Jenner, Fantilli, Johnson help Blue Jackets pull away from Stars

DALLAS -- Boone Jenner, Adam Fantilli and Kent Johnson each had a goal and an assist to help the Columbus Blue Jackets defeat the Dallas Stars 5-1 at American Airlines Center on Tuesday.

“We didn’t give up a whole lot,” Columbus coach Dean Evason said. “They’re a tricky team to play against. Their [defense] get involved a lot, they go down the backside, and I thought that we handled that really well. Obviously, they’ve got some special players that we were able to play the right way and not give up those big scoring opportunities.”

Denton Mateychuk and Dmitri Voronkov also scored for the Blue Jackets (3-3-0), who have won two in a row. Elvis Merzlikins made 22 saves.

“I tried a couple of different things over the summer and they’re working out pretty well right now, so I want to keep working on what I’m doing and keeping the same flow,” Merzlikins said. “We are seriously working hard and we care about each other. If you do the mistake, there's going to be somebody who is going to save your butt. That's what the [good] teams do, and success is coming and that's good.

“But now even if it's a win or a loss, we need to forget about it. We need to focus. We know our mission by the end of the season, and we want to get there."

Tyler Seguin scored, and Jake Oettinger made 24 saves for the Stars (3-3-0), who have lost three in a row after winning their first three games of the season.

“We don’t lose three in a row often here in the last few years. It’s frustrating for sure,” Seguin said. “We had seven [turnovers] in the first period, odd-man rushes. That’s what we’re trying to get out of our game this year and that’s what we gave them. That’s kind of the hockey game tonight. You’d like to say it’s an easy fix. We’re in the middle of figuring out what’s playing simple, what’s playing with swagger, what’s playing with new systems, and we’re just kind of caught in it all right now.”

Fantilli gave Columbus a 1-0 lead at 4:33 of the first period on a wrist shot from the left face-off circle past Dallas defenseman Alexander Petrovic.

Jenner extended it to 2-0 on the power play at 18:42 when a Charlie Coyle pass deflected in off his skate as he drove to the front of the net.

“We have to be a lot better,” Dallas defenseman Miro Heiskanen said. “We were playing too much in our end. Just have to be better to get out of there and go the other way. Start with the breakouts, those have to be a lot better. They were forechecking well and coming hard. You have to give clean, flat passes to make it easier for everyone, but sometimes you can’t make a pass and you have to flip [the puck out] or something. But if you have time and space, you have to make the pass.”

Seguin cut it to 2-1 at 11:58 of the second period after he redirected a pass by Colin Blackwell at the back doorstep.

“We’re just not happy with our game right now,” Blackwell said. “At the end of the day, we’re still 3-3. There’s got to be some onus on ourselves individually to take a look in the mirror and put it on one another and to pull the rope, to make sure we’re doing the right things every single day to turn this ship around.”

Mateychuk made it 3-1 at 7:21 of the third period on a shot from the high slot after Dallas defenseman Thomas Harley turned the puck over inside the defensive blue line.

“I think definitely seeing some more opportunities [this season],” Mateychuk said. “Took the summer to reflect and you can see the situations too when you could have shot a couple more pucks in the games, and I think looking back on that, it was something I wanted to come in and not be afraid to shoot. Sometimes it’s going to get blocked, but keep trying to get it through. I think I’ve been taking advantage of those situations so far.”

Voronkov’s power-play goal pushed it to 4-1 at 14:26 on a shot from the high slot.

Johnson then scored into an empty net at 17:00 for the 5-1 final.

“It’s not good enough,” Dallas coach Glen Gulutzan said. It’s not the way we want to play. I think the growth curve is coming, but we need to get there. We’re going through some adversity to get there. We’re near the bottom in giving up odd-man rushes against, and you can’t be a top team if you’re going to be at the bottom [of that statistic]. That has to get cleaned up. If you look at the top teams in the League, they’ve got that cleaned up.”

NOTES: Jenner recorded his 82nd multipoint game in the NHL, passing Cam Atkinson for second most in Columbus franchise history behind only Rick Nash (137 multipoint games). … Fantilli scored his 45th career goal and passed Nikolay Zherdev (44 goals) for the fourth most by a Blue Jackets skater before the age of 22. He trails only Nash (89), Pierre-Luc Dubois (65) and Ryan Johansen (47).