To overtake the Winnipeg Jets and claim the Central Division crown, Stars coach Pete DeBoer admitted at practice Wednesday that his team knew it might need to win out.

Already on a six-game win streak and nine-game point streak at the time, the Stars were red hot, but winning the next eight would be a tall task and would require the Stars to play their best hockey.

The Stars looked far from their best for the first half of Thursday’s 5-1 win over the Nashville Predators, a team far out of the playoff picture, but viciously surged back late in the second and early in the third periods, scoring five goals in a 13-minute span to extend the win streak to seven games.

“I think we’ve got an honest team, and they understand what we had to fix,” DeBoer said postgame. “We were just reckless with the puck in the first period. They fixed that, and the game kind of tilted our way following better decisions with the puck.”

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DeBoer also said he and his team were determined to make their goalies’ jobs a bit easier. Jake Oettinger and Casey DeSmith posted a .957 save percentage on their recent road trip, with both goalies recording 40-save nights.

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However, the Stars did not help Oettinger out early Thursday. Their goalie, once again, was the only reason they were in the game entering the third period.

Oettinger finished with 28 saves on 29 shots, including 17 in the first period. He didn’t allow a goal until Nashville’s 18th shot, when Steven Stamkos snuck one in from a sharp angle.

The Stars recorded just nine shots on goal by the midway point of the game, while their goalie on the other end had already faced close to a full game’s worth of shots.

“We weren’t executing,” Stars forward Matt Duchene said. “Sometimes you just have to stop the bleeding in this league and be patient and wait for your look.”

That also included the Stars spending four minutes on the power play early in the first period after a double-minor when Sam Steel took a stick to the face.

But Oettinger’s heroics gave the Stars a chance to tie it up late in the second period once they shore up their end of the ice.

“For me, I’m just trying to make one or two saves to keep it close because I know we can score pretty rapidly,” Oettinger said. “These guys bail me out and make me look good all the time. It’s fun when I can step up and Casey can step up and help them out.”

Mikael Granlund capitalized with his third goal in four games and his 21st of the season. He had a perfect deflection off an assist from Duchene to tie the game with 35 seconds left in the second period.

Just 39 seconds into the third period, Mason Marchment gave Dallas the lead, scoring five-hole on Nashville goalie Justus Annunen.

Five minutes later, the Stars’ top line added a stunning goal in transition, with Roope Hintz finding the net on assists from Jason Robertson and Mikko Rantanen.

The Stars added a fourth goal when Mavrik Bourque found Wyatt Johnston on a breakaway to extend his goal streak to six consecutive games, and Lian Bichsel scored the fifth to further put the game out of reach.

Dallas only allowed three Nashville shots on goal in the third.

The Stars were also without captain Jamie Benn for the first time in 371 games. Benn, who DeBoer said was sidelined for “maintenance” for a lower-body injury, held the fifth-longest active streak in the NHL for consecutive games played, dating back to the 2020-21 season.

“We’ve got a lot of hidden leadership in that room behind Jamie,” DeBoer said. “Jamie’s obviously the guy, but we’ve got a lot of layers of leadership underneath that you see when he’s not around.”

Dallas may not have looked like a conference champion early on Thursday night, but it looked the part in the final period and showed the fight it’s had all season, even when not playing its best.

If the Stars can keep that up over the next two weeks, overtaking Winnipeg may be well within reach.

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