Game 5 started with an unfortunate, fluke goal, but ended with the deserved outcome, as the Dallas Stars’ relentless energy and consistent physicality totally overwhelmed a Colorado Avalanche team that took far too long to find their hard hats and lunch buckets in a disheartening 6-2 loss in Dallas.

After a series of odd bounces following the opening face-off, the Stars found themselves up a goal after Wyatt Johnston’s fling toward the Avalanche net snuck behind goaltender MacKenzie Blackwood.

It was all downhill from there. In the final minute of the opening period, Stars defender Thomas Harley flipped a shot toward Blackwood, who deflected it straight up into the air; the errant puck landed on Blackwood’s back and rolled into the net, giving the Stars a 2-0 lead after one. “A couple strange goals, for sure,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said, after the loss.

The lead expanded to three only 1:12 into the second period, when the Avalanche — who spent far too many early possessions over-passing and handing out turnovers in the offensive zone like Halloween candy — coughed up another, leading to a two-on-one opportunity for the Stars that Mikko Rantanen easily slid past Blackwood.

At that point, the Avalanche finally started to revert to the form that gave them a one-sided, 4-0 win in Game 4 Saturday, firing the puck with abandon, and looking like they might make it a game after all. Goals by Artturi Lehkonen and Nathan MacKinnon — his fifth in the series to lead all players — drew the Avs to within a single goal with a little more than five minutes remaining in the second period.

Back in Colorado, fans’ enthusiasm turned out to be short-lived, as only two minutes later, the Stars scored a pair of goals from Johnston — on the power play, following a questionable interference penalty on Avs defender Sam Malinski that captain Gabe Landeskog referred to as a “preseason call” — and series villain Mason Marchment to finish off the second period with a 5-2 lead that all but finished off the Avs.

Reading the tea leaves, Bednar borrowed a page from counterpart Peter DeBoer’s playbook, yanking his starting goaltender in an attempt to reboot prior to the next game. Blackwood, who had been brilliant in this series, finished with a hard-luck line of five goals allowed on only 13 shots, an abysmal .722 save percentage that wasn’t helped by the Avalanche’s porous defense, which allowed high-danger shots, one after the other, for most of the night. An empty-netter by Roope Hintz provided the final tally.

“We weren’t great on the defensive side of things,” Bednar lamented afterward. “Some decision-making, and… we’ve got to get back to the kind of game that we played the other night (Saturday).”

The Avalanche, who came into the game allowing the Stars to lead in regulation for only 62 seconds, now find themselves 60 minutes away from elimination when the series resumes on Thursday with Game 6 in Denver.

“They took care of their home ice,” Bednar said. “Now, we’ve got to go take care of ours.”