by Mark Stepneski of Andrew's Stars Page

Stars beat surging Red Wings in Detroit ... wait, what?

Dallas Stars head coach Marc Crawford decided to go with backup goaltender Alex Auld Wednesday night in Detroit and Auld delivered, stopping 31 of 32 shots to key a 3-1 victory over the Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena.

Wednesday's win was the first for Auld since October 17, when he backstopped a 4-3 win over Chicago. He had been winless in his last four starts.

"I feel like I’ve played pretty well this year, although the numbers might not really show it," Auld said. “I’ve felt comfortable and confident in net and obviously getting results like this go a long way. The guys were tremendous in front of me. Our special teams were really good tonight and that’s a big key."

The Stars special teams were key in the contest. The penalty kill was 4-4, improving to 17-17 over the last five games, and the power play scored on two of five chances.

The Stars snapped a streak where they had scored just two goals in six straight games, getting goals from Mike Ribeiro, Matt Niskanen and Loui Eriksson. James Neal and Brad Richards both had two assists.

The Stars, who are now 6-3-3 on the road this season, handed the Red Wings their first regulation loss at Joe Louis Arena this season.

"Our goaltender played a real good game," said Crawford. "There weren't a lot of big mistakes by us tonight. We did a great job of recovering. We simply were very good in the areas we had to be, including the power play and the penalty kill."

The Stars scored on their first power play of the game when Mike Ribeiro took a pass from Brad Richards, skated down the left wing and had his centering pass go off defenseman Jonathan Ericsson and into the net at 9:26 of the first period.

They extended their lead to 2-0 at 3:52 of the second period when Matt Niskanen scored from the point just 55 seconds after the Stars had killed off Detroit's second power play of the game.

A Henrik Zetterberg goal at 6:16 of the second made it a 2-1 game, but that was as close as the Red Wings would get.

They thought they had tied the game in the third period when Brad May backhanded a puck past Auld, but the referee said he had blown the play dead and the goal was waved off.

"It wasn't blown dead. It was a goal," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. "The guy never meant to blow the whistle. It was a shot. It was as dumb as I've ever seen, but what do you do? You move on. The bottom line is they were better than us for longer than us."

The Stars made it a 3-1 game with their second power play goal of the game with 7:17 left. Neal made a slick cross-ice pass to Eriksson, who tapped the puck past Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard.

The loss snapped Detroit's winning streak at three games and dropped their record to 10-6-3 on the season.

The Stars, now 9-5-6 on the season, return home to play the Columbus Blue Jackets Thursday night at the American Airlines Center.

What do you think?