Artturi Lehkonen had a pair of goals and Alex Galchenyuk and Jonathan Drouin recorded two assists each as the Montreal Canadians defeated the Dallas Stars 4-2 on Tuesday at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and snapped a five-match losing streak.

Montreal is still 14 points behind New Jersey for the second wild card from the Eastern Conference.

The Stars have lost two straight matches, are 1-3-1 in their past five games and 4-6-2 in their last 12, but still hold the first wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference, two points ahead of Colorado. Dallas remains three points behind the Minnesota Wild for third place in the Central Division.

Dallas lit the scoreboard first as Radek Faska deflected a shot from the point by Greg Pateryn past Canadians goaltender Antti Niemi at the 11:48 mark of the first period. Tyler Pitlick also got an assist on the goal for the Stars.

Montreal answered with 3:29 to play in the opening period when Lehkonen ripped a shot over the glove of Dallas netminder Kari Lehtonen after a face off in the Canadians' zone that was won by Jacob de la Rose and a nifty pass from Galchenyuk.

Lehkonen struck again at the 8:41 mark of the second period when he stationed himself in front and buried a nice feed from Drouin on the power play to give the Canadians a 2-1 lead. Jeff Petry was granted the second assist on the tally.

Montreal expanded its lead to 3-1 just 35 seconds later with another power-play goal, this time by Brendan Gallagher, who set up at the side of the net on the power play and buried a one-timer after a feed from Drouin and an assist by Galchenyuk.

Jamie Benn answered for the Stars to cut their deficit to one with 1:40 to play in the period with a power-play goal off assists by former Montreal standout Alexander Radulov and Devin Shore.

Nikita Scherbak boosted Montreal's lead back to two goals with an unassisted power-play tally with 10:34 to play.

The Canadians return to the ice on Thursday when they host Pittsburgh while Dallas continues on its longest road trip of the season as it plays at Toronto on Wednesday in the second game of a back to back.

--Field Level Media