by Todd Maternowski

Get the adult diapers -- you're going to need 'em.

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we used Science to break down the Dallas Stars' first nine games into easily-understandable/mockable categories; this week, I was all set to lambast the Stars for becoming the first allegedly-NHL-quality team to lose to the Toronto Maple Leafs -- the insane pressure of maintaining the NHL's winning record against Toronto was building and building to the point where no one wanted to be the first team to suffer the throes of ignominy.

Fortunately for the Stars, Toronto played Anaheim. The sense of relief when Anaheim was clobbered -- thereby making Wednesday's Stars-Leafs tilt just another regular season game with no Stone of Shame attached -- was akin to the relief of taking a massive dump. Except instead of me, it was the Anaheim Ducks, and instead of a massive dump, it was a colossally legendary mountain of steaming feces with runny rivulets of diarrhea spreading in all directions across the ice like a dark brown sun. Great job, Anaheim. Awesome.

More on that later. This week we're delving into the deeply-disturbing dark depths of Halloween Hockey Horror Flicks. Here's the AFI's Top ten list, compiled by thousands of film critics over hundreds of years.

10. Rinku -- One late night, Chris Pronger pops in an unlabeled game tape into the Flyers' state-of-the-art VCR, and, after witnessing a series of discordant, seemingly unrelated images, he is informed he has only seven games to live. Can Chris collect enough elbowing and boarding suspensions to avoid playing out his inevitable fate?

9. The Shiny -- Wayne Gretzky is a troubled man just looking for some peace and quiet, and feels he's finally found the answer when he moves from the intense media scrutiny of Canada to the desolate desert moonscape of suburban Phoenix. While at first Wayne is happy with his surroundings, the cavernous emptiness of Jobing.com Arena and the disturbing appearances and disappearances of a ghostly Kyle Turris slowly drives Gretzky into a murderous rage. All work and no goals makes Wayne a dull boy.

8. Night of the Living Thugs -- Maple Leaf GM Brian Burke wakes up one day to find out that his office is completely surrounded by slow-moving, brainless flesh eaters in Maple Leaf jerseys. Armed with a sawed-off shotgun and a salary cap, Burke must defend his boarded-up corner office from an entire roster of mindless thugs, until the next clueless, desperate NHL club can swoop in and save him from a grisly demise.

7. An Omen -- Brett Hull, a powerful man of international importance, proudly brings his free agent offspring back home to the AAC. But things start going awry when the off-season pickup, Sean Avery, turns out to be the spawn of Satan and a donkey. Does Hull have the cajones necessary to destroy Avery, or will his fatherly love lead directly to the Dallas Stars' apocalypse?

6. Seen -- Three Tampa Bay Lightning forwards are trapped in a game against the Penguins, and forced to make a terrible decision: Do they potentially sacrifice their individual stats and go help their overmatched defensemen in the defensive zone, or do they continue to hang out around center ice, waiting for a clearing pass that may never come? WARNING: The graphic imagery and grisly, real-time footage of Tampa's defense and goaltending are not for the squeamish or faint-of-heart.

5. Purple Dragon -- Grizzled cop Colin Campbell is a man on a mission: He must find the perpetrator of a string of vicious hip-checks that are making the city streets of Los Angeles run red with blood. The serial hip-checker taunts Campbell, leaving a string of clues -- such as making sure his nationally-televised crimes are widely available on youtube and nhl.com -- but it's a race against the clock for Campbell, who must find the culprit before his own son Gregory visits LA to play the Kings.

4. Chokergeist -- When Joe Thornton needs a fresh start, he heads out west to the sunny confines of San Jose. But after a series of strange, inexplicable occurances, Joe starts to investigate a little more into his new team -- and finds out that the Shark Tank was built on an ancient Indian burial ground. Thornton must find and restore the angry undead Indian bones before the Sharks' next first round playoff exit, or the streets of San Jose will run with liquid teal.

3. The Flexorcist -- While digging around in a forgotten backroom at Vogue's offices, promising young intern Sean Avery accidentally releases an ancient cacodemon when he unwittingly pops the collar on a 70s-era muscle shirt. The evil spirit possesses the body of Rangers GM Glen Sather, who begins making diabolical free agent signings while screaming obscenities like "Scott Gomez sucks c**ks in hell!!!" Can the grizzled Mark Messier and his young protege Chris Drury exorcise Sather's demon before it's too late?

2. Finals Destination -- Right before he signs with his next team, Marian Hossa has a vision of that team winning the Stanley Cup -- and wisely signs with the Penguins. When he has a vision that they, too, will win the Cup, Hossa again temporarily defeats Fate by signing with the Red Wings. Can Marian successfully avoid his fate a third time, or will Fate finally catch up to him and give him the Stanley Cup against his will?

1. Texas Groinsaw Massacre -- Martin Havlat and Marian Gaborik are on a summer road trip from Minnesota to New York when they get lost in the back country roads of rural Texas. After they pick up a mysterious hitchhiker, they suddenly find themselves ambushed by a family of cannibals. Havlat and Gaborik are then subjected to two hours of torture, in which their groins are ritualistically sliced, shocked with electrical current, skinned with a chainsaw, beaten with a sledgehammer, and ground into fine dust with a steampress.

That's it for this week's spine-curdling Cupcheck. Tune in next week when we visit with Mike Modano to find out what he's been doing with his time off; his beating-up-nurses stories may surprise you.

What do you think?