The Stars already were without Esa Lindell, who missed the game with an upper-body injury, and then lost Jani Hakanpää when he was hit in the fact with a puck in warmup. Bowness said Hakanpaa was having trouble breathing, so they made the decision to play Andrej Sekera instead. In addition to Sekera, Thomas Harley and Joel Hanley also were in, so the Stars were dealing with a blueline that was a little thinner.
Still, Oettinger cleaned up the messes and kept the Stars in it, but they just couldn't finish when they had some great scoring opportunities.
"We were still down one going into the third and had some great looks," Bowness said. "We dominated the third period, but we just couldn't get the timely goal. It was 2-1, we had some great looks, and all of a sudden it was 3-1. It was one of those nights."
It really was. Pucks bounced off skates and sticks or simply eluded Stars players on passes. Reads were wrong, mistakes were made. They looked tired, and that's a valid explanation.
The Stars just don't want to start looking for excuses.
"Obviously, this one we wanted two points here today, at least a point, but we know we're not going to win them all," defenseman John Klingberg said. "It's been a long road trip, so three out of four is obviously huge, but we wanted four out of four. But we feel pretty good about this."