DALLAS (AP) — Morgan Rielly opened the scoring and had the assist on the first power-play goal scored against Dallas this season as the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Stars 4-1 Thursday night.
Mitchell Marner, Tyler Bertuzzi and John Tavares also scored for the Maple Leafs, who won their third straight game despite losing defenseman Jake McCabe to injury after only one shift.
Four of Toronto’s other five defenders played more than 22 minutes each, led by Rielly’s 26:13.
“You kind of get familiar with it,” Rielly said of losing a fellow blueliner that early. “It’s not the easiest thing, but I thought as a group we did a good job. There comes a point in a game where you have to manage energy a little bit.”
Mason Marchment scored for the Stars, who lost in regulation for the first time in six games this season and had their three-game winning streak ended.
Joseph Woll won the matchup of backup goaltenders against Scott Wedgewood, stopping 30 shots while making consecutive starts for the first time this season in relief of Ilya Samsonov.
Highlighting Woll’s performance were a point-blank save on Thomas Harley off the top of his stick six minutes in — “A good knob save,” he said with a laugh — and doing the splits to rob Jason Robertson early in the second period.
“It’s not like he’s just making easy saves,” Rielly said.
Rielly opened the scoring at 7:58 of the first on a backdoor tap-in following a backhand pass through the slot from William Nylander, who has points in all seven of Toronto’s games this season.
The Maple Leafs were ahead 2-1 early in the third period when they went on a four-minute power play after Dallas’ Jani Hakanpaa drew blood from David Kampf on a high sticking call.
Toronto’s Matthew Knies dove to keep the puck from leaving the offensive zone and knocked the puck to Rielly, whose shot from the left point was redirected by Bertuzzi at 5:08 for a two-goal lead.
The Stars had killed off 17 consecutive penalties this season before Bertuzzi’s goal.
Dallas was outshot 8-5 in the first period and went an 11-minute stretch in that period without putting a shot on Woll.
“We had enough chances to score a few goals, but the story of the game for me was our start,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “The first 20 minutes were, you know, not nearly good enough playing one of the elite teams in the league coming in here. We’ve got to get that fixed.”
Marner scored over Wedgewood’s glove off a pass from Austin Matthews with 1:53 left in the second period.
Wedgewood, making his second start this season behind Jake Oettinger and appearing in his 100th NHL game, stopped 20 shots.
Marner’s goal came 11 seconds into a 20-second span of 4-on-4 play when Dallas’ Wyatt Johnston was called for slashing Noah Gregor.
Marchment tied the score at 1-all at 11:17 of the second period, converting a cross-ice pass from Matt Duchene for his first point of the season.
Tavares scored an empty-netter with 11 seconds remaining , giving him points in all seven Maple Leafs games.
UP NEXT
Maple Leafs: Finish a five-game trip at Nashville on Saturday night.
Stars: Host Columbus on Monday night.
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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
The Associated Press