DALLAS -- The opportunity was there for the Dallas Stars, to finish their Western Conference Second Round series at home, to avoid another plane trip for a bit, to get a few days extra rest, to wait and see who they’d get in the conference final.
The Colorado Avalanche had other ideas.
“They were good tonight, give them a little bit of credit. At the end of the day, we look at it as a little bit of a missed opportunity,” Stars forward Joe Pavelski said after a 5-3 loss to the Avalanche in Game 5 at American Airlines Center on Wednesday.
“We were good in some areas, but there were definitely some areas we gave them a little bit more space tonight.”
The Avalanche took advantage of that space at 5-on-5 and on the power play, which went 2-for-3 after going 0-for-8 with two short-handed goals against in the previous three games.
The Stars, who still lead the best-of-7 series 3-2, will now have to go back to Ball Arena in Denver for Game 6 on Friday (10 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, SN1, SN, TVAS). As confident as they were coming home with a 3-1 lead, the Stars are just 3-4 here in the postseason.
“We feel good here, we like playing here,” Pavelski said. “On the flip side, we’ve been really good on the road, so there are certain things from the road we could probably bring home and do a little bit better job at, but yeah, we have to win (here). Got to take care of our opportunities here when we get them like this.”
Granted, even with their scoring struggles of late, the Avalanche were not going to go quietly. The Stars expected a pushback from them, and they got it.
“We knew we were going to get their best game of the series, and we did," Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. "Their big guys were all on the score sheet tonight, which you probably anticipated would happen."