Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Hockey Revisionism: What 2008-09 Season?

by Todd Maternowski

Howdy, hockey hombres: here's hoping the heaving hellhounds of Hoboken haven't heeded your horrible head of hair. Last week we sat down and discussed how amazingly awesome this past season really was with my court-appointed anger management guru, Paco Muy Gusto. This week, I was planning on introducing you unsuspecting readers to the next chapter of my epic fantasy novel Pixie Holocaust: The Glitterdust Apocalypse when I glanced up at the magnetic Dallas Stars schedule on my deep freezer where I keep the corpse of that minotaur I've been saving for future sandwiches -- and realized that there's only two games left in this miserable excuse for a season.

And it got me to thinking: ahhhh...remember when I predicted that the Stars would make a run for the President's Trophy? Remember when I laid out my standings, and was pretty much spot-on except for the Stars, Bruins, Sabres and Canucks? Is there any way to go back in time, click on edit moronic statements and appear less of a mouth-breathing denizen of BrickSkull, Texas?

Answer: yes. Yes there is, and it's remarkably easy. In fact, almost too easy. But that would be the height of professional dishonesty. So I've opted for the other path: Hockey Revisionism. The injury-and-Avery-riddled 2008-09 Stars season?

Never happened.

The Stars lose more man-games to injury of important players in the league?

I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about there, compadre.

Stars fans may have seen Mike Modano and Marty Turco play their last games in a Dallas uniform, and they sucked while doing it?

Really? I had no idea: why, what happened?

So with that (alleged) nastiness out of the way, the Stars can finally fill in the huge blank that was the 2008-09 Mulligan and look forward to a fresh and exciting 2009-10 season full of promise! Take this James Neal kid, for example: a lot of people don't know about him, as he's been languishing in the minors, but the book on him is that he's a highly-skilled, tough kid that does the dirty work in the corners and around the crease, can score goals and is a power forward in the mold of a Brenden Morrow or Shane Doan.

Look for James Neal to really make an impact in 2009-10, his first real taste of the NHL.

See how easy that was? You've probably already started down the road of Hockey Healing. You know what will really help with that? This Loui Eriksson kid. I know, I know, he looks like another Jere Lehtinen clone, but you gotta trust me on this one: he's got some serious offensive upside to go with his defensive responsibility. This is one kid who could take 2009-10 by storm, scoring as many as 36-38 goals by season's end.

The Stars haven't seen that level of scoring since the days of Brett Hull. And Hull, as Stars fans will fondly recall, was a one-dimensional player who sucked in his own zone. Look for this Eriksson phenom to quietly dominate the league's scoring sheets next season, his first as a top-six forward.

A lot of you might already be wondering: waitaminute, what about the core of Dallas' success last season, the four young d-men playing balls-out over their heads all season and into the playoffs? Can they build upon their success they had against San Jose and Anaheim, or will the combination of their poor showing against Detroit and the 'sophomore jinx' ruin a promising 2009-10 season for the younguns?

Here's the kicker: don't worry about any sophomore jinx! That's just a bunch of made-up crap! Fistric, Grossman, Niskanen and Daley should be a-ok in the 2009-10 --in fact, they should be significantly better. You heard it here first. And don't even get me started on the new kid on the d-block, Ivan Vishnevskiy. With a little training from fellow Russian d-phenom Sergei Zubov, Vishnevskiy should quickly be the powerplay quarterback of our Future Amazing Special Teams Unit, replacing once-notable Old Guy and shorthanded-giveaway-in-waiting Mike Modano.

Frankly, there's a lot to look forward to, and very little to look back on. In fact, there is nothing but a big blank space where the Stars' 2008-09 season would have been. Does anybody know what happened to it? Some sort of computer glitch, a records mix-up somewhere? Eh? No one? No?

I'm not going to worry about it, then.

Make no bones of it, there are a few unanswered questions heading into the next real season: can Marty Turco repeat his post-season success of last year, or will the aging goaltender have to be traded to Detroit for anything they got? Have the Stars been nice to the old gypsy woman in the basement of the AAC, or are a slew of season-ending injuries going to slow down the Stars' inevitable March to the Cup? And are there any plucky, pesky Eastern Conference forwards the Stars can look at adding in the off-season to toughen up the team? Carcillo or Downie, perhaps?

That's it for this week's surprisingly therapeutic Cupcheck. Tune in next week when I break down the Stanley Cup playoffs, and ask if we really need to do all this "playoff" nonsense once again, that maybe we could take a break just once in a while? You listening, Bettman? My uncontrollable sobbing may surprise you.

• Staff
• Verified User
• Anonymous