Ice Guys Finish First
How the Dallas Stars—yes, the Dallas Stars—got to be the most successful, most exciting sports team in Texas.
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“He’s totally different from what everybody reads about and talks about,” Modano says. But Hull’s still a bit of a loose cannon, and thank God for that. Last season he angered the league by dissing the game’s current style: At a time when hockey is trying to sell itself as the best thing out there, he griped, it’s not as good as it should be because there’s too much defense and uncalled interference, which hinders goals and other offensive excitement. When Canadian TV came to do a story on ice quality (which is not great in Dallas, but now that the Toronto and Vancouver teams share their facilities with the NBA, it’s not so great up there either), an NHL official stood by nervously, hoping Hull wouldn’t be too forthright. “Nobody likes a guy with a mind of his own,” Hull says. At the same time, it seems clear that it’s partly persona; he talks to journalists with the same dash and daring that he wrists a puck into the net.
With Hull’s arrival and the ever-swelling celebrity of Modano, the Stars are no longer invisible around the Metroplex. It’s been said that Modano used to be able to go grocery shopping undisturbed. Not anymore. “There was a time when Mike Modano couldn’t get arrested here,” Jim Lites says, invoking the familiar aphorism.
But more important, Modano still can’t—or, rather, won’t—get arrested. While the NHL has certainly had its share of drunks and ruffians, pro hockey players are, as a species, the last Boy Scouts. Okay, okay, why mince words? The Stars may practice at Valley Ranch, but they are not the Dallas Cowboys. They sign autographs for free and make nice with the media. One recent day center Joe Nieuwendyk could be seen frolicking on the ice with his two dogs (he was filming a public-service spot for the SPCA). Even at practice, hockey players seem more like regular guys, or at least guys who are still in touch with the I-would-play-for-free gestalt of their game. The day Hitchcock got the whole team bitching, six or seven of them remained on the ice long after the rest of the team, peppering Belfour with shots, razzing him when the puck went in, and oohing appreciatively when he made a save. Another day, Nieuwendyk and right wing Pat Verbeek played rock-paper-scissors to see which one of them would have to participate in a defensive drill (Verbeek lost).
Modano, Hull, Belfour, and Hatcher are the team’s frontline faces, but guys like Verbeek are what the Stars are all about. “Glue guys,” Hitchcock calls them. The five-foot-nine-inch Verbeek is nicknamed Little Ball of Hate, and he will soon be the first player in NHL history to amass both 500 career goals and 2,500 penalty minutes. He doesn’t fight much, though; what he does is buzz around, pecking and poking and hitting and circling until something happens, either to him or the other guy. “I get under the skin of opponents to try and get them off their game,” he says. “You are either going to draw a lot of penalties or you’re going to take a few.”
Another glue guy is center Guy Carbonneau, who won two Stanley Cups with the Canadiens. A former teammate of Gainey’s, he’s a face-off specialist and a penalty killer. He’ll never do anything fancy—he has only three goals thus far this season—but imagine if basketball had a jump ball every minute and your team had a guy who could win 70 percent of them on a good night.
The Fans
KAY LYNCH HAS ATTENDED EVERY home game for the past four seasons, largely because of her devotion to defenseman Craig Ludwig, one of four players who were with the team before it moved to Dallas (the others are Hatcher, Modano, and left wing Richard Matvichuk). Lynch owns three Ludwig jerseys and works a second job solely to support her hockey habit. Last season, when it looked as though he was going to retire, she cried. She cried again when she heard he was to return for another season. Why such passion? “It’s the way he stage-dives in front of the puck,” she says. “He stage-dives!” It’s true: Ludwig has been known as one of the league’s preeminent shot blockers for years.
Lynch finally got the chance to meet her hero this year, during a preseason game. “I knew that he wasn’t playing, so I put the word out: Ludwig’s on the concourse somewhere! And then somebody ran up to me and said, ‘I know you’re the major Ludwig fan. Here’s my ticket. He’s sitting next to me.’” Ludwig happily signed all her paraphernalia. On her next birthday, which is August 25, Lynch plans to use computer software to scan a picture of Ludwig and have his face put on her cake in icing.
Lynch is one of the many regulars on the Hoffbrau bus, which shuttles folks from the West End steakhouse of the same name to Reunion Arena on game night. The bus is a rabid, rowdy, and perhaps slightly tipsy but always profanity-free pep rally on wheels. Driver Big John Larkin is head cheerleader and keeper of the famous Moo Horn, which goes “mooooooo.” (Screams of “Hit the Moo Horn!” are almost as common as “Let’s Go, Stars!”) When Hoffbrau first started running the bus, there were a dozen people on it; now there are two buses that drop fans off well into the first period of a game. Alas, latecomers are common, and they drive the real devotees crazy. “They don’t care what happens during the game,” fan Sean Montgomery says of the “cocaine and boob-job crowd” and the corporate season-ticket holders who populate the lower level. “It’s the people upstairs who watch the game develop and then go hassle Hitchcock.”
Montgomery and his pal Trip Watson own several Stars jerseys between them, some authentic ($200 to $265 each) and some replicas ($79 to $144). More than any other sport, hockey has a culture of the jersey—traditionally, they are called sweaters—and at those prices, most teams have been quick to introduce special third jerseys to augment the traditional home and away models. The Stars have one that is very green and very sharp, and in two seasons the team has only lost one game while the players are wearing it.
Lower or upper level, everybody shouts out “Stars!” both times the word appears in the National Anthem. They also clap along to “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” when it comes over the P.A. and do the Chick-Fil-A chicken dance without much prompting. One lower level fan whose bona fides are not in doubt is Randy Kamin, a.k.a. Signman. When Belfour makes a save, Kamin is right there behind him in section 107, holding up a big placard that reads “Denied.” When the Stars score, it’s “Yeah Baby.” Kamin also has a Stars jersey, but his is a little different. “Most people have their favorite player on the back of their jersey,” Kamin says. “The back of my jersey says ‘Zamboni.’” Zambonis are a hockey cult object unto themselves, the machines that maintain and resurface the ice. “I figure if you’re going to lay out that kind of money for an authentic jersey, you might as well make sure it’s going to be around for a while,” Kamin reasons. “They’re never going to trade the Zamboni.”
Fans like these have the team raving about Dallas. “These people may have lacked knowledge of hockey early on,” Hitchcock says, “but when they get into something, they put both feet in. The whole game—the intensity, the aggressive action—just fits with the Texas personality. And they know when you’re putting out and when you’re not. I have never seen a crowd that wills the team to win the way this one does.”
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