Dallas Believes That a Game 7 Is in the Stars

After listening to the Dallas Stars Friday, it was easy to forget the New Jersey Devils hold a 3-2 lead in the Stanley Cup finals and will get a second chance to claim the Cup today at Reunion Arena.

The Stars’ 1-0 triple-overtime victory Thursday at New Jersey boosted their morale high enough for them to ignore the fatigue of playing 106 minutes 21 seconds of hockey, the fourth-longest game played in the finals, and travel travails.

“I think we’ve got a good hold on what we’ve got to do in this series,” said Mike Modano, who deflected a shot by Brett Hull past goaltender Martin Brodeur to support Ed Belfour’s 48-save performance and put the Cup back in its traveling case. “We all feel confident, very good about it, and we feel we’ll be going to a Game 7. We all felt if we got one [Thursday] night, we were going back there Monday. That’s still our mind-set. We can’t lose three in a row at home.”

Said center Joe Nieuwendyk: “Mentally, we may have an edge. They had the party ready. They were set to go, and that hurt them.”

Modano played a team-high 43:37 and was double-shifted with various wingers. Nieuwendyk (32:29) and Hull (39:14) also got extra ice time at the expense of third- and fourth-line forwards, prompting Devil Coach Larry Robinson to suggest the Stars may be physically spent.

“I think we’re the fresher team, anyway,” he said. “With Modano playing about 75 minutes [Thursday], he probably played more than half of our team put together. Every second shift he was out there. He’s not a young man anymore, and they’ve got a lot of guys that played a lot of hockey. The way our guys play and the fact we use more players than they do should be an advantage to us going back there.”

Not so, said Modano, who turned 30 Wednesday. “Personally, I felt better as the game went on,” he said. “I got my second wind after the second overtime.”

Dallas Coach Ken Hitchcock angrily rejected Robinson’s notion. “Larry should mind his own business and worry about his own team,” Hitchcock said.

According to the Stars, the Devils have plenty to worry about after an emotional loss.

“For the whole series, until [Thursday] we were the nail and they were the hammer and they were just moving the nail around,” Hitchcock said. “[Thursday] we finally got some pounds in on our own. . . .

“We have a hockey team that can hardly wait to come to the rink right now, and that wasn’t the case two days ago.”

Thursday’s game drew the highest television ratings in 20 years, a 4.2 national rating and a 9 share, Nielsen Media Research reported. It was the best rating for a hockey game since May 24, 1980, when Game 6 of the finals between the New York Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers received a 4.4 national rating and a 17 share on CBS.