Stars win at home

Dallas
Stars

"Our power play was good and our goalie was excellent, but if we are going to win another game in this series then we have to play a lot better for 60 minutes than we did tonight," Stars coach Ken Hitchcock said. "We got far too protective of our lead and they seemed to get a lot of momentum in the later stages of the game."

The victory gave Dallas a 3-2 lead in the best-of-7 series, which returns to St. Louis for Game 6 Monday night.

Home coming was sweet for the Stars, who had lost two games in St. Louis. Jere Lehtinen started scoring with a shorthanded goal at 3:47 of the first period.

"To score the first goal is very big, but to score shorthanded really takes the air out of the balloon of the other team," Lehtinen said. "Here they are getting a power-play opportunity very early and we get a shorthanded goal. Modano gave me a perfect pass and I had an easy time putting it into the net. Passes like that are typical from Modano."

Jamie Langenbrunner made it 2-0 on power-play in the first period and Joe Nieuwendyk's power-play goal in the second period finished scoring for the Stars before Scott Young scored St. Louis' lone goal.

"Special teams were a big factor," Blues coach Joel Quenneville said. "It was a big difference. They had a good start again and we didn't recover. It's important to get off on the right foot, and we keep digging ourselves another hole."