It’s a bit of a slow news day in Dallas Stars land, as the team apparently had the day off after Saturday’s 1-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings.
They should return to the ice today in preparation for Tuesday’s game against the Phoenix Coyotes, but it was an ex-player (as well as general manager and ambassador of fun) that made the headlines Sunday.
Brett Hull, never one to be shy about his feelings, joined Twitter about two weeks ago under the handle @2ndBestHull, and he’s had about the account you would expect from a guy who made a career of being extra blunt with the media.
As well as ribbing Mike Modano and various television personalities via the service, on Sunday he took on the entire Buffalo Sabres fanbase by changing his profile picture to this lovely little number, which you can find on Puck Daddy and apparently purchase online.
To steal a quote from the PD article, which in turn stole it from the Canadian Press’ 2009 story, here’s what Hull thinks about the enitre “no goal” issue:
“We all knew that they had changed the rule,” Hull said Thursday on a conference call. “But obviously the NHL decided they weren’t going to tell anybody but the teams … They changed the rule to say if you have control in the crease, you can score the goal, and that’s exactly what it was.
“But nobody knows that. You can tell people that a million times and they just will not listen.”
After a while, if you can’t beat them, at least make money on them, right?
After the jump, the tiny bit of actual Stars news out there on the internet Sunday, how many points will it take to make the playoffs in the West this season and the New Jersey Devils pull the old penalty box switcheroo.
- Like I said, it’s an extremely slow news day on the Stars front with only this little notes package from ESPN Dallas as of early Monday morning. On the plus side, at least we’re not worrying about injury updates at the moment? [ESPN Dallas]
- And from the Morning News, this paywalled article that states the obvious boost the team would get from a move back to a more Central-Time-Zone-oriented division. [DallasNews.com]
- Also in the ask obvious questions, get obvious answers category, the ESPN Dallas crew looks at the major teams in the area and asks which is the king of the hill. Hmm, I wonder what the top two teams will be…. [ESPN Dallas]
- Jack Campbell talks about the fitness regime he’s picked up under trainer Mike Pearson, who works with a lot of athletes from Michigan and is apparently developing quite a name for himself. [The Times Herald]
- Want a depressing thought? Randy Carlyle thinks it might take 100 points to make the playoffs in the Western Conference this year. [Orange County Register]
- Scouting the enemy: The next team in the Stars sights, the Phoenix Coyotes, did some roster shuffling on Sunday as they sent Garrett Stafford and Petteri Nokelainen to the Montreal Canadiens for a low draft pick and Brock Trotter. [Five For Howling]
- Around the Pacific Division: And speaking of those Yotes, they won a wild one 5-4 over the Anaheim Ducks in Sunday’s only game. It wasn’t a real bastion of great goaltending, but former Star Mike Smith did pick up the victory while Jonas Hiller was less than stellar. [Los Angeles Times]
- Just when it looked like we might get through the whole season without some cable network having a fallout with the major distributors (and I don’t consider the NHL Network a major enough channel to be in dispute at the moment), DirecTV and the Fox Sports family of networks seem to have reached an impasse that will lead to the pulling of the FSNs on Nov. 1. [BroadcastingCable.com]
- I’ve heard of referees misidentifying players on calls and penalizing the wrong one. I get that – the game happens at such a high speed, when there are two sticks up near the face of a player, sometimes it gets screwed up. But I’ve never heard of this before, with the referee’s properly identifying Patrik Elias as the New Jersey Devils player who committed the penalty against the Pittsburgh Penguins but not realizing that Petr Sykora was the man who went into the penalty box. To make matters worse, Elias scored a shorthanded goal during the double minor. Um, oops? [NHL.com]