Dallas Stars 1, Vancouver Canucks 0 in OT

by Mark Stepneski of Andrew's Stars Page

Stars get the OT monkey off their back, bring the series back home.

Brenden Morrow has made a point of saying somebody needed to score a goal for goalie Marty Turco in overtime. Morrow delivered that goal Thursday night, tipping a shot past Vancouver goalie Roberto Luongo 6:22 into OT to give the Dallas Stars a 1-0 win over the Canucks. The win cut the Canucks series lead to 3-2 and forces a Game 6 in Dallas Saturday night.

"It was do or die for us. We've got to win this game. Our guys competed like that. I thought we earned the goal we got," said Stars coach Dave Tippett. "We'll go home and push to take it to a Game 7."

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Morrow's power play goal snapped a streak of six straight overtime losses for the Stars. It was the team's first overtime goal since Steve Ott scored against Colorado on April 12, 2004. It also snapped a 137:13 overtime scoreless streak for the Stars.

Turco stopped 21 shots for his second shutout of the series.

"It was a great hockey game and a huge, pivotal one," Turco said on the Stars post-game show. "We are looking forward to going home, seeing our fans and getting another win."

The Canucks, who were hoping to wrap up the series and avoid a trip to Dallas for Game 6, will now have to regroup.

"You have to win four games. We had an opportunity tonight. It was another very competitive game. It was another game that could have gone either way. Tonight it didn't go in our favor," said Canucks coach Alain Vigneault. "We're going to go to Dallas and get ready for another tough game."

The Stars went on the power play in overtime after the Canucks were penalized for having too many men on the ice. After a couple of clearing attempt failure by Vancouver, Sergei Zubov put a shot on net from just inside the blue line that Morrow tipped, sending the puck up and over Luongo's shoulder.

The first period was fast paced, but neither team scored. Turco was sharp. He made a save on Bryan Smolinski just 26 seconds into the game. He later made a great pad stack save on Henrik Sedin and also had a sharp pad save on a Sami Salo blast from the point. Jere Lehtinen had the Stars' best scoring chance, but his point blank chance was stopped by Luongo.

The Stars had the better chances in the second period, but again there was no scoring. Dallas outshot the Canucks 12-3. Luongo made a nice stop on a point blank chance on Morrow, made a nice glove save on Joel Lundqvist and had a nice poke check to deny a chance by Mike Ribeiro. The Stars had a two-on-one chance and a three-on-two, but couldn't get off a good shot. Turco wasn't busy, but he came up with a big stop on Daniel Sedin.

Both goalies were sharp again in the third, but the closest scoring chance came when Turco was out of the net on a delayed penalty on the Canucks. With the extra attacker on the ice, Loui Eriksson tried to send a cross-ice pass to Mike Modano at the point. The pass missed hit the boards and the puck went all the way down the ice, grazing the outside of the empty net.

"It's something I didn't want to see," Tippett said of the puck heading down the ice. "Somebody on the bench said 'That's the break we need' and we went on from there."

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