Dallas Stars Daily Links: Stars Upbeat Despite Loss to Los Angeles

The Dallas Stars five-game winning streak came to a halt last night with a 1-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings, but it wasn't for lack of effort or execution.

No, it was a good old-fashioned goalie dual where Jonathan Quick made his case for the hottest goalie in the NHL by styming everything the Stars threw at him. Andrew Raycroft, starting in relief of Kari Lehtonen on the second night of a back-to-back, wasn't too shabby either, letting only a late shot through traffic from Jack Johnson through.

And despite the result, the players and coaching staff were uniformly pleased with the effort the team put forth even if the needed goal never came.

"We’re disappointed with the outcome but I guess we are going to rationalize it to ourselves in the fact that we thought that we played real well and the game could have gone either way," said Stars coach Glen Gulutzan. "I thought this was our best game all year from start to finish. I thought that we are playing against a high-caliber hockey club and we played a solid game and it was real good for the fans."

The team captain agreed.

"I don’t think there are a lot of things in our game that we can complain about besides finishing," said Stars captain Brenden Morrow. "Rayzor (Andrew Raycroft) gave us a solid effort. We sure would have liked to have got him the win. He was battling hard for us, but sometimes the puck just doesn’t go in for you. We didn’t get one tonight."

After the jump, more on the Stars loss to the Kings, how to insult Loui Eriksson while actually trying to praise him and pity the poor fans of the Columbus Blue Jackets.

• Raycroft says he never saw Jack Johnson's shot that ended up netting the game winner, but you'll have to get behind the DMN's paywall to read the full story. [DallasNews.com]
• Mark Stepneski wraps up his thoughts from the game in this observations column. [ESPN Dallas]
• In the newsflash of the night, Jonathan Quick is a pretty good goalie. [Los Angeles Times]
• And Quick speaks about his big night to the official website. [LAKings.com]
• Ready to be shocked? Quick was named Puck Daddy's first star of the night and NHL.com's first star of the night. It's amazing what happens when people realize hockey is played on the West Coast. [Puck Daddy/NHL.com]
• Posted before the game against the Kings, and the fun free analysis from the DMN, Mike Heika writes about why the Stars aren't that concerned with the overall shot differential or with taking icing after icing at times. [DallasNews.com]
• The top part of this notes column is about Bill Guerin's comments about the NBA lockout, which we've already reported. But there is a notable kudos to Daryl Reaugh as well for his performance on Hockey Night in Canada. [Vancouver Sun]
• Can't anyone just give Loui Eriksson credit for being a pretty good hockey player in his own right? While this article tries to be complimentary, it basically says Eriksson is feeding off the play of Jamie Benn like he used to off of Brad Richards. While I love Benn as much as anyone (okay, maybe not as much as Worley), I think Eriksson could play pretty well with a stone wall sometimes. [Pro Hockey Talk] 
• Around the Pacific Division: In sad news for the rest of the Pacific Division, the San Jose Sharks seem to finally be putting everything together as they defeated the Boston Bruins 4-2. [San Jose Mercury News]
  
• How not to make yourself appealing to UFAs: The Vancouver Canucks acquired David Booth,  cap-dump Steven Reinprecht and a draft pick from the Florida Panthers on Saturday for a package that included Mikael Samuelsson and Marco Sturm. The issue is that Sturm signed as a UFA with the Canucks this offseason, saying he wanted to play for a contender. Yeah... that worked out well for him. [TSN]
• And finally, no matter how much the loss stings, at least we aren't fans of the poor Columbus Blue Jackets, who were a minute away from their first win of the season against the equally hapless Ottawa Senators and then, well, this happened.