The Opposite of Good

Remember my post almost 2 weeks ago? It was titled "Stars Beat Detroit... IN DETROIT!"

It was written about how good the Stars were... having gone to Detroit and secured a victory by playing a complete game. A little under 2 weeks later, and the Stars are once again facing off against the Wings in the Motor City. This time, it wasn't good. We weren't good. We were the opposite of good.

Detroit had Turco beat on multiple occasions... 4 of them making it into the net, others going wide, being whiffed on, or hitting posts. (Alex Auld started last game in Detroit, by the way... much to the surprise of most fans. Just throwing that out there. No biggie.) The defensive coverage ranged from suspect to pathetic. Even "do-no-evil" Karlis Skrastins got into the debauchery, when he took the long path to the loose puck en route to an icing call. Skratch's stick missed the puck, which was picked up by a red sweater, and shot off of Daley and past Turco. The only good that I can remember was Robi's little hesitation at the blueline to earn himself a shooting lane, allowing him to put a deflectable shot on Howard's net. Morrow took care of the rest, and we scored our only goal of the night. Daley made a pretty sweet pass on a rush by James Neal, but the chance was squandered, and the puck ended up harmlessly wide.

Our powerplay was invisible and useless. Our defense wasn't effective. We lost just about every face-off we took (only won 14 out of 42). No one was a plus player. Neal and Wandell were held shotless. Turco was very beatable (and once again, flopping around like Dominik Hasek's pet goldfish). We deserved to lose, and we did lose.

I'm not going to harp on the inconsistency anymore, because it just seems useless... Instead, I'll just vent my frustration. It's difficult writing these game recaps with such a predictably inconsistent team. Rather than discussing trends that are developing in our play, I find myself discussing the bi-polarity of this roster. That story line goes down the very core of this team, but there's only so many times you can write an article about it. Every week, it's the same story line repeated.

The only trends that I'm seeing are listed as follows, in neat outline form:

• Marty Turco can not win in Detroit.
• When we're scoring, we've got a chance to overcome any deficit.
• We aren't always scoring.
• Marty Turco can not win in Detroit.
  
• Some nights, we don't even look like we're trying.
• Our defense is "in between" too often. Razor calls it "Proximity Defense." I call it indecisive, passive, and infuriating.
  
• Marty Turco can not win in Detroit.
• If we're going to go anywhere in the Western Conference, we need to be able to win in Detroit.

The Stars have the next few days off, before they suit up against the Ducks on Thursday night, in Dallas.

Quick Notes:
Thank you to everyone who has voted for me in the NHL Arena Blog-Off so far. I don't deserve to be beating the sites that I'm beating, but I guess it helps to have the support of the TBN and Bloguin communities on my side..... Speaking of Bloguin, I've got the skeleton of my site up and on their server, but you can't see it yet unless you're in my inner-circle :P I'm trying to figure out all the intricacies of their system. I'm not overly technically inclined, and outside of Blogspot, I've never done anything like this... but I'll figure it out. It looks fantastic, if I do say so myself.