| |
|
|
 No excuses for the Stars
Posted: Sunday June 13, 1999 02:40 AM
By Kostya Kennedy, Sports Illustrated You walk into the visiting locker room at Marine Midland Arena, shortly after the end of Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, and the first thing you see are the Dallas Stars' hockey sticks aligned neatly against a cinder block wall. Above them, someone has pasted a square white sign, two works written above it in block letters, in the Stars deep green: No excuses! The Stars had to remind themselves of that mandate time after time as Game 3 wore on, when they had every excuse to lose. Their best player, Mike Modano, was competing with an injured left wrist, a damaged and discolored hand; another star Star, Brett Hull, took a wallop from Buffalo defenseman Alexei Zhitnik at center ice midway through the first period and missed the rest of the game. The Sabres, favored it seemed of the referees, got power play after power play after power play. To all of this, the Stars responded by dominating the game, winning 2-1, and staying in control even when everything went against them. In the postgame locker room, Stars' center Guy Carbonneau, looking all of his 39 years. His right knee tightly wrapped, he was behaving with is customary dignity, behaving as the teams' wise elder. He would say many things over many minutes to many reporters, but the first words he spoke were the most telling. "I'm tired," he said. If not for Joe Nieuwendyk scoring twice, you would have had to call Carbonneau the Stars game MVP. He was the essence of Dallas' unyielding defense. He killed penalties, took faceoffs, hurled himself toward the puck at whatever physical cost. The sequence that underscored the game came at the end of the first period when the Stars, already having weathered three power plays, found themselves on the short end of a five-on-three with a 1:14 to play. Carbonneau was the one Star who stayed on the ice for all of those 74 seconds. He won a crucial draw, he cleared the puck, he refused to let the Sabres complete a significant pass. When the period horn sounded, and the score was still 0-0, the Stars had delivered their message. No matter how difficult things got, they were going to keep playing very hard and very well. They were going to win, and they were not going to make any excuses.
| |||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||
