The fat lady finally sings for the Dallas Stars season as they lose 2-0 to the Nashville Predators. They entered this period tied at 0-0 and with a chance to keep their season going a little longer, but the effort wasn't there.
Nashville finally broke the deadlock off of a rebound. David Legwand went around the net and shot the puck off of Lehtonen's pads. The puck bounced into the slot, where there was a group of Predators just waiting to pounce on the puck. It landed on the stick of defenseman Francis Bouillon and he quickly fired it by Lehtonen's left leg for the 1-0 lead. It was just a mess in the slot and one of the Stars' forwards (I believe it was Radek Dvorak) just lost track of Bouillon.
The Stars looked bad for much of this period as they just had a lot of trouble keeping control of the Predators' forwards. Kari Lehtonen had to make more big saves in the first 10 minutes of this period that he had the first two periods combined. The Mark Fistric injury had to have caused a big problem.
Nashville ended the Stars season with another goal with just two minutes left in the game. A Brandon Yip shot was saved by Lehtonen and the rebound floated out to the slot. Sheldon Souray, Stephane Robidas and Michael Ryder were all there for the rebound but didn't even move to try to get the puck. They just gave up and Patric Hornqvisteasily took the rebound and fired past Lehtonen. It was a pathetic show of effort by the Stars players and it was an epitome of how Dallas has played the last two weeks of the season.
Offensively, this team just couldn't do it. There wasn't an urgency to work the puck at the net or to have players crash the net. There were too many easy clears for the Predators defenders. Dallas was trying too hard to pass the puck into the net, looking for that perfect play before shooting.
With the loss, Dallas now cannot make the playoffs and have a meaningless game on Saturday against the St. Louis Blues to close out the season.