Mavs, Stars, and Playoffs...Oh My

I write this blog with a troubled heart. At the moment, it seems like the Mavericks are going to make the playoffs, and my beloved Stars are not going to. Both teams are playing significantly below their abilities, but only the Stars have a good excuse.

The hockey gods were not kind to Dallas' hockey team, handing out season-ending injuries to captain Brendan Morrow, power play quarterback Sergei Zubov, and new power play quarterback Brad Richards (who broke his other hand in his return to the ice Saturday). Marty Turco began the year in the worst stretch of his career, Modano and Lehtinen continued to show their age, and the Stars' extremely young corps of defensemen all seemed to have sophomore slumps. And then there was Sean Avery. Considering all of that, the Stars were pretty lucky to be in the hunt for so long...most teams couldn't survive that.

The Mavericks? After the Jason Kidd trade debacle, the Mavs just don't have the youth or the talent to compete in the West. They're a solid team that can occasionally play a big game, but they're boys among men in a league they don't belong in. They're almost a lock to make the playoffs, but they're looking a matchup with the Lakers in the eyes. And that would certainly end in disaster.

I, of course, would love for both my teams to make the playoffs. But if I had to choose one team to make it, I'd want it to be the Stars. And I have several reasons why:

1. The NHL playoffs are much more unpredictable than the NBA ones - In hockey, a #8 seed will regularly beat a #1 seed and not much is made of it. Because, really, all you need is a hot goaltender to win a playoff series. Jean-Sebastian Giguere proved that a few years back. In the NBA, it takes something drastic (like the Mavericks' choke job in 2007) for a #8 to beat a #1. Besides, the Mavs don't really have a hot hand like Marty Turco that they could ride.

2. The draft lottery. The Spurs, the luckiest team in the history of sports, had one bad year with an already-solid group and ended up with the best draft pick in the last 20 years in Tim Duncan. Compare that to the Mavericks, arguably the worst team in all of sports for an entire decade, who never got the #1 pick in a draft...let alone a Tim Duncan-like pick. The Mavs, if they missed the playoffs, could get that kind of luck and put one of these March Madness kids with Dirk and Kidd. Its the kind of thing that could turn the team around. Making the playoffs, getting swept by the Lakers, and getting the 15th pick (at best) would do the Mavs very little good. Probably.

3. The NHL draft is a lot more of a crapshoot. It's kinda like the MLB amateur draft...there are a lot of foreigners who might not adapt to the NHL game, and a lot of them are young guys who teams will plant overseas to develop. First round picks are still huge and a lot of the players develop, but I don't think there's as big a gap between pick 10 and pick 20. In the NBA, the gap is usually pretty huge.

4. The Stars actually match up pretty good against the top teams in the West. The Mavs do not. The Stars lost a lot of games to the Sharks, but they always played them well. And, believe it or not, the Stars won the season series with the Red Wings 3-1. I think they could make either of those series interesting. The Lakers and/or Spurs would slaughter the Mavericks.

5. I already bought tickets to the Stars' playoffs. The money isn't a sunk cost (because any games that aren't played will go towards my new season tickets) - but I'd still like to go to those games. Because the Stanley Cup playoffs make the NBA playoffs look like the WNBA playoffs. Whatever that means.

6. The Mavericks suck.

So the odds are that my NHL and NBA seasons will be over in about a month, and that is very sad to me. Because then there's just the Rangers...who, while they should be better, will probably still suck for another year. Then there's just D-Bag Romo and the Cowboys to look forward to.

This Dallas curse needs to end so I can enjoy sports again. Post haste.