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1999

sports

It was a moment of revelation. The kind of moment that forever changes the world you know. The kind of moment when you realize things will never be the same.

Or maybe it was just the spicy Chinese food . . .

Whatever it was it came to me as I stepped into the shower. I'd written on more than one occasion about how the media never talks about the Stars. For my part, I had considered it a part of some dastardly East Coast hockey establishment conspiracy. In all my most Oliver Stone-like moments did I ever conceive what I did that fateful day. The truth settled upon me like a dove. Nope, it was more like an anvil. Because the painful truth was this:

The Stars are boring.

Nobody writes about the Stars because, let's face it, they aren't the most exciting bunch in the world. For the most part our hometown heroes are made up of old, married veteran players, a few rowdy, but nice and likable, biker guys, your token pretty boy and a bunch of kids that are, for the most part, sowing their wild oats in the desolate wastes of Michigan. It doesn't make for good copy.

Think about it from a journalistic point of view: would you rather cover a team of immensely talented, but fairly uninteresting guys or would you rather cover the Red Wings ( read that as: talented guys who date underage tennis players and get into limousine accidents with pot-smoking drivers )? No contest. Would you rather cover a team that has plugged away all year with pretty much the same boring, old guys from last year or a team stocked up on big name hired guns at the end of the season, backstopped by perhaps the greatest playoff goalie of all time? The choice is clear.

I love the Stars, but dangit they're boring. They just do their job, for the most part, game in, game out. I like to compare it to a school science fair. Everybody knows the class brainiac is gonna win, so who cares. It's only if he doesn't that it becomes a story.

Let's hope that this story remains just as boring and predictable. Someone wake me when it's over.

"Get out the A-1 sauce, I'm done."