The Edmonton Oilers and Dallas Stars entered Game 5 in Dallas tied 2-2 in their Western Conference finals series. The Oilers beat the Stars 3-1 and will head home up 3-2 with a chance to end the series Sunday.

Here’s what stood out from Edmonton’s win and what to look for in Game 6, including key players for each team.

Oilers grade: A

Even the most optimistic supporters of the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference finals probably couldn’t have imagined they’d control play and out-defend the Dallas Stars like they did in Game 5. They limited the Stars to four shots on goal in the first period. Dallas went 9:43 without a shot on goal in the second period.

The Oilers were solid in all three zones, got their killer instinct back on the power play and got every save they needed out of Stuart Skinner, who had one of his best games of the postseason.

They squandered a chance to win Game 5 against Vancouver after building a lead. As they’ve done throughout the playoffs, they learned from their mistakes. “You can’t play decent, you can’t play good — you have to play great and you have to do it for a longer period of time than the opposing team were doing it,” defenseman Mattias Ekholm said.

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Ryan Nugent-Hopkins slaps home his 2nd goal for Oilers

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scores his second goal to pad the Oilers’ lead.

Stars grade: D+

Where was the intensity? The feeding off the crowd? The pushback after a Game 4 where the Oilers dominated, as Ekholm put it, for 52 minutes of a 60 minute game.

“The first two periods weren’t good enough. We have to generate more, obviously. And third period, we had some looks, but you’re down three by then,” said center Matt Duchene, who called the Stars’ offense “disjointed.”

Coach Pete DeBoer crudely pushed back when he believed a member of the media was questioning his team’s character after the loss. If only his players showed that much fire.

What we learned in Game 5

That one questionable call can change it all. With 6:09 left in the first period, Stars defenseman Ryan Suter gave Connor McDavid a shove from behind near the boards. McDavid hit the ice and the referee across the zone signaled for a penalty. It was a roughing call that might not rise to the level of a minor penalty in the playoffs.

The Oilers power play was 0-for-6 in the series heading into Game 5. All that meant was that they were due. It took 18 seconds for Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to score for the 1-0 lead. The Nuge struck again just 1:06 into the second period after Miro Heiskanen took a delay of game penalty for a 2-0 lead that sucked the wind out of the Stars’ sails — and their home crowd.

“If you’re going to draw a road game, that’s pretty much what you want to do, right?” DeBoer said. “They want to come out, get two power-play goals early in the game, get the lead and then defend well all night. So it’s tough to crack through.”

Players to watch in Game 6

Stuart Skinner. He got a lot of support from a terrific Edmonton defensive effort, but don’t sleep on how Skinner shut the door on the Stars in Game 5 with his 19-save effort.

He robbed Wyatt Johnston on the power play at the end of the second period and flashed his pad to stop a great Logan Stankoven chance later in the game.

He has quietly had a strong series, including 2.2 goals saved above expected in Game 1. He has given up two goals or fewer in four of the five games of the series. As the Stars face elimination, they have to find a way to solve Skinner. You read that correctly.

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Stuart Skinner’s impressive save keeps the Stars scoreless in the 3rd

Oilers’ goalie Stuart Skinner denies the Stars to keep them scoreless in the third period.

Wyatt Johnston. The only player to beat Skinner in Game 5, Johnston now has 10 goals in the postseason for Dallas, four more than any teammate.

The second-year forward has a knack for postseason heroics and the Stars could certainly use some with their back against the wall. A power-play goal would be nice, as Dallas is 0-for-11 in the series with the man advantage.

How good has he been? Johnston became the fifth active player to score 10 goals in a playoff year at age 21 or younger, joining Sidney Crosby (15 in 2009), Nikita Kucherov (10 in 2015), Patrick Kane (10 in 2010) and Evgeni Malkin (10 in 2008).

Big question for Game 6: Can the Dallas offense find cohesion?

The Stars averaged 3.59 goals per game in the regular season. They’ve scored two goals or fewer in their three losses in the conference finals.

Duchene said the Stars aren’t playing as a five-man unit. “It looks like we were on our heels a little too much,” he said. “Sometimes when you want something so bad, you want to try and be too perfect.”

If the Stars can’t find that chemistry, they’ll have all summer to think about what happened to a very good offensive team.

DALLAS — Like the majority of the Dallas Stars, Matt Duchene is seeking his first Stanley Cup championship. But after their Game 5 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Friday night, he’s searching for reasons the conference’s top seed is one loss away from elimination.

“We haven’t had our best for other than probably Game 3,” he said after the Oilers’ 3-1 win gave them a 3-2 lead in the Western Conference finals. “We’ve been a bit disjointed offensively this whole series.”

The Stars averaged 3.59 goals per game in the regular season. They’ve scored two goals or less in their three losses in the series.

Forward Tyler Seguin said the Stars aren’t “connected” as a five-man unit on the ice. Duchene said they didn’t retrieve enough pucks in the offensive zone — and when they did, Dallas was far too tentative in setting up for scoring chances against Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner (19 saves).

“Sometimes when you want something so bad, you want to try and be too perfect. We need to trust our game,” Duchene said.

The Oilers, in their second straight victory, controlled play for the majority of the game. They limited the Stars to four shots on goal in the first period, and Dallas went 9:43 without a shot on goal in the second.

