Posts from the Stars Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Is it too hot for hockey? You may be right, but until the cold weather returns, welcome to The Bag Skate, FanHouse's afternoon roundup of everything that's happening on a typical offseason weekday.

Today's primal scream comes from the guys at Melt Your Face Off, who have penned an open letter to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in wake of the news that a small knot of his own owners engineered a loan to help a penniless businessman -- William "Boots" DelBaggio -- boost a piece of the Nashville Predators.

Did I forget to mention that they did it behind Bettman's back?

HOW DO YOU LET THAT HAPPEN? You are the commissioner for a top-flight sports league in the most industrialized nation in the world. You are supposedly the most powerful man in your sport. Now, you claim that while owners are lending each other money to keep the franchises in their own little AllTel Circle of Friends, you thought everything was hunky dory?

"Most powerful man in your sport?" Come now, everybody knows that Brian Burke is the most powerful man in the NHL. Just ask him.

That being said, the very moment when Bettman discovered this little bit of chicanery has to be marked as the low point in his tenure at the top of the league. It's one thing for everyone fan in the world to use you as a human punching bag, but it's another thing entirely when the very men who hired you to do the job don't trust you enough to let you know what they're doing.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Tom Petty said it best and it's certainly true. With the NHL keeping us collectively holding our breath in anticipation of the Stanley Cup Finals, they can't get here any sooner. The past few days have been a barren wasteland of hockey nothingness, more reminiscent of late-August than late-May. And heck, there have been some stories, but they're nothing when compared to the elephant in the room -- the Finals. Modano is coming back? So what. I want to see Datsyuk/Zetterberg vs. Crosby/Malkin. The NHL is putting out killer commercials? Whatever. I want to see Lord Stanley's silver chalice.

But here we are. It's Friday and we're only a day away. Almost ... Almost ... I feel like I'm getting my freaking teeth pulled here. Thanks a lot, Gary. Nice scheduling.

Oh, hey! Look ... News updates after the jump!

With Jeremy Roenick recently signing on for another season, another American hockey legend, Mike Modano, also decided to stick around for at least one more season.

Despite the fact that Modano has two years left on a five-year deal, it wouldn't have surprised many if the 38-year old heartthrob decided to call it career after 1300 NHL games. It seems that the Stars' semi-successful playoff run helped shape Modano's decision.

"I've thought about it some, but Brett [Hull] wouldn't let me retire," Modano said.

"To be completely honest, I'm sure there will be some tough times," he said. "It's not as easy as it used to be, but the playoffs were so much fun, and I just think there's more that we can accomplish. I just have a really good feeling about that."

Modano spent time as a wing alongside Brad Richards as well as seeing action as a checking line center during the playoffs, so it remains to be seen what his role in 2008-09 will be. Will he be asked to play primarily on the third line, ala Roenick, or will Mikey be expected to carry a heavy offensive load once again?

Despite Modano's advanced age, the guy can skill skate and the guy can still play. Averaging over 19 minutes per game this season, Modano finished with a respectable 57 points and played in every game. Certainly, Modano can provide value for the $2.5mil he'll be paid next season.

Like him or not, Modano is one of the best Americans to ever play the game, and it's good to see one of the NHL's bigger names stay around for another go-around, especially if we get to see more of his hot wife.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

The Stanley Cup Finals matchup is now set. The Detroit Red Wings will face off against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first all-American Final since 2003.

Detroit advanced to the fourth round after an emphatic 4-1 win over the Dallas Stars in last night's Western Conference Finals Game 6. The win cut short a Dallas comeback attempt that led to wins in Games 4 and 5 after Detroit pushed the Stars to the brink of elimination through Game 3. The game was covered live by FanHouse's Bruce Ciskie, Eric McErlain and James Mirtle.

The Wings jumped out to an early lead, with their first goal going in off Kris Draper's chin at 3:45 of the first. Pavel Datsyuk added a power play goal just under eight minutes later and Dallas Drake extended the lead at 16:17. Henrik Zetterberg finished off Detroit's scoring for the night with a shorthanded breakaway goal at 3:11 of the second period. Dallas broke Chris Osgood's shutout with a Stephane Robidas tally at 2:27 of the third period.

Are we about to witness history?

It's been 33 years since a team won a series in the NHL Playoffs after dropping the first three games. Dallas not only lost the first three games, but never led in any of them.

Now, the Stars have a chance to force a Game Seven. To do so, they need a home win tonight against the suddenly sinking (maybe?) Red Wings.

