The Dallas Stars are defeated by the Ottawa Senators on the back half of a four-game road trip.

Since beating the Nashville Predators 9-2 on February 15, the Stars have gone 0-2-2, with the latest being a 4-1 loss in Ottawa. 

During head coach Pete DeBoer's tenure in Dallas, the Stars have not lost three in a row without at least getting a point. Going into Carolina Saturday, Dallas is coming off of two regulation losses, meaning if the Stars cannot regroup quickly they may finally face that reality.

The winless record since that nine goal outburst really does not tell the whole story, though. In those four games, Dallas has been without Evgenii Dadonov, Nils Lundkvist, Jani Hakanpaa, Miro Heiskanen and Matt Duchene for some or all of the losing streak. They've also had to deal with several AHL call-ups players: Logan Stankoven and Matej Blumel were called up but did not play, while Derrick Pouliot and Alexander Petrovic both unexpectedly made their debuts in Boston, where Dallas also played down one forward. 

The timing of the injuries and adversity the Stars have been facing is right in the midst of playing a stretch of tough playoff teams. Edmonton, Boston, New York and Carolina are all but playoff locks at this point of the season. That makes the loss to Ottawa, who is not even close to sniffing a playoff spot this year, even less pleasant.

Before this skid happened, the Stars were five points ahead of the next closest team in the Central Division. Fortunately, the Stars had a tiny cushion and have been able to keep hold on the top spot, but in the same breath have missed an opportunity to extend their division lead.

The situation the Stars find themselves in should be a good indicator to the front office that they are in dire need of depth on the back end. It is never going to be ideal playing six left defensemen, and the six healthy starters needed some help before injuries happened all at once.

But adversity cannot fully be blamed for the showing the Stars put out against the Ottawa Senators.

In his post-game conference, DeBoer talks about how the game was a bad loss in every aspect of the game and one of the biggest indicators was the face-offs. Dallas has always been one of the better face-off teams and currently sit in fourth place in the league at 53.7%. However, the Stars finished with a mere 39% of face-offs won against Ottawa.

The first period started out slow. The Senators were very obviously the faster team, beating the Stars to pucks and moving through the neutral zone with ease. Ottawa was able to strike first about four minutes in with a re-direction in front of the net by Josh Norris.

It looked like the Stars were going into the second period trailing 1-0 until Joe Pavelski was able to bury one in tight with about ten seconds left in the first period. This was his first goal in twelve games since scoring in New Jersey in January. 

After being out-played in the first but entering the second period tied, the Stars started the second period right where they left off, and not in a good way. Dallas only had six shots on goal in the first, but the Stars only managed to record four shots on goal in the second.

And just like the period before, the Senators were able to get on the board quickly with a goal from Norris again, about five minutes into the period. A couple minutes later, after losing a puck battle against the boards, Thomas Chabot found himself wide open in front of the net and rocketed a puck past Jake Oettinger for a 3-1 Sens lead.

Much to Stars fans' surprise, DeBoer pulled Oettinger after the third goal in 11 shots. In his post-game press conference, DeBoer stated this move was to re-ignite the team and wasn't just an indicator of how Oettinger played. Scott Wedgewood took over in net, but the bleeding wasn't over. With a little more than twenty seconds remaining in the second frame, Shane Pinto was left wide open in front of the net and put one past Wedgewood to cap a three goal period.

The Stars still had no pep in their step in the third, only recording five shots on goal for a final tally of 15, but kept Ottawa off the board as well. They were unable to get anything going offensively, looking like a tired team coming off three games in four days. Finally, after probably one of the worst outings of the season, the final buzzer mercifully sounded to end the 4-1 loss. 

Dallas will have to quickly re-group as they take on the Carolina Hurricanes, fresh off a 1-0 victory over Florida, to end their four-game road trip on Saturday at 7 p.m. central.

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