Dallas coach Peter DeBoer was asked about what one reported called a “lifeless” second period, and he responded by calling the description an attack on his team’s character.

“You can sit here and question our character if you want. You know what? I’m not going to do it. You go ahead and write whatever the f— you want,” DeBoer said.

The coach said Edmonton played “a perfect road game” in shutting down his team.

“If you’re going to draw a road game, that’s pretty much what you want to do, right?” DeBoer said. “They want to come out, get two power-play goals early in the game, get the lead and then defend well all night. So it’s tough to crack through.”

Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who scored those two power-play goals, said the key to defending the Stars is to not give them anything to work with by making mistakes.

“It starts with getting through the neutral zone, not turning pucks over and not giving them anything easy coming back at us,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “Sometimes you got to live to fight another day. You don’t need to be too aggressive.”

“Sometimes when you want something so bad, you want to try and be too perfect. We need to trust our game.”

Matt Duchene

Nugent-Hopkins also plays on the Edmonton penalty kill, which has not allowed a Dallas power-play goal all series. The Stars are 0-for-11, with five of those power plays coming in Game 1.

“There hasn’t been that many power plays this series. So you can maybe attribute a little bit of that [lack of success] to reps,” Seguin said. “But there’s no excuse at this time of the year. Sometimes the special teams need to win you the game, and theirs did tonight.”

The Oilers return home with a chance to advance to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2006. But the Stars believe they have a rally in them. Dallas was the best road team in the regular season and has gone 6-2 away from home in the playoffs. Plus, the Stars believe Edmonton has yet to see their best.

“We have the confidence that if we play our best game, then we can beat anyone. So it’s just a matter of us doing that next game,” said forward Wyatt Johnston, who scored his 10th goal of the playoffs in the loss. “I mean, we can’t lose another game for the rest of the series. Our backs are definitely against the wall.”

ARLINGTON, Texas — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and the Edmonton Oilers went into Game 5 of the Western Conference final determined to score if they got a power-play chance.

They did twice, and quickly both times, in a 3-1 win over the top-seeded Dallas Stars to take a 3-2 series lead Friday and get within one victory of going to the Stanley Cup Final.

“We’ve been pushing and they obviously don’t take a lot of penalties. You don’t have three, four or five opportunities a game to find your rhythm,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “So going into tonight, we wanted to make sure that if we only got one, we were going to make it count.”

There hadn’t been a power-play goal by either team in this series until Nugent-Hopkins scored on a rebound only 18 seconds after a penalty in the first period, only their seventh chance against Dallas. That was 2 seconds longer than it took for him to score with a man advantage again after a penalty just a minute into the second period.

Stuart Skinner stopped 19 shots for the Oilers, and Philip Broberg scored from just inside the blue line. Evan Bouchard assisted on both of the power-play goals, while captain Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl each had a helper on one of them.

“I thought right from start to finish we were dialed in,” McDavid said. “Everything. Details, a lot of things.”

Game 6 is Sunday night in Edmonton. With a win at home, the Oilers would advance to their first Stanley Cup Final since 2006. They were 5-12-1 in November and had already made a coaching change

The Stars jumped ahead 2-0 in the first 5:29 of Game 4 at Edmonton, and looked as though they were ready to take a stranglehold on the series. Instead, they didn’t have another goal for nearly 109 minutes stretched over six periods for their longest scoring drought of the postseason.

Edmonton scored eight consecutive goals, getting even by the end of the first period Wednesday night, part of five unanswered goals in a 5-2 victory before going ahead 3-0 on Friday. The Stars, now 4-6 at home this postseason, finally got another puck in the net when Wyatt Johnston scored with 5:51 left in the game.

Jake Oettinger had 23 saves for the Stars.

Dallas had only six shots on goal halfway through the game, but Skinner already had some quality stops by then — and more after that, including on the Stars’ only power play late in the second period.

“Stu was just solid. He was square, he was quick,” coach Kris Knoblauch said. “We win 3-1 tonight, and I think that’s a little skewed. I don’t think we were that much better tonight. I think just the fact that Stu had so many big saves gave us a little bit of a cushion and made it look easier than it was for our team.”

Skinner knocked down a one-timer chance by the 21-year-old Johnston only seconds after rejecting Miro Heiskanen during that power play. Then early in the third, Johnston was denied on an in-close shot before Duchene’s backhander.

Oettinger really had no chance on Nugent-Hopkins’ first goal, when he scored on a rebound after Bouchard’s shot was blocked by Chris Tanev, the defenseman who had been questionable for the game after taking a shot off his right foot in the second period of the last game. The puck went right to Nugent-Hopkins on the opposite side of the goalie.

Heiskanen got a delay of game penalty only 50 seconds into the second after knocking the puck over the glass into the stands. Edmonton needed only 16 seconds to score, with Draisaitl feeding Nugent-Hopkins for a 30-foot snap shot.

Four minutes later, Evander Kane won a draw against Joe Pavelski in the circle to the right of the net, then Adam Henrique got the puck to Broberg for a long shot.

Pavelski, who played in his 200th career playoff game, had a shoulder-to-shoulder collision in the first period with fellow 39-year-old skater Corey Perry, who with 208 playoff games is the only other active player with at least 200. Perry left and went to the locker room, but was back on the ice in the second period.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.