Stars Win West

Colorado
Avalanche

"It was an unbelievable series," Stars forward Brett Hull said. "It could have gone either way. I'm just thankful we got kind of lucky at end and held on."

Sergei Zubov, Mike Modano and Roman Lyashenko each scored for the Stars, who took a 3-0 lead in the final period after dominating the first two periods.

"When we were up three goals, I told myself to keep focus," Ed Belfour said. "Sometimes there's a little bit of a letdown when you get a lead like that. I think that's what happened to us tonight."

"The first half of the game, I thought our passion was unbelievable," Stars coach Ken Hitchcock. "Then we got a little sloppy and gave them that first goal. That gave them some momentum and they built on that."

The Avs wouldn't go away quietly as Peter Forsberg and Milan Hejduk scored two quick goals to cut the Stars' lead to one goal.

"We played good enough in this series to win," forward Dave Andreychuk said. "We didn't get the bounces, especially in this game. It's hard to explain the way the bounces go."

Colorado threw in everything they had trying to get the equalizer, but only managed to hit the goal post in the final minute of the game on Ray Bourque's shot.

"I just tried to get the puck up and toward the net and hoped that we could get a rebound or some kind of deflection," Bourque said. "I did not see the shot go through, I just heard it deflect off the post. We played so hard to come back and we came so close to tying it up."

Special teams were the deciding factor again as Dallas scored two goals on power-play and the Stars' penalty killing did a perfect job shutting down the Avs' power-play units.

"We said all along that this is an evenly matched series," Colorado coach Bob Hartley said. "We had some tough breaks and a lot of bounces didn't go our way."

Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals is on Tuesday in New Jersey.