Burish out again Tuesday; Lehtonen contnues to be best option in goal

Adam Burish will miss his second game in a row with a ``lower body'' injury. He had blocked some shots (a lot of shots really) over the past few weeks, and it was slowing him down. So the Stars are hoping some time off will help him heal.

"Adam's got a lower body injury and he's out again tomorrow," Stars coach Marc Crawford said. "Basically, we're going to watch him progress here day by day, and hopefully he continues to improve. He blocked a shot some time back and he's had some pain with it. Anybody that's watched us can see that it has affected his skating. We've made the decision to shut him down for a bit to see if that's going to make an improvement on it. As soon as he gets that improvement we all know that he'll be back in the lineup."

The rest of the team was at practice in Frisco Monday to get ready for Tuesday's game against San Jose. Kari Lehtonen is taking some rest here and there in practice, but he looks good and seems to like the heavy workload. He has started 10 straight games, and Crawford said he is looking at riding Lehtonen down the stretch.

"It's going to be a lot of Kari," said Crawford, when asked about the goaltending plan. "We're monitoring Kari as much as we can on our practice days and our off days, where we're going to limit the stress or the wear and tear in those areas. We've got to get him enough (work) that he is sharp and allow him to have that agony of repetition that allows you to be sharp.

``I think he's really played well for us,'' Crawford added. ``I think he's played with the energy that we want to see, and our games are spaced out right now so that we don't have to play him back-to-back. (Goalie coach) Mike Valley has been watching him closely, and we've been monitoring him closely, and we have the extra goalie in practice. He gives us the best opportunity to win right now. He's such an important part of our team."

Asked about the Stars' slow starts, Crawford said that teams need to play well to start games, but he's not sure that is a consistent problem for the Stars.

``We'd like to be a team that has them chase us all of the time. You always do so much better if you score first or you have a good start to the game,'' Crawford said. ``If we can focus on being great here with our starts at home, it will probably go a long way in making us a team that is a formidable opponent. We'll focus in on it again tomorrow, and it's a great opportunity for us to be good.''