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Jim Reeves: A miracle would be the Stars winning a game

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Jim Reeves

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DALLAS -- Does the NHL have a mercy rule? Can we apply it now, please?

Show a little compassion, guys. Let our gritty little Dallas Stars limp off to the golf course right now, before somebody really gets hurt.

If you listened closely enough at the AAC last night, you could practically hear the ice beginning to melt.

The long, hot Texas summer is rapidly descending upon us, just not fast enough to spare the poor Stars one final indignity.

They still have to show up for Game 4 in less than 48 hours.

Whatever mojo the Stars had hoped to find by returning to home ice never materialized Monday night, and the Detroit Red Wings blistered their favorite whipping boy again in a 5-2 rout to a take a three-games-to-none lead in the Western Conference Finals.

Call off the dogs; this one's over, and everyone south of the Bering Sea and north of The Falklands knows it.

The Stars simply can't beat these guys, and I say that having been an eyewitness to such incredible sports surprises as Kirk Gibson's famous World Series home run and the ball bouncing through Bill Buckner's legs at Shea Stadium.

The Stars winning four straight from these Red Wings? Even Vegas oddsmakers, who have no hearts at all, have to be taking that one off the boards.

There will be no Miracle on Ice in this series. There's no hint of a Buster Douglas here, waiting to come storming out of his corner to floor Mike Tyson.

"These guys aren't Anaheim and San Jose," Stars center Mike Modano said. "Tons of skill. World-class players."

He's right. This is simply a mismatch from a talent standpoint.

Even worse, there's The Curse.

You know what I'm talking about. The Stars see Red Wings jerseys, and their insides turn to jelly. Their eyes cross. Their sticks turn into over-cooked spaghetti.

Marty Turco turns into a sieve. Even his holes grow holes when the Red Wings show up.

There's a reason Turco has won only twice in 20 career games against the Wings. They're good, and they're living in his head.

The one thing the Stars simply couldn't afford in this series was for Turco to be average, and he wasn't even that Monday night. He was spectacular against both Anaheim and San Jose, and that's what he had to be for the Stars to have a chance against the Red Wings.

Instead, Turco has played just as poorly as the team in front of him. It was a given that he would have to steal at least one game for the Stars to have a chance. He hasn't even come close to being larcenous.

"We're 0-3. I don't feel like I've given our guys the best chance to win," Turco said. "I just have to start stopping pucks and turn things around.

"This is going to be the biggest test of character we've had all year. It's going to come down to each guy doing their part. For me, it's making whatever saves necessary, the easy ones, hard ones or the ones I'm not supposed to [make]."

He's right, but to lay all this off on Turco would be grossly unfair.

The Stars have been outplayed across the board, offensively, defensively and in goal.

"They want the puck, and they want it more than us," defenseman Stephane Robidas said.

And why would the Wings want it more?

"That," Robidas admitted, "is a good question."

The Stars wanted to start fast and they did, but it didn't matter. Pavel Datsyuk popped a backhand off the right post when the teams were 4-on-4 midway through the first period, and the Stars were chasing the game again for the rest of the night.

When Nicklas Grossman tied it with a one-timer off a delicious cross-ice backhand pass from Modano, the Wings answered 37 seconds later with another Datsyuk goal, this one after the Stars' defense -- hello, Trevor Daley, anybody home? -- collapsed on Tomas Holmstrom and left Datsyuk alone charging down the slot.

Once again the Stars fought back to tie it when Brad Richards bounced the puck off Brad Stuart's skate and past Chris Osgood.

That's where Turco simply had to hold the line. Let nothing else get past him. But he is simply not playing well enough to clean up the mistakes happening in front of him, and when a poorly timed Stars change let Jiri Hudler stream loose on a breakaway, it was inevitable that he would beat Turco with a simple backhand move.

"You can't give them any chances," Robidas said. "They're going to create enough on their own. You can't give them freebies."

There was no more comeback in the Stars after that, but first Henrik Zetterberg, then Datsyuk, completing his hat trick, pumped bullets into the corpse, just in case.

At one point late in the game, Stars play-by-play man Ralph Strangis noted that the Stars looked "dull, tired."

Retorted color analyst Daryl Reaugh: "Fibromyalgia?"

I fear it's something far worse than that.

They're succumbing, once again, to that most terminal of diseases, the Curse of the Red Wings.

Unfortunately, they have to show up for one more game before it's officially fatal.

revo@star-telegram.com
Jim Reeves, 817-390-7760

 

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