Stars' surge hits speed bump with rough loss in Motor City

With the Stars in a fierce battle for the final playoff spot in the Central Division, it's difficult to simply dismiss Thursday's 7-3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings as just a bad night.
But they can learn from it and they can move past it, and that's the most important lesson to take into Saturday's rematch in Detroit.

"I think we have to learn because we play on Saturday the same team, so we have to learn from the mistakes and be better," said forward Radek Faksa, who had a power-play goal.
"If we are not playing Detroit, then maybe we just throw it behind our head, but when we're playing Detroit again, we have to see what we did wrong, and don't repeat the same mistakes."
The irony is that Tuesday's stomping of the Red Wings likely had a hand in the motivated push from Detroit to start the game Thursday. With the Stars playing Detroit four straight games, then one game bleeds into another. Dallas won a 3-2 shootout on Monday, and the Red Wings looked a little tired on Tuesday. The Stars took a quick 3-0 lead in that one and cruised to a 5-2 victory.

But with a day off and a return to the Motor City, the Red Wings had a new look on Thursday. Faksa said he felt the opposition was a bit hacked off, to paraphrase a more common statement.
"It's a weird season and we're playing four times against Detroit," Faksa said. "We knew they would come hard, for sure, because we beat them twice at home, so we expected that. We did make some mistakes, but I think the game was not bad."
In a weird way, Faksa is right about that. Dallas finished with a 46-23 advantage in shots on goal and a 75-40 advantage in shot attempts. It even had more quality scoring chances than the Red Wings. Still, the Stars made mistake after mistake and kept handing Detroit great opportunities.
Filip Zadina stole an attempted clear from Andrej Sekera, and then made a slick feed to Jakub Vrana for a one-timer 10 minutes into the first period for a 1-0 lead.
Then, Detroit set up in the offensive zone, and Luke Glendening tipped in a Marc Staal shot for a 2-0 lead with 4:25 left in the first.

That seemed to be all the damage that would be done, but then the worst play of the night hit. With time ticking down in the period, Richard Panik made a nice save at the blueline, but the puck went high in the air off a stick, and Stars goalie Anton Khudobin tried to field it like a pop fly. The puck slipped down the front of Khudobin's jersey and landed between his skates. And while Jamie Oleksiak and Miro Heiskanen didn't notice until too late, Panik raced in and tipped the puck into the net for a 3-0 lead.
"I lost the puck, I thought I had it," Khudobin said. "Guys started yelling it's behind me and it was too late."
Stars coach Rick Bowness pulled Khudobin after the first period and replaced him with Jake Oettinger.
"Just didn't seem to be his night," Bowness said.
It wasn't Oettinger's either.

Dallas bounced back and got a power-play goal from Faksa on a nice pass by Tanner Kero early in the second, but then Vrana struck again with a nice redirection for his second goal of the night and a 4-1 lead. Joe Pavelski scored his 20th goal of the season to cut the deficit to 4-2, but then Vrana picked John Klingberg's pocket and scored on a breakaway for his third goal and a 5-2 lead.
Denis Gurianov cut the score to 5-3 with a power play goal, but Vrana's fourth goal of the night put it out of hand at 6-3. Dallas pulled its goalie to open the door for a seventh goal, but Bowness said the reason was because he really felt his team had a chance to come back.
"I never thought we were out of that game," Bowness said. "We were creating enough chances, we were creating enough shots. I never thought we were out of the game until we shot ourselves in the foot."
In the end, the hope is they can patch up the wound and move forward. Dallas had a shot to tie Nashville in the standings with a win, but missed out. That makes Saturday's final game against Detroit all the more important.
"Just swallow this pill, have practice tomorrow, and get ready for the next one," Khudobin said. "I think we have been playing good hockey. The only thing we have to do right now is get ready for the next one."

Up next

at Red Wings; Saturday 6 p.m. CT
Little Caesars Arena, Detroit
TV: Bally Sports Southwest Plus
Radio:The Ticket 96.7-FM, 1310-AM
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.
Mike Heikais a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on Twitter @MikeHeika, and listen to his podcast.