The Dallas Stars claimed their first win of the season with a 5-2 victory over the Calgary Flames on Friday, which consigned the home side to their first loss of the new campaign. The Stars (1-0-2) cooled off the red-hot Flames with five goals from five different players and 21 saves from the Dallas goaltender Alex Auld, making his first start of the season in place of Marty Turco.
A delighted Auld said: "I just wanted to make a good impression and the guys did a great job making my job pretty easy, scoring goals early and every time [Calgary] seemed to get one, we answered right back." "We realised the opportunity we had to beat a very good team. Dallas began each of the first two periods on fire, with Mike Ribeiro beating the Calgary goaltender Curtis McElhinney one minute into the game, while Brian Sutherby doubled the lead less than a minute into the second period.
A power play chance early in the second set up Dion Phaneuf's slap shot goal to make it 2-1, but Tom Wandell answered for Dallas less than five minutes later. Rene Bourque pulled one back for Calgary early in the third before Loui Eriksson scored his first goal of the year at 9:25 and Brad Richards recorded an empty- netter with 47 seconds left in the game. In the other NHL action on Friday night, the Carolina Hurricanes were even more convincing winners as they hammered the Florida Panthers 7-2.
Tom Kostopoulos, Tuomo Ruutu and Jussi Jokinen scored to give Carolina a commanding 3-0 lead in the first period, and it was an advantage their opponents never looked like challenging. * With agencies