What a difference a year makes.

Speed, speed, and more speed normally how you would describe the opponents of the Dallas Stars in the last 5 or 6 seasons. The Stars have always been conservative, defensive and overly dependent on their goaltender. Tonight, against the cup champs, the Stars look like the red army from the 1980 Olympics. There is speed everywhere on this team even Turco is fast. We will get back to that later, but for the game tonight.

In my last post I talked about special teams and goaltending as the key to playoff success and it was no different tonight. Turco made timely saves and did not give up any softies. This game was not won in the net however it was won right in front of it. The Dallas Stars powerplay was dangerous again tonight with two more powerplay goals. But that did not win the game, the game was won at the beginning of the third period. After Morrow took a dumb penalty at the end of the second period, Modano gets called for a questionable trip, then Richards gets another trip. Six straight minutes of powerplay time for the Ducks. Six minutes for the cup champs having five guys on the ice while we have four. The Stars do what they do, the best penalty kill in the league was awesome, the Ducks were held scoreless. As it happens so often when the officials give a team a lot of power plays they are looking to at least give the other team one to even things up. Sure enough the Stars got a power play right after all their good work on the penalty kill.

The momentum had switched as so often does in the NHL often times the goal follows the change in momentum instead of being the change of momentum itself. The momentum was changed by the penalty kill and it was turned into a goal by Modano who unleashed his bazooka of a slap shot from the blue line, putting it shelf on the glove side on a screened Giguere who had already gone down to take down the higher percentage of the net. That momentum was turned into another goal 55 seconds later by Brad Richards but it was a play made by Joel Lundquist who took a hit from Mathieu Schnieder and made a pass to turn it into a 2 on 1 for Loui Erikson and Brad Richards and they made it count. The power play has to continue to produce and the penalty kill has to be good for us to keep winning.

Now for the make up of the team, last year I was saying this team was old slow and depended on Modano too much. I complained all we drafted were defense men and two way forwards not scorers. Well this year that worked out because Boucher and Zubov missed lots of time and we got to see all these draft picks play. They have been impressive, more than impressive considering their age. Now all of them are playing with a veteran, Nisky with Boucher, Grossman with Norstrom, and Daley, whose establised as a solid NHLer eventhough he is just 24, with Robidas. Grossman and Nisky have been immense we are rolling all three sets of defensemen and are not afraid to play the kids. All of the young guys are fast and now the defense is fast as well as physical which is a change from previous seasons outside of Zubie. The forwards can be best described in this fashion, Mike Modano is our third line center. Mike Modano, the all time US-born scorer, is our third line center, he is our defensive stopper, a side to his game he is not given enough credit for. This team now has speed all over the place, and guys scoring goals that are more than just crashing the net. Erikson for example who I believe will be a 40 goal scorer in this league one day is big fast and has great hands. Evidence is his goal in game one he takes a place skates to the slot and roofs a beautiful shot off the elbow of the posts. Hagman has speed, Richards and Modano are just mustard( to borrow an english football term) Erikson has it, and Ribeiro can absolutely fly. Ribeiro is the key to everything though, he puts everyone in there place. He is the point producer and everyone else knows it, and he delivers. That Morrow, Ribeiro, Lehtinen line is dominant. Hopefully this continues, go Stars, go Turco, go Playoff beards.