It wasn't pretty at times, especially early, but when the final horn sounded the Stars had themselves a wild 8-3 win over the Minnesota Wild.

"You don't expect that," said Stars captain Brenden Morrow, who led the offensive charge with two goals and an assist. "But with Christmas, traveling, there's a lot of distractions this time of year. We were more focused early and things started going our way."

The Stars' top line of Morrow, Mike Ribeiro and Antti Miettinen accounted for three goals in this game, which seems to be par for the course these days, but they got a lot of help from everybody else.

Seven different players scored a goal in the game. 14 players registered a point. Six players had multipoint nights.

"You have to realize [scoring eight goals] won't happen every night, it's nice when everyone has a share," said Ribeiro. "It's nice to get a full, all-around effort."

Ribeiro had a goal and two assists in the game. He shook off a couple of hits in the neutral zone, stayed on his feet and went to the net, where he took a  pass from Morrow to score his 20th goal of the season. That ties his career high, and it's not even the midway point of the season yet.

But the Stars got some other big contributions on this night. Niklas Hagman opened the scoring, charging off the bench to take a pass from Mike Modano and give the Stars an early lead.

Steve Ott made a big play in the neutral zone to create a turnover and a shorthanded scoring chance, and Jeff Halpern came in to finish it off to score a huge goal to give the Stars a 3-2 lead in the first period.

The Stars got a goal out of the line of Joel Lundqvist, Stu Bares and Krys Barch when Barnes finished off a strong shift by getting a puck to the net and getting a favorable bounce.

Loui Eriksson and Modano scored in the third period as the Stars put the game away.

"It's nice when everyone contributes like that," said Morrow. "All that hard work pays off and everything went our way tonight. We were throwing things at the net and then we went in crashing. There weren't too many secrets, but hard work paid off for us in this one."

This wasn't a night for the goaltenders. Josh Harding went the distance for the Wild, surrendering eight goals on 33 shots.

Stars goalie Marty Turco struggled as well. Stars coach Dave Tippett said he considered pulling Turco, who have up a couple of questionable goals and appeared to be fighting the puck a lot in the game.

"I was concerned about our goaltender early," Tippett said. "It was all about the goaltender. It was not just the two he let in, but the four he bobbled. It was on my mind to take him out, but we chatted between periods and he said he would be all right."

Morrow said the goalies have bailed the team out a few times this season and on this night the players in front of the goalie gave some offensive support in support of their netminder.

"He and Smitty [Mike Smith] have stolen some games for us this season," said Morrow. "There were a couple of bad breaks for him early, but we went out and got him a lead and we gave him something to play with. It's nothing we said, but we felt we owed it to him to give him a little bit of a break."

And that they did, especially in the third period when they blew a still close game open with four goals. Scores by Morrow and Modano 14 seconds apart were a killer for the Wild, who had been hanging around thanks a pair of goals by Pavol Demitra and one by Mike Modano look-a-like Aaron Voros.

"We thought we were going to need eight (goals) to win after the first period, but it was a solid all-around game with contributions from up and down the lineup," Tippett said.

And it was another win, the seventh in the last eight games for the Stars and their 15th in the last 20 games. The Stars just continue to roll along, picking up wins and racking up the points.

• Defenseman Mattias Norstrom missed his second straight game with a knee injury. He is listed as day-to-day.
• The last time Dallas scored eight goals or more  was November 4, 2005 when they defeated Chicago 9-1 in Dallas.
• Brenden Morrow's first goal in the game was the 150th of his career.
• Morrow has three goals and three assists during a four-game points streak.
• Mike Ribeiro has four goals and five assists during a four-game points streak.
• Antti Miettinen has two goals and four assists during a four-game points streak.
• Perttu Lindgren scored two goals as the Iowa Stars snapped a five-game winless streak with a 4-1 win over Quad City Wednesday night. The two goals were Lindgren's first goals as a pro in North America. James Neal and Janos Vas also scored goals for Iowa. Tobias Stephan stopped 39 of 40 shots.