A Win!

Well, I can’t help but be thankful (although, it’s after thanksgiving) for the Stars getting a win tonight against the Avs. It was a very tense game, not to mention the first one that I’ve watched entirely for a while. I was glad to see my man Toby Petersen score a key goal for the Stars, and both Mike Ribeiro and Mike Modano were awesome in the shootout.

Kudos to sniper Marek Svatos. I’m dead serious, if there will ever be any Avalanche players that I like, it’ll be Paul Stastny, who was surprisingly ineffective, and the man who threaded the puck like a needle with 55.something seconds left in the game to scare the heck out of me.

I really, really like the way that Andrew Hutchinson is playing so far. I don’t know if any of you ever saw a blog I wrote two seasons ago about underrated and under-played players, but Hutchinson was one of them, and it looks like he’s fitting in with Dallas better than Sean Avery. I was surprised by his Hutchinson’s reasonable skill on offense, and there were a few key plays on defense that he made.

Modano was great, not only with his shootout-winning goal, but also his stellar play all over the ice. He basically saved one or two goals on his own.

Another little-known player that stood out to me was Chris Conner. I don’t know if anyone here’s ever seen the man skate, but if you haven’t, try and find a complete recording of this game and check out his near break-away in the second period. I am not kidding, he would’ve made every defenseman in the league take a tripping penalty (I believe Ruslan Salei actually did) in order to stop that beast. He also had a few nice defensive plays, including sliding right in front of a slapshot from the point. Great kid.

Fabian Brunnstrom’s very first shootout attempt definitely won’t be something to remember. To me, he’ll probably turn out to be the way Ryan Getzlaf was during his rookie year with shootouts: he won’t score very often because there are no rebounds or passes to tap into the net. That’s how Fabian’s skill works, and it’ll probably take him a little while longer to become as complete of a player as Getzy.

All in all, that was a heck of a game out of the Dallas Stars, and I’m glad that we could get two points out of it.

GO STARS!!!!!!