Duck Season - OVER!

Time to take a break from regular blogsnark and get a little sappy.

The emotion and revelry in the American Airlines Center after the Stars 4-1 series clinching victory were a long time coming for Dallas fans. Finally a Dallas team was able to break through and win something after several years of playoff gag jobs. As BMFS said as we were walking in to the AAC before the game, “Let’s hope that these guys can rescue us from becoming playoff chokerville.” The Stars had been dispatched in the first round the past three tries, the Cowboys (who I enjoy seeing lose) had folded the past couple years, and the Mavericks have fantastically re-written the book on playoff flameouts – and their hall of fame-worthy bed-shitting against the Hornets the day before had only served to plant more doubt in the minds of Dallas sports fans.

Of all of the things that I’ll remember about last night’s game was the image of Mike Modano emerging from a gaggle of bodies with the puck with about 8 seconds left and skating towards an empty net all alone. It was almost poetic that it was the long-time face of the or-gan-I-zation that would be the guy to drive the final stake in to the Ducks and set off the explosions and streamers from the rafters of to push the volume of the arena to Slayer levels .

It’s been more than 20 years since I got to witness a handshake with my team on the good side in person. Today my voice is toooast, I’m hungover and fuckin’ happy as hell.

Other notes on the game:

-Both goalies got assists last night. I dare you to find the last time that’s happened.

-The Ducks went almost 24 minutes between shots on goal in a stretch spanning the 2nd and 3rd periods.

-This was the first game in the series that the lead changed hands.

-I can’t believe it took until the third home playoff game for the AAC production staff to play the Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck “Duck Season” clip.

-And speaking of game production, they sometimes play the Al Czervick car horn when the Stars score – which is genius – but how did they not work in the “Did somebody step on a duck?” line from Caddyshack? (BMFS has been all over this since the series started)

-How is it that the Nazi guy with the remote control changed all 500 of the big TVs on the platinum level to the Stars warmup before the game, turning off the last 2 minutes of the Pistons-Sixers and the Flames-Sharks games in the process, but DURING the Stars game, they leave on a spare-ass Phillies-Mets game on all of the smaller TVs in the concourse?

-How's this for a little insult to injury?

-This guy is a Brian Sutherby lover who also calls Marty Turco a cheater. He's, like, totally an assjack.