DALLAS (AP) \u2014 Martin Necas broke a scoreless tie midway through the third period, Nathan MacKinnon added an empty-netter and the NHL-leading Colorado Avalanche took a big step toward home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs with a 2-0 victory over the Dallas Stars on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Scott Wedgewood made 17 saves against his former team for his third shutout of the season in the first meeting of these Central Division rivals not to go to a shootout. Dallas won two of those three.<\/p>\n
The regulation win gave the Avalanche an eight-point edge over the Stars, who have five games remaining. Colorado has seven games to go.<\/p>\n
The Stars won each of the postseason meetings with the Avs the past two seasons, and a second-round showdown could be looming this spring.<\/p>\n
Dallas is headed toward an opening-round match with third-place Minnesota, which pulled within four points of the Stars with a 4-1 victory over Ottawa and has an extra game remaining.<\/p>\n
While Wedgewood has a good chance to start in net for the Avalanche, the Stars went with Casey DeSmith, the backup to Jake Oettinger, in the final regular-season meeting. DeSmith made 20 stops.<\/p>\n
Colorado was without star defenseman Cale Makar for a second straight game due to an upper-body injury, while fellow blueliner Brent Burns became the second player in NHL history to play in 1,000 consecutive games.<\/p>\n
Necas found a seam behind the Dallas defense and tipped in a perfect pass from Artturi Lehkonen for his 36th goal 10:39 into the third. MacKinnon’s NHL-leading 51st came in the final minute after Wedgewood withstood a frantic rush moments earlier.<\/p>\n
Stars forward Arttu Hyry had what appeared to be a wide-open look at a tying goal in the slot, but misfired as the puck fluttered over the net.<\/p>\n
Up next, the Avalanche take on St. Louis Sunday in the first of consecutive meetings. The rematch is Tuesday at the Blues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS (AP) \u2014 Martin Necas broke a scoreless tie midway through the third period, Nathan MacKinnon added an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5117],"tags":[61946,193,2122,38713,144,196,147,5278,5,4,197],"class_list":{"0":"post-542339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-stars","8":"tag-acs","9":"tag-avalanche","10":"tag-avs","11":"tag-avs-score","12":"tag-colorado-avalanche","13":"tag-dallas","14":"tag-dallas-stars","15":"tag-dallasstars","16":"tag-hockey","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-stars"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116353075207599773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}