"The last thing I said was 'I need a hero," and I got one tonight with No. 10," Turco said on the Stars post-game show.

No. 10 would be Stars captain Brenden Morrow, whose tip of a Sergei Zubov hopped up over Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo and into the net, giving the Stars a thrilling 1-0 overtime victory in Game 5 of the series.

"He's the guy who is going to will it in there," Stars coach Dave Tippett said of Morrow. "That's what you want your leaders to do. Leaders can talk, but it's the ones who go out and show the way. Those are the true leaders you are looking for. He's the guy who did that for us tonight."

Morrow did it in typical Morrow fashion. He went to the net, set up shot and then got his stick on the puck.

"We've been in this series all along and we just needed a way to earn a break," Morrow said.

The Stars earned their break, drawing a too many men on the ice penalty on the Canucks when the Stars' Mike Ribeiro threatened to spring free on a breakaway. That put the Stars on the power play in overtime and they popped one in against the Canucks' tough penalty kill.

That overtime power play wasn't the only break they got in the game. The sight of a puck heading towards an empty net during the third period of a 0-0 game was a scary sight, but the fact that it missed the net was the kind of break they needed in a series where they haven't received many of them.

"It's something I didn't want to see," Tippett said of the puck heading down the ice after Loui Eriksson missed Mike Modano on pass during a delayed penalty. "Somebody on the bench said 'That's the break we need' and we went on from there."

And the Stars need a break on this one. Eriksson's pass missed Modano at the point, hit the boards and slid down the ice, just grazing the outside of the post of the net vacated by Turco during the delayed penalty.

Tuesday night the break didn't go their way when Willie Mitchell got to Mike Ribeiro's shot just before it crossed the goal line. Thursday night the puck went the Stars' way.

"When things aren't going your way sometimes something like that turns it around," Tippett said. "It was a freak play that ended up going our way. In a series that is so close you can use the momentum."

"It almost makes you feel like good vibes are with you," Turco said of the close call. "Certainly they were for us to win."

Turco was superb again. He faced just 21 shots in the game, but had several big stops. He had to make a save on Bryan Smolinski just 26 seconds into the game, and he continued throughout the game. He made big saves on Sami Salo, both the Sedins and Markus Naslund in the game.

"Marty has been unbelievable," Morrow said. "He's given us a chance to win and he's just sitting back there waiting for someone to step up, and we earned our break tonight."

The breaks, Morrow's big goal and Turco's superb performance all added up to a key win for the Stars. A win that should give them some momentum heading into Saturday Game 6 at the American Airlines Center.

Not enough pressure on Marty Turco and a struggling power play were two problems for the Canucks. Vancouver was 0-3 on the power play in Thursday's game and is 1-25 in the series.

"It didn't think were desperate enough and get enough shots to the net," said Canucks captain Markus Naslund. "We've got to do a better job of that and the power play has got to be better."

It was pretty much the kind of game they expected. It was going to be a close game where one break would probably decide it.

"Two teams are out there fighting, trying to win games,'' said Vancouver center Bryan Smolinski. "They got that one break. We knew it was going to come. We thought we were going to get it. It just didn't happen."

And now they'll have to head to Texas and try to wrap it up in Dallas, where they won the third and fourth games of the series.

"It's disappointing. It's over with now. We've got to go to Dallas and get it done there," Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo.