"As far as I'm concerned there was one team on the ice. It was the Dallas Stars. They outworked us, outhustled us," said Vigneault.

He had a point. As this series heads to a seventh game in Vancouver, it appears the Stars are trending up. They were solid from start to finish in Saturday's Game 6.

"Tonight was a better game than Game 5 and we'll be looking to get better in Game 7," said Tippett.

It was a superb team effort by the Stars, who got off to a good start with an early goal and kept up the pressure through the third period.

There was no repeat of Game 4, when they had a 1-0 lead and appeared to play it safe to protect it. They still went after the Canucks and got a second goal after some great forechecking work by Stu Barnes forced a turnover and Jeff Halpern scored off a shot from the high slot.

"There was a mindset to be aggressive," Tippett said. "We were going to do the same things that go us the lead and try to keep it."

That left the Canucks on their heels most of the night. The only thing that kept it close was the goaltending of Luongo, who made some spectacular saves to make the score look respectable for Vancouver. In every other respect this was a dominant performance by the Stars, who put on a quite a show for a record crowd of 18,600 at the American Airlines Center.

Leading the charge on this night was center Mike Modano, who scored the Stars' first goal. He beat Luongo with a blast from the left point on a five-on-three power play 3:05 into the game for his first goal of the series.

Modano, who was quiet early in the series and under pressure to produce, has had a lot of jump in the last two games. Saturday night he was the best player on the ice.

"You want to do good. You want to play well in the playoffs. You want to win. You want to contribute," Modano said. "The last couple games have been pretty good. I've been getting some good looks finally and having some time and possession with the puck. The first couple games there wasn't much of that."

But Modano was strong without the puck as well. He made several nice defensive plays in his own zone and threw one of the better hits of the game, rubbing out Canucks defenseman Sami Salo behind the Vancouver net.

The Stars got another solid effort from Marty Turco. In fact it was a record second performance by Turco, who posted his third shutout of the series and broke the franchise record of two. He got a lot of help from teammates, who either had the Canucks pinned in their own end or were giving them no quality chances in the Dallas end.

 "Our guys really played well defensively tonight," said Turco. "We took plays away. We're strong down low and that's how we have to play to win games. It's been a defensive-minded series and tonight was no different."

The Canucks top line of the Sedin twins and Taylor Pyatt ended up with one shot on goal. The Canucks second line of Markus Naslund, Brendan Morrison and Jannik Hansen produced three shots, but none of those came after the second period.

"Defense is about hard work," Tippett said. "It's about doing little things that keep the puck out your net. We feel like that is the trademark of our team."

Now it's on to Game 7 for the Stars and Canucks. It's a one-game series. One game where anything game happen.

"We'll find out if momentum matters," said Turco. "Game 7 will be the biggest challenge."

And the Stars said their mentality won't change.

"We've been in Game 7 the last two games. We're not going to change a thing," said Tippett. "We're going to go in there and compete at the same level and do what we have to do to try to win the hockey game."

Defenseman Sergei Zubov, who missed the last part of the second period and all of the third, will be evaluated on Sunday.

"From what I've been told it's a torso injury," he said. "Have to go look that one up."

Tippett said captain Brenden Morrow would be fine after taking a slash to the back of the leg from Canucks forward Alex Burrows late in the game.

"You catch that nerve on the side of your knee and it deadens your leg. He'll be fine, " Tippett said.

Tippett said the Stars will bring up the Burrows slash with the league.

"If it wasn't for Roberto [Luongo] it might have been 5-0, 6-0 or 7-0," Vigneault said. "We created four scoring chances over the last two periods. We had three shots from our forwards. ... It was not a good game on our part to say the least.

"The players who have played for the Vancouver Canucks the longest are not bringing their 'A' game to the table. That's what we did tonight. That's why we lost. ...  Obviously, if we bring this type of game and effort on the ice, I don't like our chances. As much as I think Roberto is a great goaltender, you need a lot more than that."

The Canucks players weren't disputing Vigneault's assessment.

"It wasn't  our best effort," said Canucks forward Trevor Linden. "I think it's important we stick together as a group. We've got some work to do."

"They were the hungrier team tonight and they deserved to win," said Luongo. "That's the bottom line. We start over with a clean slate. It's a one game series and we shouldn't have any problems."