The Dallas Stars visit Staples Center tonight, their own personal house of horrors.
Before the Stars first game there this season on November 11th our Brandon Bibb detailed the five worst losses at Staples in recent memory. Seemingly every game the Stars have played there in recent memory ends in varying degrees of strangeness, frustration and heart break. True to form, the two teams wrote another chapter that night worthy of those that came before it.
The Kings were awarded eight power plays in a game that was tied through two periods and they finally cashed in to win the game 3-1. You might recall that some of the supposed ‘fouls’ committed by Dallas may have been slightly embellished.
Coincidentally, the Kings are fuming after their last game, a loss at home to the Canucks, because of goaltender interference not called on Vancouver. Jonathan Quick had this to say…
“Maybe if I dive like they do, you get that call, but otherwise I guess you don’t.”
Apparently Jon Quick is a master of dramatic irony, in which the members of the audience understand the incongruence between the developments in a drama and the accompanying words or actions, and the character in the drama does not.
Because Mr. Quick’s team dives like there is no tomorrow.
Here’s Drew Doughty in that same game against the Canucks…
And as a primer tonight let’s revisit some of their greatest hits from the Stars last trip to Staples Center…
This is their captain and leader.
This one’s really got shades of Dwyane Wade in it… (Dustin Brown)
And here’s perhaps the best one of them all as Karlis Skrastins somehow slaps Dustin Brown with his back to him, causing him to violently flop over like a fish.
Everyone embellishes every now and then. It’s part of the game, and sometimes necessary to get a point across: That someone just tried to take your head off. For instance, if Tomas Vincour had stayed on the ice for a few extra seconds when Shea Weber put him into the end boards with a cross check, he might have extended Mr. Weber’s stay in the box. To Vincour’s credit, he did not. He got right up.
The above incontrovertible video evidence demonstrates a different kind of embellishment where the subject attempts not to call attention to a foul not being given it’s proper sentencing, but rather seeks to invent the foul altogether, and it’s shameful.
These are the kinds of shenanigans Marc Crawfords team needs to watch out for tonight if they’re to escape this accursed building with a point or two.
Let’s have a good clean game, yes?