Stars battered, bruised after 'road trip from hell'

WASHINGTON -- Tyler Seguin summed up the Dallas Stars' feelings well before they headed to the airport and back home following a gut-wrenching 4-3 loss to the Washington Capitals on Tuesday.
"The road trip from hell is over," Seguin said after the Stars went 0-4-2 on their six-game trek.

The Stars have two days off to regroup before a three-game homestand begins with a game against the Boston Bruins on Friday (8:30 p.m. ET; SNE, SNW, FS-SW, NESN, NHL.TV), but no time to feel sorry for themselves. With eight regular-season games remaining, the Stars (38-28-8) trail the Anaheim Ducks by two points for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference.
The Ducks, who have played one fewer game, are at Calgary Flames on Wednesday (9:30 p.m. ET; SN360, SN-W, FSW, NHL.TV), so the Stars' deficit could be larger by the time the take the ice Friday. Their margin for error is slim. Seven of their eight remaining games are against teams holding playoff spots.
"Nothing you can really do now," Seguin said. "Got to get home. Got to get points. We're playing some good teams, but we've got to find a way here."
Like they did in a 4-2 loss against the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday, the Stars played hard against the Capitals. Their best offensive players -- Seguin, Alexander Radulov and Jamie Benn -- each scored. Radulov's goal made the score 2-2 and Benn's made it a 3-3 game in the second period.
The Stars were in position to earn at least one point by reaching overtime until Capitals defenseman John Carlson beat goaltender Kari Lehtonen on a slap shot from the top of the right circle to break a 3-3 tie with 4:59 remaining in the third.

"We just needed to get to overtime," Seguin said. "We needed to at least get one point. We didn't do it."
Frustrated Stars coach Ken Hitchcock answered only one question in his postgame news conference before walking away. He essentially pleaded for the Stars' depth players to find a way to chip in.
"We had players that really carried the ball in the last four games of this trip and we still couldn't get wins," Hitchcock said. "I think to expect some of the guys that have played awful well to play better is unrealistic moving forward. We have to have more people join the fight. If you're not scoring, you'd better be terrorizing people with your work and we did not get enough participation at the end when our big guys really played well and we just need to get it.
"It doesn't matter who it is, and I know you win and lose as a team, but we have to get more people contributing either from a work standpoint or from a contribution standpoint because we can't have these same guys do it every night, night in night out, and not have more people fall in place here."
The challenge ahead of the Stars would be difficult with a healthy lineup, and they are missing a host of key players, including No. 1 goaltender Ben Bishop, who reinjured his left knee against the Jets on Sunday.

Bishop, who missed five games from March 6 through March 14 because of the knee, returned to Dallas early and is awaiting the results of an MRI. He is to be re-evaluated in two weeks, but it sounds unlikely he'll be back before the end of the regular season.
"When we say we're going to evaluate it in two weeks, then you get the picture," Hitchcock said Tuesday morning.
In two weeks, the Stars will have two regular season games remaining -- April 6 at the Ducks and April 7 at the Los Angeles Kings. By then, their fate might be decided.
So, it likely will be up to Lehtonen to get the Stars to the playoffs. The 34-year-old backup made some timely saves among the 28 shots he stopped against the Capitals, including a point blank one on Alex Ovechkin with 3:45 remaining in the second period.
But Carlson's game-winning goal, which got past his catching glove on the short side, appeared stoppable.
"He's like the rest of us," Hitchcock said of Lehtonen. "Just battle, fight, battle. Whatever word you want to use, that's what we need to do."
The Stars were also missing forwards Martin Hanzal (season-ending back surgery), Jason Spezza (back), Brett Ritchie (lower body) and defenseman Marc Methot (hand), but as Hitchcock said Tuesday morning, "Who cares?"

No one is going to feel sorry for the Stars.
"It's that time of year," Seguin said. "There's injuries. We have guys banged up. So does every other team. I don't think that's an excuse. I don't think being tired is an excuse. Right now, that's more of a mindset than anything. It's playoff hockey right now for us. It has been for a little while. We've got to go home and salvage some points."
The biggest positive for the Stars on Tuesday was they got out of Washington before the heavy snow started falling. They left Dallas on March 10 and were looking forward to getting home.
"We know we're still in the hunt, for sure," defenseman John Klingberg said. "We're still in the mix. Now, we're going home and [have] really important games at home here. We've just going to have to keep our emotions intact. We have some stuff we need to change, but overall we're battling really hard and we're just going to have to stick with that."