At 16:05 of the first period, Alex Newhook put Montréal ahead. Twenty-seven seconds later, Cole Caufield scored again. Dallas had moved from a 1-0 deficit to a 1-1 tie and then into a 3-1 hole before the period was over. That short burst did more damage than the empty-net goal that eventually made the final margin look unnecessarily harsh.
The Dallas Stars lost 5-2 to the Canadiens Thursday at American Airlines Center, a result that can be made to look more even by the official shots-on-goal totals. Montréal finished with 21 and Dallas with 19. Those numbers are close.
The game was not, because the scoreboard moved decisively during a short stretch and forced Dallas to spend the rest of the night repairing a problem that had not existed at that scale moments earlier.
Cole Caufield opened the scoring at 7:24, and Wyatt Johnston tied the game at 12:53 on Dallas’s power play. For a little more than three minutes, the teams were level. Then Newhook scored at 16:05, and Caufield followed at 16:32. A game that had just reached 1-1 became 3-1 before the first period ended.
That is the central failure here: Dallas did not hold the tie once it had recovered it. Montréal did not need a sustained shot barrage to make the damage count. The Canadiens had 10 first-period shots to Dallas’s seven, a real edge but hardly an avalanche.
Newhook scored twice on two shots, while Caufield scored twice on three. Those figures do not establish that every chance was dangerous, but they do show how quickly Montréal converted a modest first-period advantage into separation.
The close final shot count cannot smooth over the timing. A 21-19 game in shots on goal can still be lopsided in consequence when one team turns a tied score into a two-goal deficit in 27 seconds. Dallas had more than 40 minutes remaining after Caufield’s goal, but the nature of its task had changed.
Instead of trying to win a level game, the Stars had to spend every subsequent shift repairing the scoreboard.
Newhook widened the gap again at 6:11 of the second period, scoring his second goal to make it 4-1. Jamie Benn answered at 8:52, with Johnston and Mikko Rantanen assisting, and Dallas was back within two. Benn’s goal left 31:08 of regulation.
That was plenty of clock for a comeback in theory, but the Stars needed two more goals merely to reach overtime, and they did not score again.
Johnston’s night deserves credit without disguising the larger problem. He scored the power-play equalizer and assisted on Benn’s goal, giving him a hand in both Dallas scores. Rantanen also assisted on both.
Those connections produced enough offense to keep the deficit within reach after Benn’s goal, yet they could not erase the earlier sequence or create a lead Dallas had never held. Two productive players can keep a chase alive; they cannot by themselves reverse every consequence of falling behind twice in the opening 26 minutes.
