DALLAS - Tim Schaller got Vancouver going, Jacob Markstrom kept the Canucks in the game and Josh Leivo finally ended it.
Josh Leivo scored in the fourth round of the shootout for the only goal of the tiebreaker to lift the Canucks to a 3-2 win over the Dallas Stars on Sunday night.
Leivo's shot went over Stars goalie Anton Khudobin after Canucks goalie Jacob Markstrom had stopped four Dallas skaters.
Schaller scored twice in the first 11 minutes for his first goals in nearly a year and his first career multi-goal game.
“It's not been all roses for me this year, but I've been working hard so I definitely deserve it,” Schaller said.
Markstrom finished with 44 saves, one off his season high, including five in overtime.
In the shootout, Markstrom made saves on the Stars' three top scorers - Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Alexander Radulov - and their hottest player, Roope Hintz, who had four goals in the previous three games.
“It's almost personal when it's a goalie against a shooter,” Markstrom said. “They've got a couple moves that you know are their go-to moves. You can't have that in your mind because then you're screwed if they do something else.”
Benn and Taylor Fedun had the goals for Dallas. Khudobin had 25 saves and stopped a penalty shot for the second straight game. The Stars, who hold the first wild card in the Western Conference, remained two points behind third-place St. Louis in the Central Division.
Fedun tied the score with 3:50 left in regulation as he sent a rising slap shot from above the left faceoff in to Markstrom's left side, and the puck trickled past the goal line.
Both of Schaller's goals followed battles for the puck in the left corner of the Canucks' offensive zone. On the first, 52 seconds into the game, Jay Beagle dug out the puck and sent it to Schaller. He skated behind the net toward the right corner, from where he fitted a wrist shot into a gap between Khudobin's glove and the right goalpost.
For Schaller's second goal, Brock Boeser got control of the puck and passed to Elias Pettersson. He passed to Schaller at the top of the left faceoff circle for a snap shot that beat Khudobin with 9:07 left in the period.
“I literally just got on the ice, and (Petterson) saw me and made a pretty nice pass to me,” Schaller said. “I just wanted to hit the net and it went in.”
Schaller had not scored in 55 regular-season and playoff games since last March 29 while playing for Boston. Three games before that, he had scored a short-handed goal in Dallas. Schaller has 23 career goals in 214 games. His three against the Stars, in seven games, are the most he has scored against any team.
A frequent healthy scratch this season, Schaller was in the lineup for just the third time in 19 games.
For the second game in a row, Khudobin gave up a goal in the first minute of the game and stopped a penalty shot in the second period.
John Klingberg was penalized for holding Pettersson on a breakaway. The Canucks' leading scorer skated in close enough that Khudobin could poke the puck away from him.
“It looked like he lost (the stick) at the last second,” Dallas coach Jim Montgomery said.
Canucks coach Travis Green saw it differently, saying Khudobin “did throw it.”
Throwing the stick on a penalty shot results in an automatic goal.
The Stars finally scored on their 27th shot on goal, with 22 seconds left in the second period. Benn took a pass from Valeri Nichushkin in the right circle and whistled a wrist shot past Markstrom and inside the left post for his 26th.
