Surprising Dallas carrying momentum into Detroit for opener

DETROIT -- Apparently some rest for the weary isn't all it's cracked up to be.

At least for the Dallas Stars, who have been forced to cool their heels after winning a four-overtime game Sunday that closed out their second-round series against the favored San Jose Sharks. The Stars will face a well-rested Detroit Red Wings team in the Western Conference finals that begin Thursday. But if they had their druthers, they would rather get the party started sooner than later.

Marty Turco has sparked the Stars' run to the West finals with a career effort this spring. (AP)

"It was nice to have a day off because the body was a little drained, but now we're ready," said Stars captain Brenden Morrow, who scored the series winner against the Sharks and leads the team with seven playoff goals. "We can't do anything about the extra day in between, but I think we're all just anxious to get going."

That's not surprising since Dallas is riding a wave of emotional momentum picked up from beating the Sharks in six games, including four that went into overtime. That followed the Stars knocking off the defending Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks. Dallas was the underdog in both series, but the Stars won the first two games of each round on the road and never looked on the way to reaching the conference finals for the first time since 2000.

It was actually a stunning turnaround for the Stars, who spent the better part of the season in the race for both the Pacific Division and Presidents' Trophy before hitting a wall in March. Dallas won only four of its final 14 games and nearly fell out of the playoff picture entirely.

The Stars managed to muster enough to hang onto the No. 5 seed, but as they staggered into the postseason missing top defensemen Sergei Zubov and Philippe Boucher, they looked primed for another one-and-done spring that has become a pattern for the team since 2004.

Instead Dallas has managed to put its game together and become the biggest story of the playoffs so far.

"I've always looked at the regular season as the time to prove you're capable of doing what you need to do in the playoffs," Stars coach Dave Tippett said. "You have to get to the playoffs as the first step, then what you do is try to give yourself a chance to win."

"So the adversity we faced in March was very good for us because when the regular season ended it was like a new start for everybody. Our whole team looked at it as a new time to prove ourselves."

In many ways, that's the same challenge facing the Red Wings coming into this series. Detroit ran away from the pack this season to win its third Presidents' Trophy in four seasons, but the talented Red Wings, often derided for having an aging lineup that cannot sustain the rigors of a long playoff run, have only advanced as far as the third round once in that time. That was last spring, when they were stopped by the Ducks.

Poll Which teams will play in the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals?   12%  Dallas and Pittsburgh     63%  Detroit and Pittsburgh     6%  Dallas and Philadelphia     19%  Detroit and Philadelphia     Total Votes: 20042

It was a frustrating end to a great season for the Detroit after they generally outplayed Anaheim while missing two of its top three defensemen. After running through the Nashville Predators and Colorado Avalanche with relative ease in the first two rounds this spring, they are looking to make up for it.

"No one is totally healthy, but we're much healthier in the back end," Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said. "The bottom line is that we're in a much better situation than we were last year."

And probably more dangerous as well thanks to the emergence of Johan Franzen as a scoring machine. The Red Wings offense has tended to center around top-line players Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk, but Franzen has been off the charts lately with 26 goals in his past 26 games, including 11 in the playoffs.

"He's been on a roll for us which is great," Zetterberg said. "You need to get secondary scoring if you want to go deep in the playoffs.'

You need good goaltending as well, and both Dallas and Detroit have been fortunate in that regard so far in the postseason. Stars goalie Marty Turco is having the best playoffs of his career with a 1.73 goals-against average while Chris Osgood has been undefeated and posted a .937 save percentage since taking over from Dominik Hasek after the fourth game against Nashville.

"I think you've got two teams that are committed to playing with and without the puck, have good goaltending, forwards and can move the puck," Babcock said. "I don't know if there's much to pick between them."