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Stars News & Notes: A hard day's work Sunday, March 23, 2008 Easter Sunday was supposed to be a day off for the Dallas Stars, but plans changed. Slumps have way of prompting changes and, in this case, that meant a scheduled day off turned into a day of work. Hard work. Exhausting work. How exhausting? Consider that at the end of Sunday's practice the player some fans call Timex because "he takes a licking and keeps on ticking," seemed to succumb a bit to this licking. An exhausted Stephane Robidas skated to a corner of the rink at the Stars practice facility if Frisco, bent over and eventually just sat down. His equally gassed teammates were scattered around other parts of the ice. After they caught their breath it was off to the locker room. "We deserved it," center Mike Ribeiro said after the practice. "The way we've played, it's not acceptable." The Stars had planned to take Sunday and Monday off. That was part of a plan to use the light schedule in the first part of March to get in some rest in preparation for a busy schedule over the last week-and-a-half of the regular season. But after the Stars lost to Los Angeles to push their losing streak to four games and their recent slide to seven losses in eight games, the days off went out the window. "Do whatever it takes to get yourself out of it," said Stars coach Dave Tippett. "We tried days off and now we are going to try working." And that's what they did Sunday. There was a lot of work and a lot of skating. They went through a long stretch of competition drills, both two-on-two and one-on-one. And once those were done Tippett put them through some hard skating to finish out the session. "That's tough out there," said forward Steve Ott. "It's something we don't do very often. We did it maybe once last year and once the year before. When things aren't going well and the coach has to instill hard work into you, something is not right with the team. It's getting our lunch pails and getting back to hard work." At one point, Tippett stood at center ice and flipped the puck towards either goalie Marty Turco or Johan Holmqvist and two players would race after it and battle it out around the net. Once two players were done, Tippett would flip another puck and another battle would ensue. One of the more spirited competitions was between Brenden Morrow and Niklas Grossman in front of Turco. "The drills what we did out there - the compete drills - that's something that wins you hockey games," said Ott. Tippett said those drills are like games in a way. It's not just how you start, but how you finish and how you compete all along the way each and every second. "When you watched those drills, it wasn't about what happened the first ten seconds, but what happened the last ten seconds that matters," said Tippett. "Are you willing to do what it takes to finish? You look at that game [Saturday] and the shift before [the Kings] tied it up was an believable shift. That's exactly what you would want the last five minutes protecting a lead. Then we come out on a nothing play - an absolute nothing play - and give up a goal. That's just getting the job done and bearing down for every second of every play." And that's the focus right now for the Stars, who have been plagued by breakdowns and been having problems late in games during their recent slide. They've been outscored 14-1 in third periods during their 1-7-0 slump, 11-0 over their last six games and 8-0 during their four-game losing streak. "We've been lacking focus in the third period and making mental mistakes," said Ribeiro. "We really have to prepare ourselves to play those 60 minutes and that comes with hard work." Said Ott: "That's what today was all about. It's competing, hard work and showing that our team that we need to work harder in games." Injury update
Stars expected to call up Crombeen The Stars are expected to call up right wing B.J. Crombeen from Iowa. It will be Crombeen's second tour of duty with the Stars this season. He played three games with Dallas just before the All-Star break, picking up no points and five penalty minutes. In Iowa, Crombeen has 14 goals and 14 assists in 65 games and he has scored six goals in his last seven games, including two in Iowa's 6-2 loss in Peoria Saturday night.
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