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Stars' rally falls short in 4-3 loss to Avalanche Wednesday, October 17, 2007 After staging comebacks to win their last two season openers, the Dallas Stars almost put themselves in a position to do it again. Almost. But not quite. The Stars scored twice in the third period to make a 4-1 Colorado lead a 4-3 lead, but they weren't able to get the equalizer and force overtime and fell to the Avalanche Wednesday night at the Pepsi Center in Denver. The loss snapped a ten-game unbeaten streak (7-0-3) in season openers for the Stars, who got goals from Jeff Halpern, Jussi Jokinen and Niklas Hagman. The Stars were also hampered by what Stars coach Dave Tippett called a lack of urgency on opening night and this time around they weren't able to overcome them with a late rally. To win in this league you have to commit to winning one-on-one battles," Tippett said. "We didn't have enough players doing that.'' The Stars made some mistakes and the Avalanche were quick to capitalize, building a 4-1 lead through the first 40 minutes. Stars goalie Marty Turco stopped 19 of 23 shots in the game, but gave up a couple of questionable goals in the eyes of Tippett. "We're going to need better goaltending than that," Dave Tippett said. "He made some good saves, but he just has to do better than that." Paul Stastny scored three goals for Colorado and Wojtek Wolski scored the other. Andrew Brunette had three assists and Jaroslav Hlinka had two helpers. "I think anytime you win the opener, get three goals, you can’t complain," said Stastny. "It doesn’t matter who scores, anyone on this team can chip in. Today I was a little lucky and helped out because we needed all the goals." Turco came up with nice stops in the first. He made a sliding save on Ryan Smyth, a pad save on a Scott Hannan backhand and a blocker save on Hlinka's rebound attempt. But Stastny made it a 1-0 game at 18:11 of the first when he beat Turco with a wrist shot from the top of the left faceoff circle. Stastny made it 2-0 with a goal just 1:03 into the second. After a Stars' turnover, Andrew Brunette backhanded a pass from behind the goal line to the front of the net, where Stastny slipped it into the net. The Stars cut the lead to 2-1 when Halpern deflected a Trevor Daley blast from the point past Colorado goalie at 7:10 of the second. But the Stastny and the Avs took advantage of a bad line change by the Stars to make it a 3-1 game a little more than four minutes later. Brunette skated into the Dallas zone, dropped the puck to Hlinka, who skated into the right circle and slipped a pass to Stastny, who scored from the left side of the crease. Wojtek Wolski made it a 4-1 game at 16:55 of the third when he went one-on-one with Sergei Zubov, skated into the left circle and beat Turco short side. The Stars made a game of it in the third, scoring twice on the power play to make it close. Jokinen scored off the rebound of his own shot from point blank range at 7:38 of the third to make it 4-2. Hagman's centering pass from behind the goal line bounced off traffic and past Budaj at 17:10 to make it a 4-3. The Stars kept up the pressure, but Peter Budaj came up with a big stop on Philippe Boucher and then as time was running out he made a glove stop on Halpern, who had a good look from the bottom of the right faceoff circle.
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