For 64 seconds he sat there, feeling at once so guilty and remorseful that he threw himself on the mercy of the hockey gods.

"You pray," Stars captain Derian Hatcher said, when asked what a man does in the penalty box when he has just taken a horrible penalty that forced his teammates to defend three men against five in a hockey game that had been scoreless for 35 minutes. "You just pray they don' t score."

And when they did? When the Oilers got so lucky that Doug Weight' s shot that was sailing well wide of the net hit scrambling goaltender Ed Belfour's left arm and caromed into the net for what would prove to be the winning goal, then what?

"Then you're just sick to your stomach," Hatcher said.

Now he knows how we all feel after watching a wretched effort by a team that deserved the Residents’ Trophy for as much time as the Stars spent in their own zone, circling the wagons in front of Belfour.

"OK, boys, we got 'em pinned in our zone," the Stars seemed to say. So busy were they defending they generated just four shots on goal through 40 minutes, none in the first period, en route to a 2- 0 loss.

The best-of-7 Western Conference semifinal shifts to Edmonton for Games 3 and 4. The Stars plan a players-only meeting when they arrive in Alberta this evening.

There is much to discuss, such as why this team with such high expectations of itself failed to show up until the third period Saturday night and why it can't seem to generate much offense against an

Oilers team that has a reputation of being rather generous in the goals-against department, and why its leader seems to be in a retreat.

"I just think he's been slow, slow in reacting," coach Ken Hitchcock said of Hatcher. "And he needs to pick it up. He needs to be a better player for us, a much better player, if we're going to get better in this series."

And he has to play smarter, too. He cannot be killing a penalty and get caught retaliating behind the net with a punch at Dean McAmmond after a whistle. Especially with another defensive penalty-killer, Richard Matvichuk, already in the box for hooking. It put the Stars short two men for 1:04, and Weight scored with a second remaining after a valiant penalty-killing effort by Guy Carbonneau, Craig Ludwig and Sergei Zubov.

"A poor penalty at a poor time," is how Hitchcock described it.

Hatcher's teammates were not amused either.

"You just can't do that, especially when you're killing a penalty, " said Grant Marshall, whose own prayers were answered in Game 1 when he took a dumb major penalty that left his team short for five minutes while Edmonton tried to rally from behind.

"That's no time to freak out," Greg Adams said. "Every penalty is so important in the playoffs. We’ve got to learn to control ourselves and play the game between the whistles."

Hatcher's best defense was that he didn't think he deserved a penalty and that the way the game is being called he's not sure what's a penalty and what isn't these days.

"Cheesy? Yeah, I think so," he said. "To give a team a five-on- three in a game like that . . .. Hey, I’m in front of the net taking a beating at the other end [on Dallas power plays] so I see both sides of it. But what can you do?"

Learn from it, we hope, and know now that he must be more careful because the stakes have just gone up against a team that has stolen home-ice advantage in this series.

Hatcher only wishes he had an answer for his own substandard play since the middle of the opening round against San Jose.

"I just don't know," he said. "It's something you think about - all the time. Right now, I think I’m thinking about it too much."

Anybody who has played the game will tell you hockey is not a thinking- man's sport. It's a game of action and reaction.

From the Stars so far in this series, it has been mostly inaction. Now we can only pray that this sick feeling isn't going to last all summer.

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