In honor of the 10th anniversary of the Dallas Stars Stanley Cup season of 1999, DallasStars.com will be running a retrospective look back with in-depth video highlights of all 16 wins during that magical run to the Cup through June 19th.
So we’re through the Edmonton series now. And with all due respect to the Oil and the fact that all four wins in that sweep were by one goal margins, I never really felt that they threatened Dallas much to pull off the upset. Probably has to do with the fact that Edmonton’s only lead in any of those two games lasted a grand total of 79 seconds.
And while they dominated Game 3, they were stunned by three Stars goals in the span of 6:17 during the third period and saw a 2-0 lead evaporate into a 3-2 deficit.
And of course, there’s Game 4, which Art has already given a great first hand account of. Even if Edmonton had won that game, I don’t know that they would have had the intestinal fortitude to push the series much longer.
The 2nd round series against the Blues? Yeah, that gave me plenty cause for concern.
But not in Game 1.
St. Louis had just flown into town a few nights after overcoming a 3-1 series deficit against the Coyotes to deal more first round heartache to a Phoenix/Winnipeg franchise that still hasn’t won a playoff series since they were based in Manitoba. So of course, they were running on fumes and provided little resistance to the well rested Dallas Stars, who took advantage of the circumstances and won Game 1 by the score of 3-0.
In fact, that game is probably more well known to me for Pat Verbeek’s slash right on the back of of Pierre Turgeon’s left knee. Recall that Brenden Morrow suffered the same slash off the stick of Alex Burrows. Unlike Morrow, Turgeon didn’t hop back up and challenge Beeker. Instead, Jamal Mayers retaliated with a nice two hander on Darryl Sydor on the ensuing faceoff after Mike Modano had iced the game with an empty net shorty from center ice.
Game 2 highlights will be posted today. And I think for all intents and purposes, that’s where the Stars really started to show their mettle. Whatever dead legs the Blues had in the first game, they overcame quickly in the second game in counter punching their way to a 4-3 third period lead before Jere Lehtinen tied things up to send the game to OT.
Which, of course, produced one of the signature moments of the playoffs when Sergei Zubov spotted Joe Nieuwendyk flying down the right wing, hit him with a perfect pass in the neutral zone, and Mighty Joe let fly with a perfect wrister just under the bar to beat Grant Fuhr 8:22 into OT to give the Stars the win and a 2-0 series lead.