Swedes Salvage Win After Collapse

God Bless Sweden... God bless ABBA, Peter Forsberg, Swedish Fish candies, and alcoholic pear cider... without those things, Loui Eriksson may not have fed the pass to Tommy Wandell that beat arguably the most popular former backup goalie in Stars history, winning the game for us in OT.

Before Wandell beat Mike Smith with that off-speed wrister to close the game out, and keep us the hell out of another shootout (thank you, Tom), the Stars had a pretty sizable lead over the Bolts, with only minutes left in the game. Up 3-1 (famously known as the "The Worst Lead in Hockey") with about 5 minutes to go, the Stars let Tampa Bay get some life and eventually tie the game. First, Stamkos drilled a seeing-eye shot past a screened Alex Auld on the powerplay... Less than a minute later, former Star Jeff Halpern tied the game on an even strength awkward angle backhander, and we had a brand new game with a dreaded overtime looming.

In overtime, Loui and Wandell had multiple chances to grab the W, and didn't disappoint. On their second odd-man rush of the overtime, Loui fed a pass up to Wandell, who shoved a weak wrister past Smitty for the win. This game could have been a dagger into the confidence of a Stars team that forgot to show up against Phoenix last night, but they didn't panic when things started to turn sour... and that's important. The Stars have struggled with inconsistency this year, and a loss to a weak Lightning team would have led to a few nasty headlines. "Swedes Salvage Win" sounds a lot better than "@$%&#!!! We Suck Again!," doesn't it?

Quick Notes:
Looks like Sutherby and Brunnstrom are both back and available for Crow. Fabian was called back up from his conditioning stint in the AHL, and was in the lineup against Tampa. Sutherby was taken off of IR, and should be ready to go on Monday night against the Wings if called upon..... Jere Lehtinen finally got his first goal of the season in the second period. I wonder how many more he's got left..... Mike Ribeiro's 13 assists this season are only 2 more than rookie power forward Jamie Benn's 11. Should we be disappointed in Ribs, or pumped for Big Benn?..... I finally got a chance to watch the Brett Hull pre-game ceremony from DallasStars.com, and I love those Walk of Legends plaques. Very classy, and not at all what I was expecting it to look like. I expected a full color photo of Hully with the Cup and a little nameplate at the bottom. The Walk of Legends plaque looks much more official and Hall-of-Fameish. Good show, Thomas Hicks, good show..... Why does Matt Niskanen suck so much now? When he was a 20 year old rookie playing with Zubov, he could do no wrong. A few years later, take away his Hall of Fame defense partner, and he's finally playing like the 20 year old rookie he wasn't. You'd think he'd flourish under Crawford's system. He's a team-worst minus-9 this year.