Green Like Kryptonite: Stars 4, Hawks 0

Aaaand The Hawks were less than super, anyway.  What do they have to do to beat these Green Bastards?  Crawford has allowed 4+ goals on only three occasions this season and twice it's been to Dallas.  How is that they have The Hawks' number?  Let's see....
* Three Days Off, for whatever reason, has not done The Hawks any favours this season.  It's as if they need to lose one (or more) after a bit of a layoff just to get their sea legs back.  Of course this is ridiculous and should never be the case, but do check it out - their record after 3+ days off is 1-4, and they were not IN any of those losses.
* Little Urgency: puck movement was okay, the shots and shot attempts were there, but positioning was off, there was zero effort to create traffic in front of Ben Bishop and, paradoxically, they allowed The Stars to move through the neutral zone unopposed far too often.  The Hawks just seemed unengaged mentally too much of the time.
* The Goal Against late in the first really seemed to swing the momentum.  After a pretty decent first period, really, that unfortunately concluded with The Stars scoring just as a Hawks penalty expired, The Hawks were done, son.  They didn't even do anything particularly wrong there, either, as Murphy did what he should have done in blocking the cross-slot pass, only to have the puck bounce right back onto Elie's stick, giving him a second chance at getting that pass right.  Just some poor puck luck that emboldened The Stars. Once that kicked in The Hawks didn't really respond appropriately.
* Small Mistakes Cost Big: Seabrook found himself on the wrong side of Seguin twice and the previously-in-a-goal-drought Dallas sniper made him pay each time.  Take those instances away and Seabs actually had a pretty good game.  However....
* Outworked In Their Own End: Dallas actually spent precious little time in the CHI zone yet, when they did, they had their way with The Hawks.  Meanwhile, at the other end, The Hawks had loads of zone time but thanks to the aforementioned failure to obstruct Ben Bishop and an awful lot of indiscriminate, ineffective shooting had literally nothing to show for it.

That's it, that's all.  I'll catch y'all on Saturday for the NJ game in which Sharp, Franson & Rutta will all return to the lineup, the latter two displacing a couple of guys who were not the worst Hawks d-men tonight.  But that's the way she goes, right?