Thursday Morning Cupcheck - The Dallas Stars are Finn-ished

by Todd Maternowski

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we tossed around blanket generalizations across el mundo de hockey, insulting well-paid grown men with childish taunts and sarcastic barbs. This week, I was planning on continuing in that same vein with my annual NHL GMs: Who's Got Poop in Their Diapers Today, when an unstable stack of Fuddruckers' receipts, Ronald Reagan bedtime stories and Dallas Stars roster printouts nearly collapsed on me in my parents' basement. I'm ok --except for all this blood pooling on the floor-- but due to a combination of dizziness, fainting and good old-fashioned Religious Epiphany, I came to a startling realization.

The Dallas Stars, once known as Finland West, are now down to a single Finn!

To put that in layman's terms, the Stars now have as many Finns as they do Moscovites, Hottentots and Basque combined. Our lonely knife-wielding funny-sounding backwards-talking ice-man? None other than Jere Lehtinen. To make matters even more insulting to those of Helsinkish heritage, we also have three times as many Swedes (Eriksson, Grossman and Lundqvist) as Finns on our current roster, with a fourth Swede (Bruunstrom) on the way. Stars fans must be quaking in their ten-gallon boots wondering what this all means for the present/future of the franchise.

As recently as June 30th, the Swede-Finn balance of power was evenly balanced, as Finnlanders Nick Hagman, Annti Miettinen and Jussi Jokinen represented F-towne admirably, scoring shootout goals, getting bodychecked onto highlight reels and disappearing in the playoffs with the best of them. Sure, the Stars had their share of Swedes: Mattias Norstrom, Grossman, Lundqvist and Eriksson all had their moments of completely disappearing in the regular season, only to rock the Gotenborg in the postseason. In the Conference Finals, the Swede-heavy Stars would lose to a team composed almost entirely of Swedish citizens draped in the blood-soaked uniforms of their ancient progenitor Grendel.

(For those of you astute readers who read this far and questioned whether or not I was originally going to write this column in Olde English Beowulf-style... go to the head of the class. And then go back to detention for forgetting the Power of the Dark Side/Laziness is).

Did the Stars make the right move in dumping Finn for Swede? Which microscopically-different ethnicity is vastly superior to the other? Should Stars scouts be send en mass to the fjords of Norway, or the Lego factories of Denmark next?

The only way to answer these nigh-impossible questions is to completely overlook who has four Stanley Cups and a Gold Medal vs. One Measley Silver Medal, and compare the two countries via Fun Facts!

Fun Fact!: Sweden is home to the Swedish Bikini Team, a crack team of elite swimwear-bearers who dispense cheap American-made slightly-alcoholic swill to those desperately in need.

Fun Fact!: Finland is the most sparsely populated country in the E.U., but with the highest concentration of cellphone-per-citizen.

Winner: Sweden

Fun Fact!: Sweden's economy is centered around the export of allen wrenches for assembling inexpensive, tasteful furniture.

Fun Fact!: Finland has over 40 words in the Finnish language for "The Russians are invading again"

Winner: Sweden

Fun Fact!: Sweden has the greatest, bork bork bork-iest chefs in the world, known worldwide for their mad cleaver skillz.

Fun Fact!: Finland has made it mandatory that every male over the age of 9 carry a 12-inch hunting knife strapped to their leg at all times.

Winner: Finland

Fun Fact!: Sweden's citizens are best known for being especially boisterous in meade halls, having cool horns on their helmets and slaying ancient demons and their hot mothers.

Fun Fact!: Finland's citizens are best known for being eerily, painfully quiet, likely in an attempt to ensure Russia doesn't hear them and forgets that they exist.

Winner: Sweden

Fun Fact!: Sweden is really, really cold.

Fun Fact!: Finland has been described by leading geologists as 'Ass Cold', officially defined as 'so cold that if someone was roughly penetrating you in the ass, you would not realize it, that is how unbelievably cold it is right now'

Winner: Sweden

Fun Fact!: Sweden annually sweeps the prestigious Nobel Prize for Being Nordic-Looking Awards.

Fun Fact!: Finland makes cellphones that occasionally place in the top five of some Consumer Digest Best-Of lists.

Winner: Sweden

Fun Fact!: Sweden once sacked Rome while listening to The Best of ABBA.

Fun Fact!: Finland actually beat the stuffing out of both Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany in World War 2, while listening to Slayer.

Winner: Finland

So there you have it, the strengths and weaknesses of both countries broken down in the most scientific way possible. With a 5-2 advantage in Fun Facts, it stands to reason that the Dallas Stars are well on their way to either Stanley Cup or Gold Medal success, and with any luck, we'll be able to replace the 2008-09 Ice Girls with the aforementioned Bikini Team. Tune in next week when I get Ducks/future Maple Leaf GM Brian Burke all nice and drunk, and ask him what he really thinks about Gary Bettman, Kevin Lowe and that one guy who keeps parking in his spot.