"It looked like we lacked a little emotion or jump we had in the other series," Stars goalie Marty Turco said.

And that allowed the Red Wings to take control of the game early and get an early edge in the series with their 4-1 win.

"I think any time you've won a big series like they have and you've played the overtimes like they did, sometimes it's hard to get started right away," said Detroit coach Mike Babcock. "And I thought we were able to jump on them early."

The Stars had a few good shifts early, drew a power play, missed on it, went shorthanded, gave up a goal and then were on their heels for basically the first half of the game.

"We've got to be better in everything, in all areas of the game," said center Brad Richards. "We were behind and that's we took penalties. We were taking stick penalties."

And it didn't help that the Red Wings were the overwhelming winners in the special teams battle Thursday night.  Detroit scored on three of its first five chances, including a five-on-three for the first one, to build to a 3-0 lead by 6:40 of the second period.

"Special teams are usually one of our strengths," Stars captain Brenden Morrow said. "But tonight, it let us down a bit."

The Stars power play, which had a couple of chances to change momentum in the game, was 0-4 on the night. But it was the Detroit power play that was the story in the first half of the game.

"Our power play has capitalized on our chances," Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom said. "That's something we wanted to do as well, but we wanted a good, strong start, and the power play really helped us."

The Red Wings scored off a five-on-three with Tomas Holmstrom helping create traffic in front of Turco and then Johan Franzen and Tomas Holmstrom scored off deflections on the other two power play goals.

"You've got [Holmstrom] and now you've got Franzen deflecting pucks," said Stars defenseman Stephane Robidas. "It's hard to get them out of the way once they get position."

The Stars had some legitimate beefs about some of the calls or non-calls related to some of those power play goals, but the bigger issues were self-inflicted.

"We didn't battle hard and they won those one-on-one battles," said Stars center Mike Ribeiro. "We need to be disciplined and just compete better.

The bottom lines is that Detroit was the better team on this night and the end result was another impressive playoff win for the Red Wings, who have won seven straight games now by a combined scored of 32-11.

"I'm not worried about how the Red Wings played. I'm worried about how we played," said Stars coach Dave Tippett. "That's a game that wasn't even close to the games we played in the playoffs. Whether there's some fatigue from the last game, whatever the reason, we didn't play close to our capability. So give the Red Wings all the credit in the world. They did what they had to do to win, but we're going to have to be much better."

And Tippett is hoping that the Stars will find their legs in time for Game 2 on Saturday. He said the team will need its legs to get going and get back to a level of play worthy of competing with the Red Wings.

"Our top players, they looked down a quart tonight. And we just didn't skate," said Tippett. "We have to get skating. Before you can talk about anything tactics or anything else we've got to get our legs moving."

• After the Stars miss on their first power play chance, Mattias Norstrom takes a hooking penalty and then 34 seconds later Mark Fistric is whistled for roughing. Detroit cashes in on the five-on-three chance to take a 1-0 lead.
   
• With Detroit leading 2-0 early in the second, Chris Osgood stops Niklas Hagman on a breakaway to keep Dallas off the board and from gaining any momentum.
   
• Although he appears to be interfering with Stars goalie Marty Turco, Red Wings goalie Tomas Holmstrom deflects a Nicklas Lidstrom shot past Turco to make it a 3-0 game at 6:40 of the third period.