Rarely in this National Hockey League season (or any other, for that matter) have we seen a franchise have such an epic, controversial and in-the-public-eye week like the Dallas Stars are going through at the moment.
The hockey media world seems to be completely transfixed on the Lindy Ruff’s Stars and their home, American Airlines Centre. And with good reason! As far as emptions go, Dallas has run the gamut this week. Let’s take a look at a whirlwind five days, in which we’ve seen a little of everything: the good, the bad and the downright ugly.
Good – Thursday Night
The beleaguered Vancouver Canucks were in town, and even if you’re just a casual hockey fan, you were bound to have heard of how the goalie soap opera in Vancouver came to a shuddering and somewhat unexpected halt on the day of the NHL Trade Deadline.
That was when the Canucks managed to trade away their goalie, Roberto Luongo. This is Luongo, the two-time Olympic gold medallist who, in the last two years, had been the Canucks starter, then the backup and a starter again this season, and has endured more than one goalie really should with grace, style and aplomb.
So Luongo is off, and the Canucks are an unhappy organisation. Star centre Ryan Kesler apparently wanted a trade, but it didn’t happen, and there’s anger that coach John Tortorella started his backup rather than Luongo at the Heritage Classic outdoor game on the weekend, and speculation that that move might’ve been Luongo’s absolute last straw/snub.
What do the Stars do? Ease the Canucks’ pain? Absolutely not. They went onto the ice at American Airlines Centre and completely dismantled the under-siege Canucks, to the tune of 6-1. The way things were going in the first period and into the second, Dallas could’ve scored sixteen times. It was chance after chance after chance, a rare onslaught that saw the Stars up 5-0 before the Canucks seemed to awaken.
Chief destroyer was Tyler Seguin, the kid who was traded over from Boston and appears to be flourishing in his new surroundings. At least, on Thursday night he was. Three goals and two assists made it a 5-point night for the flashy forward, notching his third hat trick of the season, tying a Dallas Stars/Minnesota North Stars record held jointly by franchise/NHL legends Mike Modano (whose jersey was retired on Saturday night) and Bill Guerin.
Seguin leads all Dallas scorers with 29 on the season, and was in fabulous touch on Thursday night. He was a genuine threat to score on every shift in one of those great take-over-the-game, highlight-reel laden individual performances which writers and bloggers like to talk dissect. Seguin gave us all plenty to discuss after two first-period goals and his third at 12:53 of the final period, leading to all sorts of speculation that the Canucks had quit on their team and their coach.
Bad - Saturday Night
Going into Saturday night, there was a lot to like about the Stars in a tightly-contested Western Conference. They were on the cusp of a playoff berth, had spanked Vancouver two nights before, with Seguin lighting it up, and in came the Minnesota Wild, a team with a comparable record, which, of course, gave Dallas a good chance to make a solitary win into the beginnings of a winning streak.
Then, in one incendiary moment, Minnesota rookie Eric Haula perhaps changed the complexion of the Stars’ season.
Surely, as Haula was sweeping up ice, out of his defensive zone and went in on Stars goalie Kari Lehtonen with the puck on his stick, his brain melted down? At the very least, all common-sense had retreated so far to the back of his mind that he just couldn’t snatch at it when he needed to, the former University of Minnesota stand-out barrelled hard into the Lehtonen, a head-to-head collision, knocking the goalie backwards, his helmet popping off, the man himself barrelling backwards, his head hitting the iron crossbar.
Vision suggests that Haula appeared to lose an edge on his skate at the last moment, dogged, as he was, by two Stars defencemen, but that does little to save Haula’s skin in this circumstance, because the vision – damning, as it is – also shows that he did little, if anything at all, to avoid hitting Lehtonen. And hit Lehtonen, Haula did. Viciously. Illegally.
Predictably, and rightfully, Haula’s stupid actions drew a crowd of angry Dallas players, and he was given a five-minute major as well as a game misconduct. If Haula hasn’t been handed supplementary suspension from the League’s Player Safety team by the time you’re reading this article, I’ll be very surprised. It deserves three or four games on the sideline, and a sizeable fine, if only for the purposes of deterrence.
The upshot of one of the uglier moments we’ve seen during the 2013-14 season is that Lehtonen is out indefinitely, with concussion symptoms. We all know that concussions are an uncertain type of injury. There is no set timeframe for a return, like there is for a broken arm or a hamstring tear, and so, when the Stars most need their starting goalie – who had impressed this year, so far – they are without him, and no one knows for quite how long.
Ugly - Monday Night
As bad as things were for the Stars, they only got worse on Monday night.
Perhaps the scariest thing I’ve ever seen happen in a hockey game – and this one didn’t even occur on the ice.
Reeling from Kari Lehtonen’s concussion, it was former Stanley Cup champion Tim Thomas (he of the miraculous 2011 Stanley Cup Final that earned him the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP) making his first start as a Star, having been traded out of Florida to make room for Roberto Luongo, in the middle of the pipes, and if that sight was the worst Stars fans expected to see from their game against Columbus, they were in for a rude shock.
The Blue Jackets scored an early goal, but it was events occurring on the bench that soon led to the game taking a frightening turn for the worst. Forward Rich Peverley, acquired by the Stars as part of the trade that also delivered Thursday night’s 5-point hero Tyler Seguin to the team, suffered a frightening cardiac incident as he watched his team mates take shifts on the ice. One minute he was okay, and the next something was very wrong.
Play continued momentarily, before Stars players streamed over the boards to get the officials to stop the game, which they did, and everyone was stunned to watch trainers carrying Peverley, sans stretcher, out into the tunnel, and players returned to the locker room. The game would later be postponed, but hockey, on this night, was of small consequence. Peverley had missed some games earlier in the year due to an operation to correct an irregular heartbeat.
True to the form of a hockey player, Peverley, conscious when he was transferred from the American Airlines Centre to a nearby hospital, was most concerned with the score of the game, and when he could get back into the action.
In the face of a terrible situation that most people – and, indeed, most sporting organisations – would be prepared for, it was refreshing to see the entire hockey community come together in their support for Peverley and for the Stars franchise as a whole. I’ve often said that hockey people are the best sort, and the league-wide reaction to the Peverley injury confirms this. Get well soon, Rich. We all want to see you come back and play hockey!
Hopefully, for the Dallas Stars, the coming weeks and days with be filled with less drama than the last five days have been.
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