Roope Hintz scored once and added an assist as the host Dallas Stars used a three-goal second period en route to a 4-1 victory over the struggling Minnesota Wild on Wednesday.

Jamie Benn, Radek Faksa and Jani Hakanpaa also scored for the Central Division-leading Stars, who have won two straight games and have a 4-0-3 mark in their last seven outings. Goaltender Jake Oettinger made 39 saves, 16 of them in the third period, and Jason Robertson collected two assists.

Joel Eriksson Ek replied for the Wild, who have lost five of seven games, all in regulation, a swoon that has dropped them to the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot. Goalie Filip Gustavsson stopped 33 shots.

Benn’s 20th goal of the season opened the scoring 23 seconds into the second period. With Benn zipping past the defenders, Wyatt Johnson threaded a pass that found the Stars captain at full stride, and Benn converted a forehand deke.

Faksa doubled the lead at the 5:40 mark of the middle frame. Tyler Seguin led a two-on-one rush that ended when he sent a cross-ice pass for Faksa to redirect for his seventh of the season.

Hakanpaa made it a 3-0 edge just past the tilt’s midway point. Another odd-man rush for the Stars resulted in Hakanpaa heading to the net and deflecting Hintz’s shot for his fifth goal of the season.

Eriksson Ek’s power-play goal gave the Wild a jolt of life with 1:44 remaining in the second period. A three-way passing play ended with a Kirill Kaprizov feed that left Eriksson Ek with a tap-in from the doorstep for his 19th goal of the season.

Kaprizov’s assist extended his point-scoring streak to seven games, in which he’s collected three goals and nine points.

Faksa failed to convert a third-period penalty shot, but Hintz iced the game with an empty-net goal, his 22nd marker of the campaign.

–Field Level Media

Chris Kreider scored his 250th career goal, Filip Chytil tied a career high by scoring in his fifth straight game and the host New York Rangers held on for a 4-3 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night.

New York improved to 4-0-1 in its past five games and 18-4-3 since its 5-2 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Dec. 3.

Kreider and Chytil scored in a span of 1:38 during the first period while Alexis Lafreniere tallied in the second and Mika Zibanejad scored his 25th goal late in the third.

Kreider became the seventh player in team history to reach 250 goals. Chytil matched his longest goal-scoring streak set Nov. 12-21, 2018, and scored his 11th goal in his past 13 contests.

New York’s Igor Shesterkin made 22 saves in his first start in two weeks.

Conor Garland, Vasily Podkolzin and Elias Pettersson scored as Vancouver dropped to 2-2-1 under new coach Rick Tocchet and dropped to 4-12-1 in its past 17.

Vancouver’s Spencer Martin stopped 17 shots and lost for the ninth straight time.

Kreider opened the scoring with 13:07 remaining when he finished off a 2-on-1 with Vincent Trocheck by converting an easy tap-in at the left side of the net.

The Rangers doubled the lead with 11:29 remaining when Chytil flipped a backhander over Martin’s left shoulder from in front of the net moments after Vancouver defenseman Riley Stillman committed a giveaway behind the net.

The Canucks made it a one-goal game with 2:24 remaining in the first when Garland’s off-balance shot from the left circle sailed over Shesterkin’s right shoulder.

New York took a 3-1 lead with 13:37 left in the second when Lafreniere reached his stick out for the deflection of Jacob Trouba’s shot from the left point into the vacated right side of the net.

Vancouver got within one goal again with 3:54 remaining when Podkolzin came off the bench and stepped into a wrister from the left circle that caromed off the stick of the Rangers’ Artemi Panarin’s and past Shesterkin’s right shoulder.

After Zibanejad deflected a Trouba shot with 3:55 remaining, Pettersson pushed a loose puck into the net 11 seconds later when icing went uncalled.

–Field Level Media

Neither New Jersey coach Lindy Ruff nor Seattle coach Dave Hakstol were happy with their teams’ first game back after the All-Star break.

The difference was, the Devils defeated visiting Vancouver 5-4 in overtime Monday while the Kraken suffered a 4-0 loss to the host New York Islanders on Tuesday.

The Devils and Kraken will meet for the second and final time this season on Thursday night in Newark, N.J. Seattle won 4-3 at home on Jan. 19 as Andre Burakovsky scored 1:10 into overtime.

The Devils are 9-1-1 in their past 11 games, but Monday’s victory didn’t come easy.

They squandered a three-goal lead before Jesper Bratt scored with the man advantage with 43 seconds remaining in overtime.

Jack Hughes and Ondrej Palat each scored twice and goaltender Vitek Vanecek made 26 saves in winning his 10th straight game.

“I just think we got lucky,” Ruff said. “I think the last 10 minutes of the third period that it was all Vancouver. I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. They had two or three opportunities, they could have won the game. I feel like we got lucky.”

The Devils have worked overtime in six of their past seven games, winning five.

“We know we’re a really good hockey team now,” said Hughes, who also assisted on the winning goal. “We got a good squad so I mean, I don’t know if it’s adversity or anything like that. We just got to play the full 60 minutes and we’ve been doing it, but (Monday) was a little bit of an off night but we came out with the win.”

The Devils scored three times in a 50-second span midway through the second period to take a 4-1 lead before letting the Canucks back in the game.

“This wasn’t our A-game,” Bratt said. “Coming off the (All-Star) break, you could be a little rusty. At the same time, we showed great character coming back and found a way to get a win. Those two points, in the end, are going to be huge for us. For us to battle it out and find a way to win was huge.”

The Kraken fell out of a first-place tie in the Pacific Division with Tuesday’s loss in the opener of a five-game trip in Elmont, N.Y.

Martin Jones made 24 saves for the Kraken, who played for the first time since Jan. 28.

“Obviously you don’t want to use it as an excuse,” Seattle forward Jaden Schwartz said of the All-Star break. “A lot of teams are in (a) similar situation. … We know what our game looks like when we’re sharp.”

Burakovsky, the Kraken’s leading scorer, left the game after sustaining a lower-body injury on his first shift and didn’t return.

“It’s not ideal to lose a guy on his very first shift 20 seconds into the hockey game, but those things happen,” Hakstol said. “We’ve been able to adapt and overcome.

” … That’s not the reason for (Tuesday’s loss). It’s not ideal for sure to go down to 11 forwards and 59 minutes to go in the game, but that’s not the reason that we couldn’t get ourselves going.”

Defenseman Jaycob Megna made his Kraken debut after being acquired in a trade with San Jose on Sunday. Megna was a minus-2 in 18:15 of ice time, with his turnover leading to one of the Islanders’ goals.

–Field Level Media