Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Happy Hockey with Paco Muy Gusto

by Todd Maternowski

Hola, hockey hombres! Here's hoping the regulation-puck-sized hail that smacked DFW didn't smash your green-and-black Stars-themed windshields. Last week, we dug deep into the open, gaping puss-filled gangrenous wounds of the Stars' many injured warriors; this week, I was planning on writing my one-man heavily introspective play My Dinner With Fabian, when I casually glanced at the standings and realized, "Holy hell, what the hell are all these little numbers and stuff?"

After having the mysterious hieroglyphs explained to me patiently, the Monolith of Suck slowly dawned on my ape-like consciousness: the Dallas Stars are going to miss the postseason this year. Much like I predicted in a previous column, history is once again repeating itself, and the wraiths of the abysmal 2001-02 season are starting to haunt the Stars once again.

While you can point bony fingers at a number of reasons why this team will be the melancholic laughingstock of the NHL (until the Sharks' epic collapse in the playoffs, which will make everyone forget about the Stars until training camp), my court-appointed anger management guru Paco Muy Gusto has told me not to focus negative energy on the errors of the past, instead focusing my positive ki on happy-happy-joy-joy thoughts for the future. So with forced smile, clinched sphincter and repressed fury, I've compiled a list of Five Truly Amazing Things About This Very Special Season.

#1: Marty Turco is clearly the Goalie of the Future for the Detroit Red Wings. While it'd be tough for any goaltender to have a mediocre season behind this defense (if I see Robidas launch another slow-developing powerplay slapshot directly into an opposing forward's shins and have it bounce into the neutral zone for yet another short-handed breakaway... I'm going to start re-considering my stance on torture), our 34 year-old netminder is clearly showing his age and declining athletic ability. Turco's M.O. since his rookie season has been "let in the first shot of the game, then shut it down for 58 minutes". Now? "Two softies per game, tops... well, three softies per game, then. I mean, four softies. But no more than fou--ahh, crap".

With minor league phenom Richard Bachman and perhaps a Josh Harding signing --not to mention a clause in Turco's contract which waives his NTC if the Stars fail to make the playoffs-- it's time to trade Turco and his massive salary to a team that collects Old Guys like I collect My Little Ponies. It's not mere coincidence that Twilight is required viewing for the Wings before every game. He could finally play for his hometown heroes, the ones he steadfastly refused to beat for the first 95% of his professional career. And it never would have been possible if Marty had not failed to make about three hundred key saves this season.

#2: Mike Modano's still got a few good years left in him before the Lifestyle channel cancels his reality-show career. Mike and Willa were practically made for reality TV: he's tall, she's an Oscar-nominated Actress, and they're already sortof famous. It's like Flava Flav and Hoopz all over again! Just without the on-screen charisma!

More to the point, Mike's going to need to do something with his life other than uncomfortably-awkward car commercials, because this season he's shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's got about as much desire to play hockey as I do to sit through Twilight again. If you're looking for the NHL's equivalent of vegetarian vampires who glisten like diamonds and once a year play sports for no apparent reason, look no further than Mike "I've been 17 for a while" Modano.

#3: The Stars' salary cap problems are over if they can ice a team like they did this week in Phoenix. For that ragtag bunch of misfits, madmen and ne'er-do-wells, the salary cap hit was a whopping $30 million. Replace Stephane with Turco, and you get $35 million. Not too shabby for a team that came back from a three-goal deficit against one of December's hottest teams to steal a point in overtime before inevitably losing. That's what I call 'competitive'.

More to the point, when they played that game they were missing $24.2 million in salary, not including Turco. And as we all learned from watching epic movies like Twilight, a great movie is possible even with a no-name cast of actors/man-candy who couldn't convincingly eat a bowl of Cheerios. And that's just injured players, guys with festering wounds crawling with maggots, begging for someone to stick a sword in their sides and finish them off, much like myself in the dollar movies the other night.

Well, that's it for this week's positive, uplifting slice of the joy train. Tune in next week when I break down the Stanley Cup playoffs, and go into painful detail on why, once again, no team will win the Stanley Cup this year.