Necas Scores Twice as the Short-Handed Avalanche Hold Off the Stars 3-2 in Dallas

DALLAS, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026

The Colorado Avalanche arrived in Dallas on Tuesday, Oct. 13, missing their best defenseman, lost another forward before the puck dropped, watched their franchise player leave the game bleeding after a fight — and won anyway. Colorado beat the Dallas Stars 3-2 in the first game of a home-and-home series, behind two goals from Martin Necas, two assists from Nathan MacKinnon, and 24 saves from Mackenzie Blackwood, according to Reuters, NHL.com and the Associated Press, which all reported the same resilient shape to the night. The Stars, owners of the league’s stingiest defense coming in, could not solve a Colorado team that spent much of the evening improvising its lineup and none of it apologizing for the result.

Start with who was not there, because the absences frame everything else. Cale Makar did not make the trip — he stayed home, where his wife is expecting twins, per the reports from Reuters, NHL.com and the Associated Press. Zachary L’Heureux was then lost as a late scratch with an upper-body injury, leaving Colorado short-handed up front and playing much of the game that way, its forward rotation compressed and its lines shuffled. Dallas had an absence with history attached: Wyatt Johnston missed the game with an illness, ending his streak of playing every game — 395 in a row including playoffs — since 2022, according to the Associated Press and NHL.com. Streaks like Johnston’s become part of a player’s identity, the quiet ironman number that follows his name in every broadcast graphic. Illness ended it on a Tuesday in October, and the Stars had to face the league’s highest-scoring team without one of their most reliable two-way forwards.

The scoring opened the way so many Colorado goals do — with traffic, a point shot, and a deflection nobody could track. Artturi Lehkonen opened the scoring at 11:32 of the first period, on a play that began with a Josh Manson point shot that hit Nathan MacKinnon’s skate on its way through, according to Reuters and NHL.com. Lehkonen goals rarely make the year-end highlight packages, and that is precisely their value: net-front, opportunistic, the product of a forward who treats the crease like an office. MacKinnon’s skate will not get its own assist column, but his fingerprints were on the play, and they would be all over the rest of the night as well — in ways both productive and painful.

Necas then took the game over, and his second goal was the one that broke Dallas’s structure. He scored twice on the night, per the Associated Press and NHL.com, including a 5-on-3 power-play goal at 16:14 of the second period — the kind of advantage that good teams treat as a scheduled goal. A two-man advantage against the league’s best defensive team is a test of patience: move the puck, move the coverage, and do not waste the gift. Colorado did not waste it. Necas now has 4 goals and 7 points this season, numbers that describe a player who arrived as a major piece and is performing like one, finishing plays that MacKinnon and the power play keep creating. When a team is missing Makar from the back end of that power play, somebody has to become the release valve. On Tuesday, it was Necas, twice.

And then there was the fight, because with MacKinnon there is always a chance the night takes a turn. MacKinnon fought Roope Hintz in the second period, according to Reuters and NHL.com, and left the game for nearly 8 minutes with a cut on the bridge of his nose before returning. He finished with two assists, giving him 12 points this season. Superstars are not supposed to fight middleweights in October; the risk calculus is terrible, the hand-injury and cut scenarios are obvious, and every coach in the league would prefer his best player in the box for zero minutes. But MacKinnon’s competitiveness has never much cared for the calculus, and the sequence — fight, blood, training room, return, two-point night in a one-goal win — became the game’s defining image. Colorado’s bench watched its leader leave and come back. Benches notice things like that in October, and they remember them in April.

Dallas pushed, as Dallas does. Tyler Seguin had a goal and an assist for the Stars, and Hintz — MacKinnon’s dance partner — scored at 3:17 of the third period to cut the lead to 3-2, per the Associated Press and NHL.com, setting up a long, nervous finish. Miro Heiskanen had two assists, quietly quarterbacking the pushback the way he quarterbacks everything for the Stars. But the equalizer never came. Blackwood made 24 saves for Colorado, in a bounce-back performance after allowing five goals against Toronto on Saturday, according to Reuters and NHL.com — the exact kind of answer a goaltender wants to give the next time out, on the road, protecting a one-goal lead for most of a third period. Jake Oettinger stopped 22 for Dallas, a solid night that will be remembered mostly for the 5-on-3 he had almost no chance to survive.

The statistical backdrop made the result stranger and more impressive. Colorado came in leading the NHL at 5.2 goals per game, according to the Associated Press; Dallas had the league’s best goals-against average at 1.38. Something had to give, and what gave was a compromise: three goals, not five, against a defense that almost never allows three — scored by a team missing its power-play quarterback, a forward short for most of the night, and held together in the third period by a goaltender coming off his worst outing of the young season. The Avalanche did not win the game their identity advertises. They won the game the night actually offered, which is a more useful skill over 82 games.

The rematch comes fast: the teams meet again Wednesday night in Denver, the back end of the home-and-home, per NHL.com’s schedule. Dallas gets Johnston’s status re-evaluated, Colorado gets to find out whether Makar’s family news has changed, and both benches get a second look at matchups they just spent 60 minutes learning. The rest of Frozen Frenzy night is in our newsroom’s coverage — Vegas’s 5-2 win in Nashville, the Devils’ overtime finish against Detroit, and Colorado’s earlier statement in the 7-3 win over Calgary — with everything else in our sports section.

October wins in Dallas do not settle the Central Division. But they do file evidence. Colorado’s evidence, one week into the season, says this team’s ceiling travels with its depth as much as its stars: Necas finishing, Lehkonen digging, Blackwood answering, and MacKinnon — cut, stitched, and back on the ice — refusing to let a short-handed night become a lost one. The Stars get their answer attempt Wednesday. Based on Tuesday, they will need all of it.