ST. LOUIS -- Dallas Stars forward Patrick Sharp noticed it right away in training camp. The Stars had a vibe that reminded him of his old Chicago Blackhawks teams from years past. They had a tightness that was reminiscent of the 2009 season in Chicago well before salary-cap issues forced out player after player, taking a bit of the fun and personality with each one who left.

That 2009 Blackhawks team was a fun team. They still hadn't won anything yet, but they were having a blast doing it and probably knew, deep down, that they were on to something special.

There were a few players, like Duncan Keith, Sharp and Brent Seabrook, who had been at the NHL level for a while. There was a group that came up together in the AHL. There were a couple of new stars in Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. They meshed remarkably well.

"On any given night, we were hanging out together. There were no cliques," Sharp said. "This has a very similar feeling."

He sees the same thing in these Dallas Stars.

You see glimpses of it. It's spotting a couple of Stars teammates laughing while they climb into a rickshaw together in downtown St. Louis on a night between games.

The Stars bounced back in a big way in Game 4. Scott Rovak/NHL/Getty Images

Or it's walking into the Stars dressing room on Thursday morning for the first game since an ugly blowout loss in Game 3, and none of the players will do interviews until they're done singing a Shania Twain song together.

Is it some Stars tradition?

"Nope," answered one of the players. "It's just a great f---ing song."

They lost ugly in Game 3. They were all but written off going against a veteran St. Louis Blues team on a mission. And they couldn't care less.

All they did was go out and beat the Blues 3-2 in overtime in Game 4 to regain home-ice advantage and head back to Dallas with the series locked up 2-2.

The Game 3 debacle might have lingered in the minds of observers, but not the guys on the ice. They're having fun and they just announced that this series is going deep when it looked like it might be a quick one.

"You can't play perfect hockey all the time," said Stars captain Jamie Benn, in the understatement of the series. "It was just magnified a bit because it's the playoffs. The message was stay positive, get back at it."

It's hard to truly get behind this Stars team because it's unlike any of the recent Western Conference powers. When things break down, they break down in a big way, as was on full display in Game 3 -- and those moments stick in the memory.

The Blues and Stars kept it close in Game 4 in the Loo. Jasen Vinlove/USA TODAY Sports

There are defensive breakdowns. There are goalie changes. There is a moment like we saw in the first period of Game 4 when Vladimir Tarasenko was left all alone for a breakaway, scoring on a defenseless Kari Lehtonen. There were shootout attempts during the regular season better defended than that play, and to make it worse, the Stars had six skaters on the ice at that moment.

Not one of them decided to defend.

But these Stars don't have much of a memory for these things. Instead, they showed their firepower with two goals in 69 seconds when Radek Faksa and Sharp scored back-to-back.

Faksa has been a bit of a revelation this series, playing another strong game and scoring on a turnover from Blues defenseman Joel Edmundson. Sharp's power-play goal broke a streak of 12 consecutive kills by the Blues' penalty-killing unit.

Sharp approached the power-play struggles as the Stars seem to do some of the other bigger-picture issues with this team. Sure, they might not have looked good previously, but they got a big goal when they needed it.

"In that period of time, that one game, it was able to do it," Sharp said of the power play.

Same goes for the goaltending. In this period of time, in this one game, the Stars got exactly the performance they needed from Lehtonen. He stopped 24 of 26 shots and many of those were high on the difficulty scale.

He played better because the team played better in front of him. Or maybe it's the other way around.

It doesn't matter. The Stars have evened it up and they're having a blast doing it. We're just catching glimpses and, now, it appears there's more to come.

"That's just the character of our team," Sharp said. "You'll probably see that the rest of the way."