Souray on Stars’ recent effort: “Awful, atrocious”

Following a 4-1 home loss to the Phoenix Coyotes on Tuesday night, the Dallas Stars found themselves sitting in 11th place in the Western Conference and answering a lot of questions about their recent form.

One player willing to speak openly about that form? Stars defenseman Sheldon Souray.

“Awful. Atrocious. We’ve gotten by on a real good goaltender in our last three or four games, and it’s just not good enough,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “We can talk about it, try to figure it out, point the finger, but as a whole, we’ve really been letting each other down the last three or four games, especially with how important this stretch of games is and what it means.”

The Stars are 3-6-1 in their last 10 and have seen their offense dry up almost entirely. They’ve scored two or fewer goals in nine of the last 10 games (a 6-2 win at Anaheim notwithstanding) and found the back of the net just 18 times in last 10 games.

More pressing than the offense, though, is Dallas’ inability to take advantage of tired teams. The Coyotes had played the night before in Phoenix (a 3-1 win over Detroit) and were on the second game of a back-to-back, yet thoroughly outworked the Stars. That’s a re-occurring theme — Dallas is now 3-5-1 this year when the other team plays the night before.

“The compete level, I don’t think was there tonight,” said defenseman Stephane Robidas. “They’re [Phoenix] the team that should have been tired, and they played a simple effective game.

“That should be a good lesson for us. We have to make sure we compete every night.”