Blues fall to Stars at home

Pietrangelo nets first career goal as Blues fall to Stars

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The Dallas Stars are embracing the idea of playing on the road. They might want to stay away from home the way things are going.

Loui Eriksson had a goal and an assist, Marty Turco made 26 saves and Dallas beat the St. Louis Blues 4-1 on Saturday night improve to 4-0-3 on the road.

James Neal, Tom Wandell and Brian Sutherby also scored, and Brad Richards added two assists to help the Stars set a franchise record with points in seven straight road games at the start of a season. They are 1-2-1 at home.

"I think we should be having success at home as well and I believe we will," Stars coach Marc Crawford said. "We haven't been able to initialize our plan of attack when we've had a game home. If you can play well on the road, you should be able to play well at home. It's tougher on the road because you don't get the matches you want. You've got to be really sharp."

Alex Pietrangelo scored his first career NHL goal for the Blues, who have dropped three of four games at Scottrade Center. Ty Conklin stopped 27 shots.

"There's different types of losses," Blues coach Andy Murray said. "There's a loss like we had in Pittsburgh (a 5-1 defeat Tuesday night), which is one that's hard to accept as a coach. All losses are tough to accept, but there's a difference tonight. I thought we had energy, we had some legs, we were working."

Neal put the Stars on top with his sixth goal of the season, taking Richards' pass in the right circle and rifling a shot that got through Conklin at the near post 7:56 into the second.

Eriksson netted his fifth on the Stars' first power play. Richards again made the play with a pass in the low slot and Eriksson beat Conklin short side 10:17 into the second.

"(Richards) made a great pass there and I think the goalie was out of his station so I just put it in there," Eriksson said. "It was a pretty easy one."

The goal put the Blues down by two as they seemed to lose an edge they gained earlier in the game.

"We lost our focus in the second period, didn't stick with our game and then we started to try and do too much individually for a while and they took advantage," Murray said.

A scoreless first period was filled with two fights and each team being thwarted on breakaway attempts.

Conklin made a pad save on Steve Ott's short-handed attempt midway through the period, and the Blues' Jay McClement had his backhand attempt roll off his stick trying to beat Turco.

Wandell put the Stars up by three when he backhanded a shot from the slot past Conklin 4:48 into the third after Conklin made an initial save off a Steve Ott shot.

Sutherby stole a puck from Brad Winchester and beat Conklin on a breakaway at 9:51 to make it 4-0.

Turco made all the goals stand up with numerous quality saves, including one on Keith Tkachuk with 10:45 to play in the game as Turco sprawled to his left and got his pads up.

"It was the best I've felt all year," Turco said. "There were opportunities to see a lot of puck's. I got fortunate on a few missed shots or rebounds or tips."

Pietrangelo, the fourth overall pick in 2008, broke up Turco's shutout with what appeared to be a harmless wrister from the left half boards that caromed off the Dallas goalie and into the net with 3:50 left.

"It's always good to get your first goal, but it's kind of overshadowed by the loss," Pietrangelo said. "We played hard tonight, we really did. A few mistakes and they took advantage of it. It's a good feeling, but at the same time, it's tough to go through that with a loss."