O'Driscoll, playing his 100th game for Ireland, dropped a difficult pass after two minutes.
Smith won a penalty but the attack ended as Mark Henry was thrown a difficult pass and lost possession.
Kompany's exit seemed to make little difference when United midfielder Tom Cleverley stretched for a difficult pass and slipped it to Antonio Valencia on the right.
The Stars best chance came on a four-on-two rush, but Modano, open near Brodeur's net, could not control a difficult pass.
Sinfield demonstrated brilliant handling to receive a difficult pass on the 10-metre line and spread it to Watkins who surged through to score.
On the last play, the game still up for grabs, Latrell got a difficult pass under the basket and went up for a last-second fallaway shot as Duncan and Robinson converged on him, arms extended.
Then Habana, to his chagrin, had to jump to take a difficult pass from Pollard and was unable to gather it for what would have been a simple run-in.
Addison, not yet out of his teens, scored a pearl of a try at the end of the third quarter, taking a difficult pass above his right shoulder on halfway and disappearing into the distance with a combination of swerves and sidesteps.
"It's not who we are" is an appealing locution, and perhaps the President landed on it, with his usual intuitive feel for language, as the right set of words to negotiate a difficult pass — stronger, suppler, more human in resonance than the older ones, better than simply saying, "That's against American principles," much less, "That's against international law".
That appeared to spell the end of the match as a contest but the Scots hit back immediately, only to bungle a gilt-edged opportunity when Stuart Hogg, with no-one in front of him, was harshly ruled to have knocked the ball on metres from the Welsh line as he tried to pick up a difficult pass when a more accurate delivery would have left him with a walk-in.
