The past week

The Iowa Stars picked up three of a possible four points over the past week, but that wasn't enough to brighten their hopes of making the playoffs.

Iowa was on the road, knocking off Chicago in a shootout and then losing to Rockford in overtime.

That left Iowa with a 29-30-4-2 record. Their 64 points leaves them nine points out of a playoff spot with 15 games remaining in their schedule.

Center Toby Petersen, called up to Dallas from last week, said the team has struggled to put together good lengthy runs and that has hurt their cause this season.

"We had trouble putting good streaks together. We'd play three great games, get five points out of the six and we had a problem following that up with more good performances. That's kind of been dogging us all year," Petersen said after a practice in Dallas recently. "I think some of that is inexperience and it's just the way our division has played out this year. We are just under.500 and in last place by quite a few points."

• James Neal scored a goal in Friday's game in Chicago, giving the rookie left wing seven goals in his last 13 games. Neal now has 12 goals and 12 assists in 47 games.
   
• Forward Francis Wathier picked up his first points of the season over the weekend. He registered one assist in both the Chicago and Rockford games. Wathier, who had been out all season with a shoulder injury suffered in Dallas' training camp, returned to the lineup at the beginning of the month.
   
• Idaho Steelheads left wing John Lammers was named the ECHL's Player of the Month for February. Lammers scored 14 goals, including on the power play, and had nine assists in 14 games as the Steelheads went 8-4-2 during the month.

• Richard Clune (hand)

• Dallas assigned D Dan Jancevski to Iowa on March 10
• Dallas recalled D Dan Jancevski on March 9
• Dallas recalled C Toby Petersen on March 4
• Dallas assigned RW Alexander Naurov from Idaho (ECHL) to Bakersfield (ECHL) on March 4