The Dallas Stars earned full marks once again for digging deep and dealing with the severe adversity. Without their top two centers, the Stars pulled together and cranked out tremendous efforts on Monday night in St. Louis and last night at home against Detroit.
Unfortunately, they skated off with just one of four possible points and went winless in the just completed stretch of three games in four nights.
Plain and simple, the team needs to score some goals to win, and they just don't have the horses without Jamie Benn or Mike Ribeiro. More often than not, the "magic number" to win a game in the NHL is three goals.
Last night, the Stars got goals from two of the players they most needed to step up -- Loui Eriksson and Brenden Morrow -- but that was it. They ran out of gas by the third period, as fatigue became a factor. This was partially because Detroit wore them down and partially due to the Stars' insane travel schedule and tightly packed slate of games over the last week.
Fortunately for Dallas, they got a stellar goaltending performance from Richard Bachman, especially in the third period. The rookie made a host of tremendous saves to prevent his team from falling behind, and it was actually the Stars (courtesy of Steve Ott) who cleanly won the final defensive zone faceoff in regulation and generated a scoring chance before the horn.
In last night's shootout, Bachman was beaten by Pavel Datsyuk but caught a break when the shot pinged off the crossbar. He wasn't so lucky on Jiri Hudler's attempt, but then stoned Todd Bertuzzi in the third round to give Trevor Daley a chance to extend the game.
At the other end, Eriksson, Michael Ryder and Daley all came up empty against Ty Conklin. Going into the game, I thought overtime or a shootout would be the Stars' best chance of winning short of building a multi-goal lead early and then hanging on for the win. It wasn't to be, but one point is better than none.
The Stars will take a much needed day off today, and then practice tomorrow in preparation for Friday's game against the Tampa Bay Lightning at the American Airlines Center.
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