Thursday Morning Cupcheck - 20 Reasons to Love the Stars

by Todd Maternowski

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we learned, we loved, we lost, and we decided that the Stars' youth movement was paying off, big-time. This week, I was going to review former Stars goalie Mike Smith's one-man performance piece entitled, The Tampa Bay Lightning, when I was blindsided by some truly unsuspecting news: stop the presses, the Dallas Stars blow serious chunk!

When did this happen? Did Scott Niedermayer poison the water supply? Is Patrick Marleau holding Brendan Morrow's father-in-law hostage on a remote volcanic island? Did the Apocalypse get impatient and jump the gun?

Like any Stars fan, I tried to understand what was going on, just to try and get a hold on things. I even started writing a List of Things That Suck Harder Than the Dallas Stars, but quickly ran out of steam after #2 (Being born with the name Daterape Hitler). So I do what I always do in these troubled times: call on my friend and longtime quicker-picker-upper, Captain Yes Positive.

Yo: "Nice to see you, bud. What's been goin' on?"

Captain Yes Positive: "Nothing much -- just teaching the dreamers to love and the lovers to dream."

Yo: "Bitchin'. Say, fine fellow, I've got a quick question that's been on the minds of Stars fans everywhere."

Captain Yes Positive: "Do go on, Materman."

Yo:" Here it is - WHAT THE F*CKING F$CK!?!?! F#CK ME, F%CK ME, F&CKING F*CK F@CK F$CK!!!"

Captain Yes Positive: "I thought you might be a tad concerned about the recent miffs your beloved Stars are going through. So I came up with a Terrif-List, which details all the positive and terrific things we can glean from the first 12 games of the season! Yay! Here it is!"

#1 - Remember, when you're dead last in the league, there's nowhere to go but up... unless it's 4-76-2

#2 - Things could be much worse: the citizenry of Dallas could be infected with lycanthropy.

#3 - Nobody is noticing because the Cowboys suck even harder.

#4 - The Stars' defense is contributing to a league-wide increase in goal-scoring, which can only mean bigger, more excited crowds for opponents.

#5 - The Stars are finally getting the national media attention that they deserve.

#6 - The dust blows forward and the dust blows back: even if it takes one million years, the defense and goaltending will eventually get fixed.

#7 - Modano's calling out his teammates was even more hilarious when you picture him saying it in Napoleon Dynamite's voice.

#8 - As the second-most penalized team in the NHL, the Stars are well on their way to catching up with the Penalty Kings, the Dallas Cowboys.

#9 - The Stars may be last in the NHL in GAA at 4.17, but they're 3rd best in the league in shots allowed at just 26.3! Awesome!

#10 - Everyone loves being the underdog. Successful teams with winning records are hardly ever underdogs.

#11 - The Stars are pioneers of the sport: a return to the go-go defense-less "hockey" of the 1980s is exactly what the NHL needs.

#12 - Giving up tons of soft goals is better than allowing highlight-reel, unstoppable shots that just serve to demoralize the team.

#13 - Turco is lucky: to be on his knees with all that rubber behind him, only dimly illuminated by a red light! Heck, most people pay good money for that.

#14 - Making watching games 'brutal' is a-plus marketing; it's worked wonders for Dethklok. And GWAR.

#15 - Stars are obviously saving themselves up for the spring, when games actually matter.

#16 - Long and frequent stays in the penalty box make for fresher, less injured players.

#17 - Stars fans who did not get the chance to draft Turco with their #1 pick can now laugh and be jolly.

#18 - Despite the Infinite Suckage, the Stars are just three points out of the final playoff spot with 70 games to go.

#19 - 83% of the Stars' losses have occurred on the road, where nobody does well. Except for, like, teams with winning records.

#20 - Give and ye shall receive: as the Stars unselfishly provide gifts to opposing forwards, so to will they be rewarded in the AfterSeason.

I walked away from my meeting with Captain Yes Positive with a little spring in my step, a glide in my stride and a dip in my yip, and canceled my plans to escape on the muthaship. You'll have to wake up pretty early in the morning to get one over on El Capitan! Confident that the everything is going exactly according to plan (what's that? No, I don't like Kool-Aid. Why do you ask?), I'm already revising my preseason prediction of 110 or so points for the Stars, and upping that to a record-shattering 74-6-2 that will silence critics from Haltom City all the way to Coppell. You heard it here first: tune in next week when I rail against moronic sportswriters who make drool-covered predictions with no basis in reality.