MONTREAL (AP) -- The Dallas Stars are starting to play like defending Stanley Cup champions. It just took a while.

	Montreal goaltender Jose Theodore makes one of the 38 saves he had against Dallas.

Mike Keane and Brett Hull scored late in the third period as the Dallas Stars rallied to beat the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 Wednesday night.

Keane, a former Canadiens captain, was left alone in front of goaltender Jose Theodore and broke a 2-2 tie off a pass from Joe Nieuwendyk.

"Maybe there was a miscommunication on their part, but I knew there was no one around me at all," said Keane, who scored his fourth goal of the season at 15:13. "But I'm just happy that my shot didn't hit their goaltender in the head."

Rookie Roman Lyashenko scored the other Dallas goal on which Hull picked up an assist.

Sergei Zholtok and Dainius Zubrus scored for the Canadiens, who saw their four-game winning streak snapped, and Oleg Petrov had two assists. The line of Zholtok, Zubrus and Petrov has 18 points in its last five games.

Theodore turned aside 38 shots, but he couldn't stop Hull's one-timer at 14:28 of the third that tied the game. Guy Carbonneau, another former Canadiens player, fed Hull from behind the net.

"It was just a quick shot but there was a player in between so I couldn't really see it," Theodore said. "I knew where the puck was going and I moved, but I couldn't follow it. I got a piece of it, but he's got a hard shot."

Theodore, making his fifth straight start in place of No. 1 goalie Jeff Hackett, stifled the Stars for most of the game. He made 15 saves in the first period when Montreal was outshot 16-6 and stopped all 12 shots in the second when the Canadiens managed just two shots at Ed Belfour.

"We knew it would take a good shot to beat Theodore, because of the way he was playing," Carbonneau said. "To be able to come back and for me to get an assist and Keane to score the winner, it's a bit of revenge."

Lyashenko gave Dallas a 1-0 advantage when he poked in a rebound at 6:26 of the first period, after Theodore stopped Mike Modano's shot.

Zholtok's goal at 12:15 of the first period came after the Canadiens were outshot 10-0. Montreal then scored on its third shot three minutes later when Zubrus' shot from a bad angle trickled under Belfour.