The Stars take on a struggling Columbus Blue Jackets side at the Nationwide Arena tonight. The Jackets’ season is practically over as they currently sit rock bottom of the NHL with just 36 points from 53 games. In contrast, the Stars season is still very much alive, as they continue to fight to break into the top eight in the Western Conference, currently sitting 2 points behind eighth.

Dallas comes into tonight’s game after suffering a disappointing 4-1 loss to divisional rivals Phoenix in Texas on Tuesday. Despite having more shots in the game, they lacked the cutting edge and didn’t finish off the few chances that they created. Dallas have constantly relied on Kari Lehtonen throughout the year, and, as the Phoenix game showed, he isn’t going to save the team in every game.

Columbus comes into the game looking for their third straight victory, something they have played for just twice this season. Curtis Sanford will most probably be in goal for the Jackets tonight, as he has started the last 3 games, stopping 91 of 97 shots with a save percentage of .938. Although it isn’t confirmed yet, it is expected that Kari Lehtonen will occupy the crease for the Stars.

It has been a very inconsistent season for the Stars, and coach Gulutzan has said that he cant shuffle anything aroundanymore and the only solution to getting out of the recent slump is by putting the effort in and showing high levels of intensity on the ice. In a recent interview he said, “You run the risk of how much experimenting do you do? We might change some things just to try something different, but changing the lines is just reshuffling the cards. There’s no magic elixir or potion. This is about digging in.”

Despite the Jackets sitting at the bottom of the Western Conference, the Stars know the threats that they do pose. A part of the game they certainly thrive in is on the face-off dot. They rank seventh in the league in face-offs won and with face-offs being a part of the Stars game that struggles at times, Columbus will look to exploit this.

It really is a massive game for the Stars as they look to get the ball rolling and fight for a spot in the playoffs. If Dallas are to make the post season, Columbus are teams that they must beat. Puck drop is at 7pm ET in Ohio.

The Dallas Stars welcomed their great rivals the Detroit Red Wings to the American Airlines Center in what turned out to be a thrilling 9 goal game in a Western Conference battle last night. Both sides had played some great hockey throughout the season going into the game and it was set up to be a fast and physical game.

The first period turned out to be a great one in terms of offense as the Stars and Red Wings recorded 15 and 14 shots respectively. The Stars went about their work early forcing several good saves from American Jimmy Howard, but it was Detroit who broke the deadlock through Valtteri Filppula who received a pass from Henrik Zetterberg to slot past Kari Lehtonen with 8 minutes gone. The Wings grabbed another goal with 3 minutes to go in the first as the puck his Jiri Hudler’s skate from Zetterberg’s shot to grab his tenth of the year and increase the lead to 2. It was crucial that the Stars didn’t go 3 goals down and they hit straight back just a minute later through a Loui Eriksson wrist shot with the Benn brothers grabbing both assists. An awesome period of hockey ended with a 3-1 lead for the Red Wings.

After a great first period the fans continued to be entertained as the second frame provided 4 goals. It was critical for the Stars to stay in the game and the awesome Jamie Benn did just that with a minute played by slotting one past Howard to make it a 3-2 game. The Wings got their fourth goal of the game as they showed some sublime puck movement to allow Jiri Hudler to grab his second of the night and fire the puck behind Lehtonen. The great hockey going forward continued as Detroit regained their 2 goal lead through 23 year old Canadian Cory Emmerton who surprised Lehtonen and squeezed the puck into the net with 4 minutes gone.

The good-sized crowd were glued to the game as shots, saves and hits were occurring at regular intervals. Michael Ryder, who was acquired from the Bruins in the off-season, has been a critical part of the Stars team this season and he netted his 16th of the year to cut the lead to back to one approaching the halfway stage in the second. The period wasn’t done for goals though as Detroit scored their 5th goal through a Johan Franzen slapshot which should have been dealt with by Lehtonen. The 2 sides went to the locker rooms with the score at 5-3 in favour of the Red Wings after 2 periods.

It was a quiet third period in terms of goals but Michael Ryder netted his second for the Stars after robbing the puck and impressively slotting the puck upstairs, setting up a tense final 5 minutes. Dallas pulled Lehtonen with just over a minute to play to get the extra man but they couldn’t tie it up and Detroit took the 2 points from the thrilling encounter.

Despite conceding 5, there were several positives for the Stars to take away including some great offensive hockey and exquisite saves from Lehtonen who has recently returned from an injury after missing 12 games. Dallas will look to bounce back on the road as they take on the Nashville Predators tomorrow night.

I sat in a local wing restaurant last night, watching the most unbelievable comedy of errors in recent memory. Missed snap after missed snap. Dropped pass after dropped pass.running backs stopped behind the line of scrimmage. Wide receivers running wrong routes. A banged up Tony Romo managed to avoid a potentially catastrophic meltdown.

Tony’s an even keeled guy. Maybe too much so. Not last night. You could see the frustration on his face, especially if you could read his lips play after play. Phil Costa got an earful.

Which makes me wonder: why are we seeing this side of Romo tonight? As always, I see a couple possibilities:

1. Romo feels more comfortable calling out the players on the line now because he’s the veteran and they’re the rookies.

2. He gave so much effort and focus to play injured that he had no sympathy for mistakes made by healthy players. I can almost hear Tony say, “Don’t make my effort and risk tonight a waste! Get your sh** together! Don’t tell me I came out here for nothing!”

