"Tonight, we had our chances to score," Bowness said. "There's no room for error. When we get those chances like we had in overtime, you would hope that it would go in. We had some unreal looks at the end of the third period, unreal, and we didn't score. That will always come back to bite you in these one-goal losses."
The Stars last season were 18-9-8 in one-goal games. That was the difference in making the playoffs and missing. This season, the one-goal games might tilt the balance in the other direction.
It's especially frustrating for everyone because the Stars spend long stretches controlling play and looking like the better team. Even with Roope Hintz (lower body) and Alexander Radulov (lower body) out of the lineup, forcing the lines to be reshuffled, the Stars had stretches of dominant possession.
"I thought our game was as good as you're going to get until a couple of executional errors," said forward Andrew Cogliano, who had a goal and an assist. "You can't play much better, but in moments when we need to do the right things and have the right execution, we haven't, and it's cost us."
Ironically, the Cogliano line with Radek Faksa and Blake Comeau had two great plays to help the Stars score goals but then also had a huge breakdown. Cogliano scored late in the first period and then fed Andrej Sekera for a goal that gave the Stars a 2-1 lead. However, Cam Atkinson scored off a faceoff play against the FCC line late in the second period, and Columbus scored a minute later on a broken play.
It was just one more time where a crack in the armor allowed the opposition to grab momentum.
"I thought we had a decent game," Cogliano said of his line. "We had some good moments, but then we give up a goal off of a faceoff and we shouldn't have that as a line. Those are the moments I'm talking about. You have some good plays and you score some goals and your team is controlling the game, and at that moment we need to be better. Not good enough."
