Blackhawks' slide reaches 7 straight

The Blackhawks' once-promising season is on the verge of slipping away.

In the tightly packed Western Conference, where a losing streak of any consequence can blow a team right out of the playoff chase, the Hawks have dropped seven straight following Wednesday night's agonizing 3-1 loss to the Dallas Stars at the United Center.

"We need to find a way to win here in the next game," Hawks coach Denis Savard said. "We're looking one game at a time, and we'll see where we're at in a couple weeks. I'm not giving up. Nobody's giving up.

"Whether it's this year, we hope it is. If not, we've got to continue the process that we're on and stick with what we're doing and get better."

In other words, Savard knows how difficult it's going to be to make the playoffs now unless there's a long winning streak in the Hawks' future.

The way the Hawks lost this one was particularly frustrating for the sizable weekday crowd of 15,469.

The Stars capitalized on a miserably executed Hawks power play in the game's final eight minutes, with Stu Barnes scoring a short-handed goal with 6:04 to play to snap a 1-1 tie.

Barnes' shot from the right point went in off the pad of goalie Nikolai Khabibulin. The only person anywhere near Khabibulin was teammate Dustin Byfuglien, who was so close to the goalie that he appeared to distract him.

The goal came after the Hawks turned the puck over several times on a power play that could have decided the game in their favor. The Hawks were 1-for-5 on the power play.

"We had a few good ones and a few really bad ones," Savard said. "Again, we're a young group. You look at the great power plays in the league and there are solid veteran players who have played 500 games or a thousand games. We're not quite there yet."

Savard didn't fault Khabibulin on the winning goal.

"We could have been in the shooting lane," Savard said, not mentioning Byfuglien by name. "Even though we were on the power play we could have come back and stopped, (but) we circled. Little things -- that's the difference between winning and losing right now."

Khabibulin was excellent for most of the night. But in addition to allowing Barnes' short-handed goal off his pad, Khabibulin let Loui Eriksson's trickler from the right side get through him in the first period to make it 1-1.

Patrick Kane could have put the Hawks back ahead when he was awarded a penalty shot at 11:47 of the second period, but the rookie failed to convert. Kane put a backhander wide after deking goalie Marty Turco to the ice.

"I thought I had him beat there and maybe shot it a little too quick," Kane said. "It looked like I had the whole net to shoot at. You wish you had those back because it's a turning point in the game. It could have been 2-1 us there, but instead it's 1-1 and they have the momentum going their way."

The Hawks had only 18 shots on goal, none by Martin Havlat.

"They outbattled us and it showed on the shot clock, probably in scoring chances and on the scoreboard," Duncan Keith said.