Stars borrow from past to build for future

4/27/99

By Larry Wigge
The Sporting News

No one had the nerve to ask him the question: Are the Stars too old? No one would be stupid enough to ask 39-year-old Guy Carbonneau, blood streaming down his cheek while answering whether he's too old to compete in this game of speed and youth. Not while this gnarly veteran is talking about how you have to pay the price to win in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Carbonneau is hyper -- and why shouldn't he be? He may have scored only four goals during the regular season, but he had the game-winning goal late in the third period of Game 1 against Edmonton, and he came back two nights later and got Dallas off to a quick start with another goal.

"Oh, it's nothing," Carbonneau says of the high stick that opened a gash on his cheek. "Just a little playoff blood. It won't be the last time I get cut this spring. It's kind of like a sign that I'm not afraid to pay the price to win."

The game winner came in Carbonneau's 192nd career playoff game. That includes two Stanley Cups with the tradition-filled Canadiens in 1986 and 1993.

A master shot blocker, faceoff man and defensive center, Carbonneau has missed the playoffs one time in 17 NHL seasons. So it's no surprise that he still knows how to lead the charge, how to win the little battles and big wars. And this red badge of courage streaming down his cheek is more than just a sign that the old guy isn't done.

"To a lot of people it might be a surprise, but those kinds of guys feed on this time of the year," Stars center Mike Modano says, looking at Carbonneau and then pointing to defenseman Craig Ludwig, right winger Mike Keane and center Brian Skrudland, all former Montreal stars. "There's a lasting effect on people who learned how to play the game for the old Montreal Canadiens. There's the tradition, the winning attitude they had. It carries over wherever they go. It gets in your blood, and it trickles down to everybody around them."

You play with winners, and you learn to do what they do. That's how Oilers coach Ron Low sees it.

"You didn't play in Montreal until you learned how to play offensively and defensively, not even Guy Lafleur," Low says. "Teams don't teach the right way to play, the way the Canadiens once did. That's why it is so important to build around players who won championships in Montreal, Edmonton and now Detroit."

The Stars obtained Keane and Skrudland from the Rangers at the March trading deadline last year. It was done to toughen the character of the team so Dallas wouldn't suffer a repeat of its first-round playoff loss to Edmonton in 1997. That done, the Stars hope to take one giant step forward from conference championship loser to Stanley Cup winner.

Stars G.M. Bob Gainey lived through some of those same wars in his 16-year career in Montreal with Carbonneau, Ludwig, Keane and Skrudland. So they didn't need resumes to play for Gainey in Dallas.

The Fab Four are as old-fashioned as dial phones. They have fun playing, they bring passion to the locker room and bench, and they have learned to keep pressure at a minimum -- a good practical joke will break the tension. There's no replacement for the experience Stanley Cup veterans bring to a team.

"Dallas reminds me a lot of Montreal," Carbonneau says. "We get flashbacks in a game -- and we laugh on the bench and then tell our teammates about a shift back in 1986 or a game in 1993. The other guys come to us and ask what to do on the ice in certain situations, how to react.

"We're particularly good at remembering the funniest Bob Gainey stories. Those always go over well in the locker room."

"The experience, the values they've learned rub off on you," Modano says. "How to be unselfish, to be patient, to play with passion has rubbed off on me."

Stars coach Ken Hitchcock likes to compare the regular season, in which Dallas had the best record, to stroke play in golf. In the playoffs, you take each game one at a time, like match play.

"It's like we just finished 82 holes of stroke play, and now it's us vs. one guy, one team," Hitchcock says. "If you get four-up on the other guy, you've closed them out and head for your next opponent -- until you've won 16 games and beaten four opponents."

Except that winning the Ryder Cup doesn't come with the same contact, the same intensity you see on the way to the Stanley Cup.

Forget that the Stars, at 30.9 years old, are the oldest team left in the playoffs. Hitchcock wanted Carbonneau, Ludwig, Keane and Skrudland around to show his players how they have to sacrifice for the team to win the Stanley Cup.

It's working.

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