Stars, redux

It's amazing how teams in sports can look invincible one day, and mediocre the next. It appears the Detroit Red Wings team that I saw in Game 3 was a trick of the eye. Or, perhaps the Stars themselves were an illusion. The two teams that showed up in games 4 and 5 bear little resemblance to the teams I wrote about in the previous post. Suddenly, the Red Wings can't score at will and the Stars are capable of entering the offensive zone.

Marty Turco has been nothing short of a brick wall in the last two games and the team is playing some inspired hockey. The only people that are more surprised than I am about this turnaround appear to be the Detroit Red Wings, who are clearly on their heels now. The Stars are still an extreme long shot to reach the Stanley Cup Finals, but they have emphatically proven that they belong in the Western Conference Finals. If Game 5 ends up being the last hurrah of the season, the Stars have nothing to hang their heads about. For the first time in several years, a Dallas team has managed to not end their season with a giant face plant. We may not be parading the Stanley Cup through downtown Dallas this year, but we finally have a team we can be proud of.