DENVER — Wyatt Johnston scored twice on the eve of his birthday as the Dallas Stars pushed Colorado to the brink of elimination Monday night with a 5-1 victory.

Johnston had shorthanded and power-play goals for the Stars, who grabbed a 3-1 lead in the second-round, best-of-seven series. Dallas can close it out at home in Game 5 on Wednesday.

Miro Heiskanen and Evgenii Dadonov also scored, while Sam Steel added a late empty-net goal. Jake Oettinger made 24 saves.

About an hour before the game, the National Hockey League and National Hockey League Players’ Association announced that Nichushkin was suspended for at least six months without pay. He was placed in stage 3 of the league’s player assistance program. It’s the second time this season Nichushkin has been in the program.

A Colorado lineup missing Nichushkin, the team’s leading goal scorer (nine) in this playoff run, struggled early to get on track and was outshot by a 16-2 margin in the first period. Casey Mittelstadt scored Colorado’s lone goal.

“We talked about (how) we’d been the best road team all year because regardless of the building or the lineup for the other team, who’s in, who’s out, we approach the game the same way,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said, “and took care of business.”

Colorado’s defense was unable to prevent Johnston and the Stars from building a 3-0 lead in the second period, and because of the hot start in the first, Dallas maintained its streak of not trailing in regulation at any point during the series. And the Stars have outscored the Avalanche 6-0 in the opening period alone.

Johnston, who turns 21 on Tuesday, scored his 10th and 11th career playoff goals. He became the eighth player in NHL history to reach double-digit postseason goals at age 20 or younger, according to league research.

Johnston took advantage of a Cale Makar turnover late in the first period and scored a shorthanded goal to give the Stars a 1-0 lead. It’s the second shorthanded goal of the series for Dallas.

“That was our worst game of the series,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said after the loss, adding that it “atrocious.”

It wasn’t all good news for the road team, though. The Stars saw forward Roope Hintz leave the game after suffering an upper-body injury in the opening period. In his postgame news conference, DeBoer said he’d have more injury information on Hintz on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — New York Rangers captain Jacob Trouba said their failure to close out the Carolina Hurricanes at home in Game 5 presents an important character test for his team.

“I don’t think we thought this was going to be a cakewalk,” Trouba said after the Rangers’ 4-1 loss on Monday night, which narrowed New York’s series lead to 3-2. “We’ve lost two games [in a row]. We’re facing a little adversity. We’ll see what we’re made of going down to Carolina for Game 6.”

The Rangers entered the third period with a 1-0 lead thanks to Trouba’s short-handed goal in the second frame. But the desperate Hurricanes took over the game by scoring three goals in 6:23.

Jordan Staal evened the score with his first goal of the playoffs. Just 3:06 later, Evgeny Kuznetsov netted his fourth of the postseason to give Carolina the lead. Jordan Martinook added a critical third goal before Martin Necas sealed the win with an empty-netter.

“It kind of snowballed quick on us. This was a bad period,” Trouba said. “It’s different than a regular season, where you feel bad all night and tomorrow you wake up and you’re upset. You got to turn the page quick.”

His teammate, Vincent Trocheck, didn’t see the third period the same way.

“I don’t know if I’m going to say something snowballed tonight,” he said. “They scored a couple goals in the third. It’s a seven-game series against a team that was three points behind us in the regular season. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”

Coach Peter Laviolette also didn’t believe the third period was the reason New York dropped Game 5.

“It was more than the third period. We weren’t sharp. We gave up way too many chances in the first period and then it died off after that,” he said.

The Rangers’ power play, which scored 10 goals in five games during a recent stretch against Washington and Carolina, went scoreless for a third straight game, the unit’s longest dry spell since March.

Meanwhile, Carolina scored three goals at even strength against New York goaltender Igor Shesterkin, marking the first time Shesterkin allowed three goals in the third period of a playoff game.

Hurricanes captain Staal said the team is starting to feel like itself again.

“Yeah, obviously wins help. But we really believe we had some good games [to start the series], but we had some mistakes, especially with the special teams, and that’s gotten a lot better,” he said. “I think our 5-on-5 game has been really good and it’s coming together more and more.

“Wins are nice. We’ve got to just keep fighting.”

Staal has played in 146 playoff games during his NHL career and has seen how hard it is to finish an opponent.

“Game 5s are tough, especially when you’re at home. You don’t want to go back on the road and you want to close it out,” he said. “But we gave it all we got, we found a way to get a win and we’re going to have to do it all over again.”

Trouba took an optimistic approach to the Game 5 loss: Since the Rangers won the first three games of the series, there was some margin for error.

“Obviously we want to close out series, but we put ourselves in a position that we get a couple cracks at it,” he said. “We played good games in Carolina. We know we can play in that building, and we’ll go down there and bring a better game.”

Game 6 is Thursday night in Raleigh.

China extends lead