Hoo boy! Its gonna be a scorcher down in Texas tonight. The Stars have done a lil self chemo and rid themselves of the cancer in their locker room. With Avery gone and team mates bonding again, the Twinkles will be looking to get back to their classic winning ways. Injury riddled lineup makes them totally unpredictable. Wounded opponents are always more dangerous and the Stars will be no different.
We’re on a tear. Bryz is coming back to solid. Adding Lindy seems to have infused us with a lil more hop in our step. The Joker is healed and on the hunt for his playoff berth (and apparently has no problem dragging the team kicking and screaming into contention). Enver Lisin is DTD (we lose a bit of the wallop thru the neutral…hopefully Boeds will pick that up for us) but we called Porter back up to give us some other options.
Since the shaming in Chicago we seem to be pulling together. 3 wildly successful games in a row (a point out of the Wing game counts as successful people), indicates a turning point for the boys. We don’t want to just cling to an 8th place tie, we need to build off this and grab some points tonight and make the next 8 games our coming out statement to close out December. Every month we’ve gotten a little better, become a little more gelled, a little more confident and certainly increased our winning ways.
DAL sits in our usual spot in the cellar right now. At 5-5-0 in their last 10 and 26 points, we need to hit them hard before they are able to regroup. A flustered Marty Turco is our best friend (he really hates sittin in the crease waiting for something to happen, we need to play off his impatience again…make him move Dawgs). Their PK/PP AND GA are all amongst the lowest they’ve ever been (28th). Their IR list reads like a full team roster but they still have the newbie Brunnstrum, our arch nemesis Riberio and Modano/Richardson can also bite ya even when you expect it. Even though newly acquired Brian Sutherby is listed DTD (remember that scrapper from ANA?) he can’t be overlooked.
Our numbers look pretty good, 6-3-1 on the last 10 games. Our GF/GA and PK% are firmly middle of the pack but our PP could still use a whooole lot of work… as could our lamentable face off inability (again I beseech TPTB…No Panic Yanic for specialty team coach, we’ll never become a puck possession team if we can’t gain friggin possession in the circles). Lindstrom and Jokinen have been hot, Mueller has found his legs, Boeds is due a clutch and Doaner always gets up to face Turco.
This is TOTALLY WINNABLE! We can do this!
