• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers

Stars dominate lowly Coyotes

Mar 28, 2007 - 6:00 AM DALLAS (Ticker) -- The Dallas Stars are climbing the playoff ladder. The Phoenix Coyotes are just trying to avoid last place.

Mike Ribeiro scored two goals and Sergei Zubov notched two assists to lead the Stars to a 6-0 victory over the lowly Coyotes.

The Stars (46-24-6) moved into a tie for fifth place in the Western Conference with Minnesota (45-24-8) at 98 points and are just two points behind Anaheim (44-20-12) for first place in the Pacific Division.

"We're two points behind (Anaheim) now," Riberio said. "It's tight. It's going to get to the end of the season. I know if we play a better team, with a start like that, it will be a different story."

Veteran goaltender Marty Turco notched his sixth shutout of the season - third over Phoenix this season - with 21 saves. Dallas is now 7-1-0 against Phoenix this season.

"We got some bounces, made some good plays, got some tips," Turco said. "It's seems a lot more lopsided than it really was. The shots were pretty close. It is difficult to keep your head up and be accountable for each other and help each other. It's not always easy looking over your shoulder."

Mike Modano, Jere Lehtinen, and Loui Eriksson each had a goal and an assist for the Stars. Modano now has 20 goals on the season. It's the 15th time in his career that the veteran center has hit the 20-goal plateau, a franchise record.

"It took us a while to get going and open up the game a little bit, but they played well, they had a good start to the game," Modano said. "The shot clock kind of showed that, we weren't doing too many things with the puck. The chances game, we kind of hung with the game and took advantage of our opportunities."

The Coyotes totaled 58 penalty minutes, leading to two power-play goals for the Stars Right wing Josh Gratton managed three separate 10-minute majors - a misconduct, a game misconduct and an abuse of officials penalty at the 7:42 mark in the third period.

The Stars are 8-1-1 in their last 10 overall and 13-2-2 in their last 17 home games.

"Yeah, we want to win the division, but we want to play well. We want to be firing on all cylinders come playoff-time," Turco said. "That is our utmost priority and I think, big-picture, if we do end up winning the division, we'll probably be firing on all cylinders, because we need some wins.

"We've got some really big games, obviously, if we're going to collect points, we've got Anaheim one more time at home. It's right there in front of us, but we're really concentrating on the things that we need to be successful, and tonight was a good step for us."