Stargazing: Not Distracted: Marty Turco Lead Stars Over Calgary, 3-1

Stargazing is a daily assortment of Dallas Stars  and NHL news, and whatever other random ramblings are bouncing around inside our heads.

We've been talking about the Stars road struggles for what feels like forever. Razor always says they need to win an ugly game, or their goaltender needs to steal one, and they can then build from that. Both of those things happened last night because Marty Turco was great, and that was one of the ugliest hockey games I've ever seen. As if a portent of sloppiness to come, there were 5 faceoffs in the first 74 seconds of the game. There were three too-many-men on the ice penalties. In an NHL game. Three.

For the first 40 minutes it looked like the two points might better have been decided with a "Yo Momma So Fat" contest than the "who's PP is worse" contest going on out there. Luckily the third period started and the Stars were in a good position to win an important hockey game.

Did you guys see those cool flames that shoot out of the scoreboard every time Calgary scores a goal? Well, you shouldn't have. They fired those things up a couple of times last night anyway, and even turned the lights on and threw their arms up in the air when a puck dribbled across the crease near the goal line, all without ever having beat Marty Turco.

Can Mike Ribeiro score some fun goals, or what? Is Fabian Brunnstrom really as..."challenged" as he looks out there right now? Can you believe Marty Turco played that well after the Kari Lehtonen trade distractions? Did it really snow over a foot in DFW yesterday?

And of course the most important question of all: Can the Stars win in Phoenix and carry a ton of momentum into the break? They've done what they must do. They've started collecting points on the road. No time to stop and look back now: The Coyotes stand ready to respond to last Saturday's 4-0 shutout by Marty Turco.

Follow the jump for all the quotes and goodies after a real important win in Calgary...

The Calgary Herald has some Flames quotage:

"The guys played hard defensively. It’s 1-1 going into the third period at home . . . we have to find ways to win that game and we have to find ways to score goals," said Iginla.

"We were good defensively, have been for a long time, but we’re capable of scoring more goals. We can’t expect to win 1-0 or 2-1 all the time. Kipper’s (goalie Miikka Kiprusoff) playing great, couldn’t be playing any better. It’s the best I’ve seen him play and he’s played some amazing years.

‘‘We have to find ways to score more.

"The power play could have been better. We got one, a lucky one, two would have been a big difference."

As far as I, Stars-homer, am concerned, Turco has 2 shutouts in his last 3 starts. I'm not so sure they got one.

Head on over to Andrew's as always to get Mark Stepneski's thoughts:

Big win. That’s three of our points on this trip so far. What they needed to do was get points on this trip to keep themselves right in the middle of things, and not fall too far behind in the race for a playoff spot. They’ve done that. We’’ll see where they are when everyone is finished on Sunday, but they are going to be in a good spot coming out of the break and heading into that final push. There’s still a long way to go and it’s tight and it’s likely going to remain tight, but the three points this week have been huge.

Turco was excellent again. He’s on a nice roll right now. In the first period he was the only guy who looked like he had a sharp focus for the Stars, which was strange considering the circumstances.

The Stars PR staff had a couple of interesting notes after the game:

Turco is two games shy of 500 career NHL contests.

Modano played in his 1,446th career NHL game, tying him with Tim Horton for 19th on the all-time list.

Dallas finished with a 3-0-1 mark against the Flames this season, and has earned at least one point in 23 of its past 29 games with Calgary.

Dating back to March 2002, the Stars have erased 59-of-63 Calgary power plays.

23 of 29 games with at least a point. We'll miss you Calgary. See you next year.

The game was saved by the zebra's getting one right:

But just as Dallas thought it had the win in hand, Stephane Robidas took a late holding penalty, Calgary pulled the goalie, and Jarome Iginla appeared to squeeze a hard angle shot just underneath Turco and barely over the goal line to tie the score with 29.3 seconds left in regulation.

But while the horn sounded and the flames went off in the building to signal a goal, the referee looked hesitant to declare the official goal. He eventually skated over and pointed to the net, but Turco said he did it after he blew the whistle. Turco said he had the puck saved on the goal line when the whistle blew and then moved it behind the line after he heard the whistle.

A lengthy replay in Toronto confirmed Turco's story, and the Stars were saved. Ribeiro added an empty-net goal off a faceoff, and Dallas walked out with a huge win.

DMN: Add the list of local celebrities interested in a piece of the Dallas Stars: Mike Modano

Stars center Mike Modano said Thursday that he would like to have a role in any ownership group that ends up buying the Stars.

"I definitely would like to be a part of the team going forward, and that would be one option," Modano said. "But it would have to be in a smaller role."

Modano set up a meeting between Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and a prospective Stars owner to study a potential role for Cuban in ownership, Cuban said during an interview Wednesday with ESPN-FM (103.3). Modano declined to name that prospective owner. However, the fact that he knows both a prospective owner and Cuban puts Modano in a good position when it comes to becoming part of the new ownership group.

The guys at Matchsticks and Gasoline keep track of "scoring chances" and say the Stars got 7 of the last 12 scoring chances of the game.

Quotes:

As usual, quotes are hard to come by on the road. These come via Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News.

Brenden Morrow on his goal:

"I have never done anything like that. I usually see that on highlights and laugh at guys who do that," he said. "But we had to come back. We had no choice."

And on Marty Turco:

"Who knows what's going to happen, but hopefully he's putting doubt into whoever makes these decisions," Morrow said. "He's given us a chance to win in every one of these last five games. He's playing really, really well. It looks like him. To be able to focus with all of these distractions, I think you have to give him a lot of credit for that."

Don't discount the theory that trading Marty Turco is going to..."disrupt" Brenden Morrow.

Marty Turco:

"That's why we have video replay," Turco said. "You have to give them credit, they took their time, it wasn't in and they got the call right."

"As much as you want to say it's out of my control, because it is, I think about it all of the time," Turco said. "I've got three kids, two in school, and this is something that's on my mind. But it's not on my mind one bit during the game, and that's what matters."

Mike Ribeiro:

"That's probably the game of the year right now," said Ribeiro, who flipped in one shot between his legs and then added an empty-net goal on a sneaky faceoff win. "We've been struggling on the road, (Calgary has) made a bunch of changes, this is a tough place to play. It was just a really big game. To be one point behind right now, that's good for us. That's good for the confidence of the team."

On Morrow's goal:

"He just leads by example," Ribeiro said. "He came back so hard and battled. That's his game."