Stars Keep Coming Up Short in Shootouts

This is getting almost comical, though the Stars might argue it's more of a black comedy.

Dallas simply can't get the job done in overtime this year, particularly shootouts. So, of course, extra time is piling up left and right for the Stars. Their past four games have extended beyond regulation, all because Dallas blew leads, and the Stars have lost three of them.

"It's funny, when you look at our team, with Marty Turco in net, he's one of the top tier goaltenders in the league," Dallas coach Marc Crawford told FanHouse. "And we have a lot of talent at the forward positions. But we've still had difficulties. We've worked at it -- maybe to the point of too much."

The raw data is ugly: Dallas has played 14 overtime games, the most in the league, and nine of those have gone to shootouts. There, the Stars have two wins and a league-high seven losses.

Strangely, both shootout victories have come at San Jose, including last Friday's craziness: it took a franchise-record 11 rounds for the Stars to put it away, with Matt Niskanen providing the winning goal. The next night, it was back to the norm, as Dallas fell to Los Angeles in a shootout. The Stars were shut out in the shootout, failing to convert any of their four attempts against Jonathan Quick, and the goose egg was all the more aggravating because what looked like a goal by Mike Ribeiro was denied. Quick had poke-checked the puck, it glanced off Ribeiro's skate and in, and the ruling was that the puck's forward progression had been stopped. Game over. Ouch.

"You'd like to rise to the moment, but it's been really feeble sometimes, and up and down."
-- Mike Modano on the Stars' Shootout woes Overall this year, Dallas shooters are 6-for-39 on the shootout, a 22 percent success rate. Only one team is worse; Tampa Bay is 2-for-22. With that kind of shooting percentage, it's tough to pin the blame on Turco, though Turco is near the bottom of the pack in save percentage in shootouts, stopping 21 of 31.

Crawford said that shootouts have become a science, with teams scouring video to detect goalies' weaknesses and tendencies. The Stars are going to do more of that, he said, trying to find an edge. Meanwhile, he's shuffled his shootout lineup around a lot, especially recently.

The Stars used to have a sure-fire thing in shootouts: former Dallas winger Jussi Jokinen is the all-time leader in shootout goals, making 26 of 47. He was 9-for-9 in one stretch.

"The few guys we had that are really good at it aren't here anymore," Stars forward Mike Modano said. "It was rare that Jokinen missed. One score and it's over."

"It's nice to have a guy like that," Crawford said. "We haven't been able to find one."

Modano (0-for-2 this year, 7-for-22 in his career) couldn't put his finger on anything specific that is causing things to go haywire in shootouts, but the experience is frustrating. Yes, the Stars are coming away with points, but they're also leaving a lot of points out there. Considering the close races for the final playoff spots -- and right now Dallas is hanging onto eighth place by a point ahead of Detroit -- the 10 post-regulation losses represent some lost opportunities.

"These are the things where you look back at the end of the year and say, 'Those points were pretty critical,' " Modano said. "That could be two or three spots in the standings.

"Some games I feel like we should have won in overtime. You'd like to rise to the moment, but it's really been feeble sometimes, and up and down. We've played great against some really good teams, and then against .500 teams, we're not as good as we should be. I'd like to see us good on a consistent basis. That's what's frustrating."