Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Stars play Rope-a-Duck

by Todd Maternowski

Hola, mis chingas del hockey! Last week we put aside our differences to rap, straightforwardly, about the reality of the Stars' playoff chances not being determined in March. After no doubt reading and re-reading my column --perhaps even using it in one of his many Greatest Motivational Speeches of All Time-- Tippett and the boys went out and thoroughly decimated a piss-poor Kings team of which the great Daryl Reaugh has said, "the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead."

The Stars followed that huge win with an overtime loss to the Ducks, likely their first-round opponent. A cause for concern? Not if you, like Tipp and myself, have spent many fruitful hours studying ancient Chinese military strategy. As most of you probably know, great commanders like Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi were apt at defeating their enemies long before they set foot on the battlefield, preferring stealth and subterfuge to the unpredictable gamble of brute force. Someday, if the Stars can keep this up and perhaps snag a Stanley Cup out of all this, the name Dave Tippett will ring proud and true in the hallowed Halls of Victory, and Tipp will take his rightful place among the great generalissimos in history.

Either that, or the Stars are teh suck.

The greatest coach in NFL history, Vince Lombardi, was psychologically beaten once, early in his career, by George Halas of the Chicago Bears --before the teams ever set foot on the field. Sometime before kickoff, Halas stormed into the Packers' locker room, got right in Lombardi's face and started cursing the young coach up and down. Then he left as quickly as he came, and a razzled Lombardi went on to lose that game, being more concerned with Halas' personal tirade than the game at hand. Can Tippett be doing the same to the allegedly tough Ducks?

Here's the facts: after a record-setting February, the Stars tank it in March, winning just enough games to keep themselves in a playoff spot. Meanwhile, the Sharks and Ducks both go on huge winning streaks, passing the Stars by for both the division title and the coveted #4 seed. Dallas slips, and slips, and slips some more, until they are positioned in either the #5 or #6 seed, ready to face the Ducks or the Northwest Division winner. To many impatient fans incapable of seeing the larger picture, this sounds like the set-up for just another first-round playoff exit.

To me, it sounds like rock-solid playoff preparation strategy. Are the Stars throwing games on purpose? Yes! Or, actually, it's impossible to say, and it really doesn't matter. But for every season Tippett has been behind the bench, the Stars have managed to put up some amazing statistics in March, only to fall flat in April. They could be conserving their energy for the high-intensity playoffs, or they could be playing their hearts out every second of every shift and still just coming up short.

More importantly --and I know the hockey gods frown upon this sort of thinking when it's "out loud"-- but the Stars match up well against whoever wins the Northwest. Whether it turns out to be the Wild, the Avalanche, or the Flames (all pretty fey names when you think about it), the Stars will be facing a team that has been playing an exhausting game of King of the Mountain for two months, with all the fan pressures of home ice, and the Stars well-rested and geared up for the road. Sounds like an easy five-game upset right there.

I know what my detractors are saying: Listen, numbnuts, there is no easy path to the Stanley Cup. And while that's more or less true, just look at the last few Cup-winning teams and tell me they weren't glad to be playing who they did. Anaheim got the Wild in the first round --a team like looked completely out of place in that first round ass-whuppin', then drew the Canucks, who were beaten down after playing the Stars in seven, the only playoff series to go to seven games all of last year. Then they waited around until the Wings had disposed of the Sharks --no small feat-- before hooking, grabbing, and cheap-shotting their way past the all-skill Red Wings and into the Finals, where they repeated that exact formula against the Senators. Playing 21 games in four series? Cake.

The year before that, Caroline squeezed past regular first-round playoff patsies Montreal, skated circles around the depleted Devils before beating the Buffalo Sabres in 7. Could the Hurricanes pull off an unlikely Cup win? Against Edmonton they could: Edmonton had just beaten Detroit, San Jose and Anaheim in titanic upsets, and was not physically ready to beat Carolina in the Finals. Even so, it took seven games and the Oilers' #1 goalie going down to bring the Cup to the East. Pretty pathetic, but the stars were obviously aligned for the NASCAR state in 2006.

The Dallas Stars should be so lucky. But fortune favors the bold, and the Stars are boldly losing in order to draw their possible playoff opponents into a haze of overconfidence. Having beaten the Ducks repeatedly throughout the season, they have now lost two close OT games against the team they knew they would face: giving the Ducks a false sense of security for the post-season. Brilliant!

Even cleverer, the Stars seem to be taking a page from many of the world's most feared supervillains: keep your secret weapon secret! It's public knowledge that the reason we acquired Brad Richards is to replace the aging and unmotivated Mike Modano in the upcoming years, as well as for Richards' amazing postseason prowess. A forward with a single goal or assist would very likely have swung the Vancouver series in the other direction, and Richards, over his career, averages a pretty powerful point per game in the playoffs. But to unveil this weapon too early would be sheer folly: better to give the enemies (yeah, I know, this makes the Anaheim Ducks somebody's good guy) tiny glimpses of what you're capable of --perhaps in a pair of seven-goal romps, and the lone defeat of Forsberg's Avalanche-- but keep it hidden and in reserve until it becomes timely to unleash it on the unsuspecting rubes. Scoring 26 goals in a four-game sweep of the Ducks would be super-sweet on so many levels, Stars fans are probably orgasmically salivating at the mere thought of it. In fact, you might want to do that away from your keyboard. Yes. Yes, it's nice, isn't it?

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......anyways!! Sorry about that, got a little carried away there. Tune in next week when the regular season is, sadly, over, and I whip out my Mayan Tablets of the Ancients, my dog-eared Nostradamus, and Yahoo! Sports to give you my annual 100% Correct Stone Cold Playoff Locks!