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Posted on Mon, Apr. 21, 2008

RINKSIDE JOURNAL

Robidas edges most players in toughness ...... by a nose

By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

DALLAS -- Stars defenseman Stephane Robidas walked into his neighborhood coffee shop Sunday morning and, frankly, frightened his barista.

"The guy said, 'You look like you play hockey,'" Robidas said.

And if Mr. Latte Maker thought Robidas looked bad Sunday, which he kind of did, he is lucky he did not see him during Game 5 on Friday with a huge cotton chunk shoved up his nostril, crusty blood in his beard and splotches of dried blood on his jersey. He had the feel of a Josh Brolin in No Country For Old Men when he was crossing into Mexico.

By late Sunday, after scoring the game-tying goal and assisting on Stu Barnes' game-winner in Game 6, he had Anaheim feeling a lot like Brolin looked.

And if you have not seen No Country, well, just imagine a lot of blood and even more pain. Robi's came thanks to Todd Marchant's slapshot clearing attempt that jumped up and smacked him in the nose.

It broke on impact, opening a flood gate of blood that simultaneously poured out of his nose and down his throat. He was gurgling the stuff when he reached the locker room where docs stitched his nose while the equipment guys tried to get the blood off his jersey.

The pain had to be severe. It was his fourth nose break.

"Four or five," Robi clarified.

Yet the only thing Robi was screaming about was "get me back on the ice. I need to get out there."

For anybody counting, he missed two shifts.

He was back on the ice, doing what he has done all season, which is mind the gap left by injuries to Sergei Zubov and Philippe Boucher. And while many will argue Mike Ribeiro, this team's MVP has been the guy willing to play with cotton shoved up his nose.

"He'll go through a wall to help the team win, take pucks to the face, stuff cotton up his nose," Stars coach Dave Tippett said.

"He's the epitome of what's great about our game. We all recognize it in our room. But to hear the Anaheim players say that to him [in the postgame line], this guy is part of our game."

And if Tip's testimonial is not enough to convince non-hockey watchers that Robi belongs in a category with Dirk and his ankle, just look at his special athlete membership card: His nose.

The only way to describe it to someone who has never seen it -- his nose valleys where everybody else's peaks. And we're talking a deep valley. It kind of looks one of those skateboard ramps.

He was thinking about going the whole nose job route this off-season, when Marchant reminded him that pucks happen. Especially to him.

"When I retire, I'll probably go sand it and redo the whole thing," Robi said. "But it is who I am. I have looked like that since I first broke it when I was 17."

Nor are his problems simply aesthetics. His nose is not exactly good for breathing or blowing or really anything of the b's except bleeding.

And helping beat Anaheim.

Keith Hernandez style

The Stars' locker room at the AAC has a kiddie corner, with Loui Eriksson, Matt Niskanen and Mark Fistric all crammed into a corner.

With Toby Petersen.

He is, shhhhh, 29. And while this hardly qualifies as ancient, Fistric had him paranoid when he remarked that he saw white in his playoff beard.

"I'm going to need Just For Men. That is what you use, right, Ralph?" Petersen said, looking right at Stars play-by-play man Ralph Strangis.

"Why are you asking me?" Strangis said with mock indignation.

It was then noted that Niskanen, Eriksson and Fistric are not old enough -- combined -- to need the stuff, much less know the product that Keith Hernandez made famous.