Whatever the case, Romo led his team to a touchdownless victory over the dogbutted Redskins, and Dallas now holds a two game advantage over Washington, which has to make Jerry feel good.

I’m going to look for some postgame Jerry talk, and I’ll post it here if I come up with anything. He seems overly emotional this year after each game, probably because he couldn’t legitimately expect a playoff season with last year’s fiasco.

Stay tuned.

If you’re looking to take your knowledge of pro sports in Dallas to a whole new level, you’re going to need to hook yourself into the Matrix, big time. But this is easily possible with a few tools and Internet access, the latter of which is easy, given you’re reading this online article right now.

The former requires some Googling and possibly one or two software downloads, but that’s pretty much it – you could be up and running with a whole new feed of information to complement what you get online here. So if you’ve got a spare minute while reading this and waiting for your party poker tournament to start or your email inbox to update, point your Google-sights towards getting an RSS reader, and start subscribing to every site you read, so you can start collecting their output into a single program in order to collate your “to be read” queue.

If you’re looking to really immerse yourself in the Dallas pro sports scene, you’ll also need to get a Twitter account and start following people, even if you don’t tweet yourself (although you’re more than welcome to – some players actually enjoy communicating with fans over Twitter). This is great not only if you want to keep tabs, but even if you want to become a journalist documenting Dallas pro sports and need to keep a close eye on the players’ personal output, as well.

Lastly, learn that some articles will be more important – the result of last night’s Cowboys game is important, but if there’s been a major walkout of players somewhere else, then it’s probably worth reading up on that first. You can’t spend all day reading – your day job and other commitments may prevent that – but it’s always worth keeping up on stuff that can’t be summarized with a few numbers Read, learn, and become a Dallas pro sports fountain of knowledge.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsU2UXCB5Fg&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

While soccer flies very much under the DFW sports radar, last nights international friendly vs. hated rivals Mexico had a couple of noteworthy moments for the metroplex. Jurgen Klinsmann took to the sidelines as head coach of the US Men’s National Team last night for the first time after 5+ years of speculation. While the American’s were underwhelming in the first half, they looked like a completely different team in the second half, most notably after the entry of FC Dallas mid-fielder Brek Shea and his Billy Idol-esque hair into the equation in the 60th minute.

The 21-year old shined in only his 3rd CAP for the senior team last night, creating a handful of chances for other players including the equalizer which was tapped in by Robbie Rogers in the 72nd. Shea, born in College Station, has been a standout for FC Dallas this season and was even included in the MLS All-Star squad against Manchester United. Having recently signed a long-term contract with Dallas, we now know there’s at least one reason to drive to Frisco on the weekends…but that’s probably about it.

@TheRantDFW

Mark it down now. August 10, 2011. Tashard Choice will be a New Orleans Saint.

Last night at the Temple, Mike Young became the first Ranger in club history to record 2,000 hits. The biggest story of the night, however, was the Rangers come back in a 5-run eighth inning to keep the club one game above the streaking Los Angeles de Los Angeles de Anaheim for the lead in the American League West. Elvis Andrus seemed to answer his critics again with a big 2-run single putting the Rangers in for the final time. The three-game set with the Indians was taxing for the club, due mostly to the 11-inning Marathon Friday night which saw a “Major League”-esque finish as Willie Mays Hays, I mean Elvis Andrus scored from second on an infield hit by Josh Hamilton. With all due respect to Jake Taylor, Hambone may have been a few steps quicker down the line. After what could have easily been a 3 game sweep against the surprise team of the American League, the Rangers carry a one game lead into a set with the Mariners and avoid a matchup with King Felix Hernandez….a sweep would be nice.

@TheRantDFW

I know it’s Super Bowl Week and you could care less about Mavs talk. So sad. We haven’t talked some Mavs here in a while, so it’s time to give one of Dallas’ last two sports franchises it’s due.

We were all amazed when the Mavericks dominated everyone at the beginning of the year. We held our collective breaths, at first, expecting such stellar levels of awesome to wear off. But they didn’t. Dallas pwned every major market it played. Only San Antonio and Boston held competitive records.

Then the inevitable happened. INJURY. In one fell swoop, Caron Butler was out for the season and Dirk was out for at least a week. And the stars plummeted toward the earth.

Dallas fell to a very sub-par looking record and the “strongest bench in the league” looked more like the lamest.

Enter the Peja

Trade talks began circling. Toronto was looking to trade Peja Stojakovic, but no takers. So they opted to dump him and make salary cap space. Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson swooped in, arranging a “you let Peja go and we’ll trade our 3rd string Center” deal.

And now here we are. Dirk is back and returning to his former self. Peja hasn’t played a game yet, but morale has improved, partly due to the trade movement and partly because Roddy Beaubois is weeks if not days away from returning to the lineup.

What Dallas loses in penetration and mental toughness it will make up for with raw shooting power and kick ass speed.

Maybe this should be the Peja and Roddy Story. But as Dallas heads out on the road again, sources say Peja and Roddy B will remain in Dallas to train, strengthen, and heal. The way it was presented leads me to believe that one or both will see playing time soon after the team returns home.

So get your popcorn ready. They may not be the toughest team in the NBA, but they’re about to be one of the flashiest.

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