by Mark Stepneski of Andrew's Stars Page

Stars rally in the final minute, only to lose in the shootout.

DALLAS — The Dallas Stars scored a late goal to force overtime; for the fifth time in six times this season, they couldn't get the extra point in the shootout. The St. Louis Blues got the extra goal in the shootout and the extra point, beating the Stars 4-3 at American Airlines Center Wednesday night.

"The shootout didn't go our way, but we could have been a lot worse off,'' coach Mark Crawford said.

The Stars started strong in the game, getting the first nine shots on goal and taking a 1-0 lead, but they were sluggish at times and needed a goal in the final 30 seconds to get a point out of it.

"It was a sloppy game. We started out doing what we wanted to do, but for some reason we decided not to do it anymore," said Stars center Brad Richards, who had two assists in the game. "That's not how we wanted to play. We started turning pucks over and not doing what we did in the first 10 minutes. We weren't going to keep them to zero shots for the whole game."

Blues forward T.J. Oshie snapped a 2-2 tie with 9:00 to go in the game, but the Stars struck late in the game to force the overtime. The Stars were able to keep the Blues pinned in their own zone, pulled Marty Turco with a little more than a minute to go and with 25.4 seconds to go a Richards shot from the right point deflected off traffic, last touching Brenden Morrow, to tie the game at 3-3.

In the shootout, Andy McDonald and Brad Boyes scored for the Blues. Richards scored for the Stars, while Mike Ribeiro hit the post and Stephane Robidas was stopped by Blues goalie Ty Conklin.

Both teams scored twice in the first period. Robidas scored on the power play for the Stars and Erik Johnson answered for the Blues. After Toby Petersen put the Stars up 2-1, St. Louis' David Backes responded for the Blues.

The win was the third in the last four games for St. Louis, which improved to 9-9-4 on the season.

"We got what we deserved tonight," St. Louis head coach Andy Murray said. "We talked about playing 60 minutes and we played a pretty darn good 52, anyway."

The Stars, who are 3-1-1 in their last five games and 11-6-7 on the season, play at Phoenix on Friday and then host Tampa Bay on Saturday.

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