An angry Modano

Mike Modano is the only man I've ever met who can be vehement without ever raising his voice. And his words after Saturday's debacle in Boston spoke volumes. He was mostly angry at the way the Stars conducted themselves with all the penalties, as well as the yapping at officials and fans (Morrow, Ott, Avery were each guilty of one or the other):
    "It's idiotic, it's stupid. It's one of the most embarrassing things I've seen, on the ice and involved with the fans. In 20 years I've never seen anything like that. If that's what we're going for here, then I need to find me an office job."
    On the Stars letting frustrations take over: "There's no mental toughness. We're letting everything get to us. We're letting refs get involved in the game with us. We're taking our energy out on them instead of the details of winning the game. It's been a real bad part of our game as a team."
    On the goaltending: "They're doing as best you can ask from them (Marty Turco and Tobias Stephan), but the quality of the chances are doorstep goals. You can have two goalies in there, they're still going to go in."

    OK, kids, now your thoughts.

Comments

[Tim]

for some reason the stars went out of their way to try to be tough to play against in the offseason instead of just trying to be a good hockey team. Ott and Barch were enough. Now we've got 3 guys who are more interested in extra activities than the game itself and their mentality is rubbing off on others.

[hip czech]

Tim,

I'm not sure that I'd say that our muscle is overly focused on intimidating the opposition.

Avery has setup some nice goals and scored some as well. He seems to get more done than many other of our hitters.

You make a good point though about this team as a whole having a different philosophy, a different way of approaching the game this year.

If I read you correctly, I will agree with your observation that we didn't need to get "tougher" than we already were last year.

My view has been that every since Nanny-heim won the Cup, some teams have tried to copycat their over-the-top physical play (read "dirty"). I think that we are doing this, as you seemed to say.

And of course, it's not good. It's not even bad. It's horrible

The sources of our problems are so much more than the "heavies" being preoccupied in other areas of the game though.