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Who are these guys? Stars haggard and worn, but still the defending champs
Posted: Wednesday April 12, 2000 03:07 AM
By Terry Jones, Edmonton Sun DALLAS -- Winning a Stanley Cup is just about the toughest thing to do in all of sports. It's an endurance test virtually beyond compare. Some teams, when they win one, discover the secrets and know how to win two, three, four, even five. Other teams find out how hard it is and, having won a Stanley Cup ring, can't force themselves through it again just to get another of something they already have. What kind of team are the Dallas Stars? That question alone makes this matchup different than any other Dallas-Edmonton playoff series. "We're the defending Stanley Cup champions,'' says coach Ken Hitchcock. "When you're the defending Stanley Cup champions, you're judged and gauged on how you do in the playoffs.'' It's different when you're the defending champions. The season is different. You've played through the middle of June. In no time at all you're back at it and now you've become a trophy yourselves. "For the first 10 or 15 games it was unbelievable,'' said the coach. "We were playing Nashville one night and on the first shift they blocked four shots. Forwards were blocking shots. It was incredible. Our players came to the bench rolling their eyes. But I didn't find that after about 25 games.'' APPEARANCES DECEIVING After 25 games the Stars didn't look much like defending Stanley Cup champs. "I think a lot of our guys had that 'I'm never going to get to the end of the road, the road is too long,' look to them. But adversity forced us through necessity to play at a high level. "We went through a real stretch because of the removal of key players that it had taken away from the togetherness of the team. There were so many real friendships. They'd won the Stanley Cup together. All of a sudden guys like Pat Verbeek, Craig Ludwig, Dave Reid and Roman Turek weren't part of the team. "It's a close group. We broke up that group. And I think a lot of guys looked at the new guys and thought, 'You better be good because you're replacing good players and good friends.' Then they saw how good our young guys were and were going to become. And it started to come. They started to enjoy the newness of the team.'' The Stars ended up second in the West with 102 points in the standings and all was well. But now it's the playoffs. And there are questions about the Dallas Stars. "Nobody has seen our team yet,'' says Hitchcock. "Including us.'' INTERESTING STATEMENT. "We have the knowledge of what it takes,'' said Hitchcock. "Now we find out if we have the game to go with the knowledge.'' The nucleus is the same. But with Sergei Zubov out until Game 3 in Edmonton, Hitchcock will have nine players in the lineup for tomorrow's Game 1 who didn't play for Dallas in the Edmonton series last year. OK. They're not all kids. Sylvain Cote. Scott Thornton. Dave Manson. Kirk Muller. "Still, that's a lot of changes for us,'' said Hitch. "And we have a lot of guys who didn't play a lot against Edmonton this year. Joe Nieuwendyk played one game. Jere Lehtinen and Darien Hatcher played two.'' That said, Hitchcock says coaching a series involving Edmonton isn't what it is against any other opponent. "Our players are familiar with Edmonton. We don't have to do much with films and go into a lot about their system and what they do in this situation and that situation. We didn't have to go through much of that last year, either. "There's not much technical and tactical detail we have to go over. We've played each other so many times in the playoffs now, the players have as good a feel as the coaches. They know it's all about the competitive level and the emotional level. None of it works against Edmonton without the competitive level and the emotional level. "When you play against Edmonton in the playoffs, it's such a quick game, there are no lulls.'' Hitchcock has a way of making these modern-day Oilers sound as good as the team that won five Stanley Cups in seven years when he was sneaking in the back door of Northlands Coliseum to watch them. An outsider armed with the stats that show last year's four-game sweep, three wins and a tie this year, 12 games without a loss against Edmonton, including playoffs in the last two years, and 15 if you count the last three games of the playoffs the year before ... Dallas owns Edmonton and has since the Oilers' first-round upset over the Stars three years ago. Except it's been one thing to read the scores and another to watch the games. "Last year's series was as gut-wrenching a series as I've ever been involved in as a coach,'' said the former skate-sharpener at Alberta Cycle. "After that series, we told ourselves over and over that if we could handle the Edmonton series we could handle anything. We referred back to that series all the way through until we won the Stanley Cup. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY'RE IN FOR "Anybody who didn't watch that series probably doesn't get it. All I know is we didn't skate for 2 1/2 days after that series. There isn't one person who played in that series who doesn't know exactly - exactly - what we are in for again. "We showed up at the rink here this morning and just about everybody showed up for an optional. And all of our players are talking about how hard it's going to be and what a challenge it's going to be.'' Hitchcock sends you away from the rink almost completely convinced the Edmonton Oilers have a chance here. They don't. Dallas in five. Click here for more hockey coverage at
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