• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers

Stars continue domination of Oilers in Edmonton

Feb 2, 2008 - 6:17 AM EDMONTON, Alberta (Ticker) -- The people of Edmonton may love hockey, but they sure don't like it when the Dallas Stars come to town.

Captain Brenden Morrow scored a goal and set up another and All-Star Mike Ribeiro added a pair of assists to lead the Stars to their seventh consecutive win at Rexall Place, a 4-1 triumph over the Edmonton Oilers on Friday night.

Marty Turco made 32 saves and Jussi Jokinen and defenseman Stephane Robidas each scored a goal for Dallas, which has not lost in Edmonton in over four years and has beaten the Oilers in eight of their last nine meetings overall.

"I think we just started quite a rivalry," Morrow said of the streak. "These are fun games to play in. This is home for myself and a few of us, and it's fun to come and play in this atmosphere against the Oilers. We feed off the energy of the crowd."

The Oilers' last win over the Stars at Rexall Place came on January 20, 2004, when Tommy Salo posted a shutout and Raffi Torres scored two goals in a 3-0 victory.

"We've come in here and had some crazy games here and we've got some fortunate wins like tonight," Dallas coach Dave Tippett said. "After that first period, you would have thought that it would be a struggle for us to get points, but we found a way. I didn't even know that that streak was in play, so that's how much we think about that."

Dwayne Roloson turned aside 18 shots and rookie Zack Stortini opened the scoring at 5:12 of the first period for the Oilers, who have lost six of their last eight contests.

"We came out hard and put everything at the net, and we got a lot of shots in the first," Oilers center Jarret Stoll said. "We took the play to them in the first portion of the game, but then they slowly took the game over. In the third, we got more physical, but we just didn't create enough good chances to tie the game."

The Oilers carried a 1-0 advantage into the second period and seemingly had all the momentum, but a series of penalties in the session helped the Stars grab the lead - and control of the contest.

"When they're skating and we're not, that means they have the puck," Tippett said. "That's how they get all the shots and we get no shots. It's as simple as that. You have to recognize that the other team is going to come out and come at you and what you are going to do to deflect that.

"The first thing you can do is get your butt going, and it took us a while to figure that out."

Dallas failed to capitalize on a 5-on-3 advantage early in the period, but Morrow tied the contest at 7:16. Morrow took a pass from Ribeiro and beat Roloson to the glove side for his 21st of the season.

Robidas gave the Stars a 2-1 edge on the power play with 9:14 remaining in the second. The Oilers successfully killed the first part of a 5-on-3, but Robidas notched his fourth tally of the season before defenseman Steve Staios - who just came out of the penalty box - was able to join the play.

"We got a lot of good looks at the net," Morrow said. "Didn't get the bounce that we needed, but we created some momentum when we had them pinned in their zone for quite a bit of time, and it was only a matter of time."

Ribeiro set up the goal with a superb cross-ice pass to Robidas, who blasted a one-timer past Roloson.

Jokinen scored another man-advantage goal with 8:37 left in the third and Steve Ott added an empty-netter with 2:06 remaining to provide the final margin.

The Stars, who have won the first two legs of their three-game road trip through Western Canada, will go for the sweep when they visit the Calgary Flames on Saturday.