Texans Have Taken To This Game On Ice
A thoroughbred trainer from Southern California was a visitor Sunday afternoon to Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie.
He stood shivering on a suite balcony overlooking the track, caught completely off guard, as were the rest of us, by a late-April cold front. But his real shock was seeing a hockey game from Edmonton, Alberta, being shown between races on the infield Jumbotron.
As a huge cheer went up from the track crowd for Mike Modano’s game-winning goal, the visitor paused, zipped up a borrowed jacket, then asked softly: “Am I in Texas?”
His confusion, of course, is no more legitimate than that of local sports fans who have been charting from Game 1 the playoff series between the Dallas Stars and Edmonton.
This thing has been a wild child - unruly, unpredictable and, like at the end of Game 3, also unbelievable. But because of all those intriguing factors, the NHL has finally arrived in North Texas. The Stars have been here four years, but thanks in part to Curtis Joseph, Kelly Buchberger and most other Oilers, the Stars arrived in the last week, climaxed by a welcome-home party.
If any two teams ever deserved a Game 7 showdown, it’s these. And this Game 7 will be played in a Sun Belt town suddenly swept up in what the Stanley Cup moment is supposed to be all about.
People who wouldn’t know a Zamboni from an armadillo woke up Saturday morning cursing the heavens and some guy named CuJo because of the double-overtime agony of Friday night. But once Modano’s late goal kept the Stars alive on Sunday, ticket office phones went nuts. The 4,000 available seats for tonight were sold before noon Monday.
Why were there 4,000 seats available to begin with? Because, obviously, not enough fans cared enough early on.
It’s funny how things work out sometimes. When playoff seeding was finally official on the last day of the regular season, Dallas had the best draw possible in Edmonton. Meaning the easiest. But from a local standpoint, it was also the most boring. Stars vs. Oilers fell flat as a local attraction. Game 1 here didn’t sell out. It was embarrassingly close to not happening for Game 2.
Even Stars players would later admit they also started off taking the Oilers lightly. They pulled out a win in Game 1 despite being outplayed.
“Then I think Bob (Gainey, general manager) described our team best in Game 2,” noted Stars’ president Jim Lites. “He said we played arrogant hockey. Of course, we paid for it a 4-0 shutout by Joseph. But since then, it has been two deadly serious teams. The intensity level could not be more fierce.”
So while the easy part and the boring part were woefully wrong, another dramatic change has been the interest level of the fandom. Suddenly, the casual observer is sweating pucks.
If the Stars can survive Game 7, the prissy Detroit Red Wings are waiting in the next round.