Golden Knights 5, Canucks 3

Max Pacioretty scored twice and added an assist, and Vegas rallied for three goals in the third period and beat Vancouver on Sunday night.

The Golden Knights took a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven second-round series. With a win in Game 5 on Tuesday, Vegas can eliminate Vancouver, the last Canadian team from the postseason.

The 31-year-old Pacioretty suffered a minor injury as players returned to training camp in July for the return to play tournament. He didn’t play in the round-robin portion and also missed one game in the first round against Chicago.

“It’s easy to come back and join this group,” Pacioretty said. “Everyone here is on the same page. You’re not really expected to come in here and be the hero, we have such great depth.

“(Coming back from injury) you’re not really relied upon to do too much out of your comfort zone, and that’s a nice feeling going into a lineup knowing your teammates are working for you to get back into the rhythm of things.”

William Karlsson, Nate Schmidt, and Chandler Stephenson also scored for Vegas. Goalie Marc-Andre Fleury made 27 saves and earned his third win of the playoffs.

Shea Theodore added two assists, giving him four goals and 10 assists in the playoffs.

Bo Horvat, Elias Pettersson, and Tyler Toffoli scored for Vancouver. Jacob Markstrom, in his 14th start, made 28 saves in the loss.

It was a game that saw two lead changes after there had been no lead changes in the first three games of the series.

The Golden Knights led 2-1 after the first period but trailed 3-2 after the second.

Vegas pressed the Canucks early in the third and tied it when Schmidt cranked a slap shot from the blue line past Markstrom at 2:52.

Pacioretty then scored the winner at 7:02 on a give-and-go with Schmidt, with the return pass going off his skate blade at the doorstep and behind Markstrom.

Pacioretty then set up the insurance goal 87 seconds later, feeding Karlsson from behind the net for the 5-3 lead.

“It was a strange game,” said Vegas head coach Peter DeBoer. He said the Golden Knights started out well but got away from their game when they got into penalty trouble in the second period.

“We talked at the end of the second about just getting back to our game, staying out of the (penalty) box and getting more direct and stopping at the net,” said DeBoer.

“When we play that way, we can put a lot of pressure on teams.”

The veteran winger has four goals in the series and five in the last five games.

It was Fleury’s third start of the post-season, replacing Robin Lehner. The change was expected as Lehner played 24 hours earlier, and head coach Peter DeBoer had said the plan is to play both goaltenders in the playoffs.

Lehner, acquired at the trade deadline, has been getting the bulk of the work in the postseason and is 7-2.

Fleury had been the starter until Lehner’s arrival and that has not sat well with Fleury’s agent, Allan Walsh. When the Vancouver series began, Walsh tweeted a meme of his client, in full uniform on the ice, taking a broadsword in the back. On the blade was written the name DeBoer.

For Vancouver, Toffoli has two goals and four points in the last three games since returning to the Canucks’ lineup after missing an extended period due to a suspected foot injury.

Pettersson has six goals and 17 points in the post-season. J.T. Miller recorded three assists, giving him five goals and nine assists in the return-to-play tournament.

Horvat has nine goals.

Canucks defenseman Tyler Myers returned to the lineup after missing seven games. The 6-foot-8 Texan had not played since he got hit by St. Louis forward Brayden Schenn and fell awkwardly into the boards in Game 2 of the Blues series.

Vegas defenseman Jon Merrill recorded one assist in his first action of the playoffs, replacing Nick Holden in the lineup.

Stars 5, Avalanche 4

Radek Faksa and Dallas are one win away from the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2008.

Faksa had goal and two assists and Roope Hintz scored the last of three power-play goals by the Stars in a win over Colorado, taking a series lead after another game of wild scoring swings.

“It just seems like when one team gets one goal, it kind of gives them a boost," Stars captain Jamie Benn said. “I’m not sure why it’s going back and forth like this, but it is. And you’ve just got to handle the momentum as it comes.”

Right now, it's advantage Stars, who had a 3-0 lead in the first period before Colorado had its first shot on goal and scored twice in a 32-second span in the period that included a gift goal.

“They came out hard and earned their bounces. All of a sudden we’re down 3-0," Avs center Nathan MacKinnon said. “We got better, I felt, as the game wore on. ... We had a push earlier in the third to tie it up. Obviously getting down in a hole early didn’t help us.”

John Klingberg had a goal and an assist for the Stars, who can wrap up the series in Game 5 on Monday night. The back-to-back games were previously planned, though initially those consecutive games were supposed to be Games 5 and 6.

Colorado won 6-4 in Game 3 on Wednesday night after a wild third period when the Stars scored three goals in a row to lead before the Avs then reeled off three in a row. That was after Game 2 when Dallas fell behind 2-0 in what turned into a 5-2 victory.

Both teams had two runs of multiple goals Sunday, though the Stars never trailed.

“We’re keeping our composure,” Benn said about going into a potential series clincher. “We know how hard that Game 6 was against Calgary."

The Stars eliminated Calgary 7-3, scoring seven consecutive goals after falling behind 3-0 before their first shot on goal.

Colorado was down 3-0 without a shot against the Stars this time but got within 3-2 on rookie defenseman Cale Makar’s goal with 25 seconds left in the second period. That was only 11 seconds in to a 5-on-3 after two Dallas penalties on the same play. Makar scored on a one-timer from just inside the left circle on a pass from MacKinnon.

But the Avalanche couldn’t take advantage of rest of the power play, including the first 1:24 of the final period.

Two quick Dallas goals were the difference. Hintz scored at the end of a power play, on his team's seventh shot during that segment. The gift came 32 seconds later when Makar tried to clear a puck from behind his own net and flubbed the attempt. Goalie Pavel Francouz didn't see it go in front of him, and rookie Denis Gurianov knocked it in for a 5-2 lead.

“Plays like that happen in the course of a game, in the course of a career,” Avs captain Gabriel Landeskog said. "He’s not going to stop playing the way he is either. He’s strong mentally. He’s in this position for a reason and he’s making the Stanley Cup playoffs look easy for a reason. He’ll bounce back no problem.”

Valeri Nichushkin, the former Dallas player who had no points in the first 11 games this postseason for the Avalanche, scored two goals. Vladislav Namestnikov added a goal with 3.6 seconds remaining when Colorado had an extra skater on the ice.

Anton Khudobin, who had never made a postseason start before this year, stopped 33 shots for the Stars.

Dallas went ahead to stay on Klingberg's goal just over six minutes into the game, knocking in the puck after Francouz couldn't control Faksa's shot. It was 2-0 less than three minutes later after Faksa poked in a score on a power play, and Benn added another goal with a man advantage midway through the first period.

MacKinnon added to his franchise record, now with a point in all 12 games to start this postseason. The last NHL player that had opened the playoffs with a 12-game point streak was Johan Franzen for Detroit in 2010. MacKinnon has 21 points (seven goals, 14 assists).