Thursday, October 25, 2007

Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Modano = Worst American Ever

By Todd Maternowski

Good morning, hockey fans! Last week we learned, we laughed, we loved and we discussed the existence, purpose and means of worship for the hockey gods. I was planning on spending this week's column highlighting my Annual One-Tenth of the Season Awards Ceremony (Best Healthy Scratch: Antti Miettinen), but after Motel 6 kicked me out of the Blue Room for my pyropornographic interior design (and I still maintain my good friend Gary Bettman would have found those naked effigies flattering) (but trust me, Anthony the Night Manager wasn't hearing me out on this.... perhaps a naked effigy of him would be just the thing to change his mind), I was forced to find another venue for my Awards Ceremony. Fat chance, what with my picture and social security number pasted on every $10-a-night motel along 183 --in retrospect, perhaps my Texas Stadium Demolition Night idea was a bit premature-- so I'm afraid unless I can find an affordable ninja/event planner --and not like the last one I hired! That was just some fat white guy who thought he was Demi Moore-- I'm going to have to cancel the One-Tenth of the Season Awards Ceremony this year. Sorry, kids... maybe you'll get lucky and Motel 6 won't punch Goofy in the nuts next time you're at Disneyland. More on that later.

Never one to accept "Get out or I'm calling Irving P.D." as an answer, I set out to have a slightly different awards ceremony: the Dallas Stars On-Pace Awards, to be held right here in my very own invention, the NHL Cool Zone. In a game like hockey where statistics mean everything, it's a relatively simply task to casually glance at a stat sheet to determine which players are good and which players are overpaid bums on a Bataan death march to the waiver pool.

Modano seems to like the Stars' new road uniforms

For example, any fool can peruse the Stars' scoring sheets to see that Hagman is on pace for an astonishing 51 goals this year, which is approximately ten more goals than the entire team scored all of last season. Or that Boucher is on pace for zero goals this year, but an impressive 51 assists. Or that Jere Lehtinen is on pace for 51 points this year, and Joel Lundqvist is on pace for a +51 plus/minus this year. Those are numbers no one can argue with.

But I think the most telling stats come from our first-line center, Mike Modano, who I am appointing the official On Pace Offensive MVP for this year's Dallas Stars team. Sure, Mike has just one goal and one assist, and uneducated, poorly-bred ruffians have opted to point this out as somehow a bad thing. Churls! Is it really Modano's fault that the league has not increased the size of the net to match the broad side of a barn?! I think not.

And let's not ignore his most impressive stat thus far: 10 penalty minutes in 8 games. 10! That's third on the team behind Todd Fedoruk and Brad Winchester, who artificially inflate their penalty minute stat lines with unnecessary fights in which they get their asses solidly kicked. Modano, on the other hand, got his ten penalty minutes the hard way: by playing an aggressive, calculated game of diving and hooking. Think about it: do we really want our league's referees to think we're a team that's not going to whine and complain about every call? Zebras get lonely, too. Mike's just giving them the attention they crave.

For example, in the last game against the Ducks, with the third period winding down and the Stars defending a 3-1 lead, Modano glibly took a dive behind the Anaheim net --so far, nothing surprising here-- but decided to make the ref's job interesting by staying down until long after the Ducks had cleared the zone and were trying to score the 'gettin' closer' goal. Brilliant tactician that he is, Modano was both getting necessary beauty rest in the safest spot on the ice (behind the Ducks' goal), while also making it obvious to the refs that he was about to unleash a hellish firestorm of exasperated indignation!

Modano was merely following in the footsteps of the Great Ones --Sidney Crosby, Peter Forsberg-- and tellingly, the refs made the Unsportsmanlike call and the game was on! Now Modano was in the box, watching his team try and hold a lead against a relentless Stanley Cup champion team with a 6-on-4 (then, 6-on-3) advantage. And if the Ducks had scored a goal there, no one's plus/minus stat would've been negatively impacted! Genius! Is there any way we can give him back the Captain's 'C'?

Modano celebrates his latest hooking penalty

Not to mention Modano's amazing sense of timing: sure, two points from your first-line center is perhaps a little below what you might expect from a franchise player. But let's be serious here: this is the first 8 games. These are, technically, the least important 8 games of the entire season. Last year, three teams got off to amazing starts in the first few weeks: the Stars, Sabres and Wild. Any of those teams win the Stanley Cup? Hell no! Two of 'em meekly bowed out in the first round, in fact, and the third one lost to Ottawa. The only logical conclusion is that they were all "won-out" by the time the playoffs came around. Modano's early season, big-picture brilliance is a message to the Stars: save it for later. Don't win these first few games. Don't be fools. Follow my leadership. Whiff on empty nets. Take game-losing hooking penalties late in the third against inferior teams. Modano's a veteran of many years, and his long-term thinking is just what the Stars need. Too bad not all the Stars can stop thinking about themselves and stop scoring all these highlight-reel goals --I'm talking to you, Hagman and Morrow. Give it a rest, would you guys? Save the good stuff for games 34 through 42.

Besides, it isn't like Modano is getting paid to score lots of goals. He's only under contract for $3.5 million this year, 6th on the team, and just 29th among all NHL centers in 2006-07. That's less than the Philadelphia Flyers are paying for Mike Rathje, who played just 18 games last year and had a single assist. When you think of it that way, the Stars are getting a quite a return on their dollar.

Mark my words: as sure as I am that I just spilled my Thursday Morning Guiness all over my Thursday Morning Keyboard, Mike Modano Will Probably Break the All-Time American Scoring Record at Some Point This Year. Isn't that reason enough not to trade him to the Columbus Blue Jackets for a ziplock bag of Ken Hitchcock's mustache clippings? Food for thought.

That's it for this week's Cupcheck. Tune in next week when I report live from the Parkland ICU after Willa pile-drives my lower vertebrae into my face!

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