen and Jason Robertson each had two assists for the Stars (50-21-4), who also extended their point streak to 10 games (8-0-2). Jake Oettinger made 28 saves.

“Our goaltending has been outstanding the last few weeks,” Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. “Obviously the first period was not the way we wanted to play it. We knew it was going to be tough coming off of the road trip. I don’t think we helped ourselves with our puck management and kind of fed their rush. Once we cleaned that up, for the last 40 minutes we were good.”

Dallas remained four points behind the Winnipeg Jets for first place in the Central Division with a game in hand. The Stars also remained six points ahead of the Colorado Avalanche for second with two games in hand.

Steven Stamkos scored for the Predators (27-41-8), who have lost five straight (0-5-0). Justus Annunen made 22 saves.

“We had a really good first period and did the things that we wanted to do,” Stamkos said. “We know they’re a really good offensive rush team. We didn’t give them much in the first, and then kind of halfway through the game you could tell we were starting to turn some pucks over and feed their rush. It just felt like it was a matter of time before it kind of burned us, and it did.”

Dallas scored four straight goals in the third period after Mikael Granlund tied it late in the second.

Marchment gave the Stars a 2-1 lead at 39 seconds on a wrist shot from the left circle off a pass from Duchene.

Roope Hintz extended it to 3-1 at 5:47 on the rush. He gave the puck to Robertson in the right circle, who found Hintz in front of the net for the redirection past Annunen.

Johnston made it 4-1 at 9:45 with a backhand-to-forehand move on the breakaway to extend his goal streak.

“[Johnston] finished that off and a great finish, but the play was made by [Stars forward Mavrik Bourque] on the wall,” DeBoer said. “He took a big hit to advance the puck, which is what you have to do. You have to make them pay for pressuring like they do. They put a lot of pressure on us, and you’ve got to dig in and win those pucks and win those confrontations.”

Lian Bichsel pushed it to 5-1 at 12:42 with a wrist shot from the left circle on a feed from Rantanen.

"It’s such a fine line in this league between keeping it simple and making plays when they’re there, and knowing you have a split second to make that decision,” Duchene said. “And I felt like after the first period we were better with that. We simplified and we let the game come back to us.

“In the third period we started to execute and make plays off the rush and breakouts and little things. We found our feel and our confidence.”

Stamkos gave the Predators a 1-0 lead at 4:37 of the second on a wrist shot off the rush from the right circle.

Granlund tied it 1-1 at 19:24 on a redirection from in front of the net off a pass from Duchene.

“I thought we were really good for 40 minutes,” Nashville coach Andrew Brunette said. “A little bit of just getting a little loose with the puck halfway through the second period. We had a great first and kind of beat ourselves from there. A point of emphasis was we just can’t seem to be consistent over 60 minutes with taking care of the puck.”

NOTES: Predators defenseman Spencer Stastney did not play because of an upper-body injury and is day to day. … Rantanen reached 700 NHL points (293 goals, 407 assists) to become the third-fastest Finnish player to reach the mark (645 games played). He trails only Jari Kurri (483) and Teemu Selanne (541).