We'll be here to cover it live, via Cover It Live. Join us after the jump for our liveblog, beginning at around 7:45pm Eastern.

Bruce MacLeod, the hockey beat writer for the Macomb Daily, reports that the Detroit Red Wings will formally shuffle their second, third, and fourth lines for tonight's Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals. The top line, composed of Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, and Tomas Holmstrom, will remain unchanged.

The main move is the promotion of Jiri Hudler from the fourth line to the second, where he spent much of Game 5. He'll skate on Valtteri Filppula's wing with Dan Cleary.

With 13 points, the diminutive Czech is Detroit's fourth-leading playoff scorer despite averaging just 10:58 in ice time troughout the postseason. He scored the only Detroit goal in Game 5.

Hudler has long produced consistently at a rate out of proportion to his ice time, but has had trouble gaining a second line spot on a deep Detroit squad. He has a bit of a reputation of having a poor work ethic and is considered to be among the weakest Detroit forwards in his own end. The first charge is largely unfounded, as Hudler generally shows a lot of hustle. There's something to the second charge, but he has made enormous strides since hitting the NHL. Apparently, not enough, as his continued relegation to fourth line purgatory indicates.

As a consolation, head coach Mike Babcock lets him out of the doghouse long enough to quarterback the second power play unit. He has matched Zetterberg's power play production this post-season.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Well that was rather emphatic.

For the second series in a row, the young and incredibly talented Pittsburgh Penguins had failed to sweep an opponent out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And now, for the second series in a row, those same young Penguins refused to let their opponent up off the mat, and put an exclamation point on a five-game series victory. Now all that's left to do is win the Cup. Easier said than done, I know.

For somebody who was alive and ambulatory in the mid-1980s when the Edmonton Oilers rose out of the Canadian prairie to slay the New York Islanders and take their place on top of the National Hockey League for the better part of a decade, this is all starting to look a little familiar -- something that was reinforced for me last night when ESPN's John Buccigross narrated a video roll of teams with young superstars early in their careers that manage to play for a title.

Though I'm not sure Buccigross meant for it, I couldn't help but come away with what's become a common complaint from Baby Boomers about Generation Y, or whatever marketers are calling the 18-25 year old set these days -- that success has come all too easy to a certain generation, and that somehow there's something wrong with all of it.

To borrow a line from more hockey bloggers than I care to remember, I'll just write this: Meh.

While Dallas may have shown some life in Game Four at home, the Stars are going to have to find a way to win a pair of games on the road in Detroit in order to turn this thing around. The task begins today at Joe Louis Arena, where Dallas goalie Marty Turco has been a tad less than successful.

We'll be going live around 1:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, and I'll be joined by FanHouse colleagues Kevin Schultz and brand new contributor Matt Saler on the commentary. Please stop by then.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

There may be a lot of you who are surprised there is hockey this weekend.

I'll freely admit to being one of them. I'm even more surprised that there are two games this weekend.

Both the Dallas Stars and Philadelphia Flyers were left for dead after falling behind 3-0 in their respective series. Even though they were playing on home ice, they were heavy underdogs in Game Four.

They both got the job done. Their prize? They're being left for dead entering road games this weekend.

While I think it would be outright lunacy to predict one of these series will be extended, you can't rule it out. After all, most of you ruled out these series even going five games, and here we are.

Dallas tries first, as they face Detroit Saturday in "Hockeytown". We'll be live-blogging the game here at FanHouse, so join us for the action starting at 1pm Eastern.

Can this added confidence carry the Stars to a Game Five upset?

(Still to come: The conference finals indeed continue, NBC prays for a regulation end to Saturday's game, and a YouTube to remember from the incomparable Tie Domi)

The Associated Press reports that Detroit Red Wings forward Johan Franzen will miss his fourth consecutive game as the Wings take on the Dallas Stars in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals Saturday afternoon.

Franzen's time on the sidelines began after the forward complained of headaches following Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals. Evidently, he began experiencing persistent pain early in the Semifinal series between Detroit and Colorado, but kept that to himself until Friday morning. No single incident has been pinpointed as the cause of the headaches.

The team labeled his condition "concussion-like symptoms and he was kept from physical activity until being cleared for off-ice exercises yesterday. Detroit General Manager Ken Holland told the Macomb Daily's Bruce MacLeod that Franzen will not hit the ice until tomorrow at the earliest.