Seeing Stars

It should come as no surprise that Hound Central 4.0 gets a little ramped up any time a Western Conference team crosses the Mississippi and makes its way down here to Hockey Bay. Take the Dallas Stars, for instance.

Thanks to a work schedule, a school holiday and leftover 2008 holiday time, the central command here at Hound Central 4.0 headquarters helped to welcome the Stars to town yesterday. We got up early, loaded the car with cards, pucks, sticks, jerseys as well as our game tickets and, by putting in the time and effort, added 65 autographs, including 31 cards, to the collection.

Sure beats work, doesn't it?

It was fun, too, snagging signatures from the Stars' big names -- Mike Modano, Jere Lehtinen, Marty Turco, Loui Eriksson, among others. Other than Brian Sutherby, who signed at game time, every Stars player signed on his way over to morning skate.

We missed former Bolt Brad Richards (I'm glad I got him before camps opened) and Brett Hull, one of the Stars' two GMs. Though both signed for a few folks Sunday night, we never saw them Monday. Yes, it would have been nice, but the rest of the team more than made up for it.

Signing pucks, shown above, were:

Top row: Fabian Brunnstrom, Jere Lehtinen and Matt Niskanen
Bottom row: Mike Ribeiro, Darryl Sydor and Marty Turco

Among those signing cards were:

Top row: Stu Barnes, Trevor Daley and Loui Eriksson
Middle row: Jere Lehtinen, Joel Lundqvist and James Neal
Bottom row: Matt Niskanen, Steve Ott and Stephane Robidas

And, no, we didn't forget to have Turco sign the Team Canada jersey. All told, the goalie signed seven items for us yesterday.

We also added these to the collection:

~ Future Hall of Famer Mike Modano on a Stars puck and a Team USA jersey;
~ Four autographed cards each from Marty Turco, Mike Ribeiro and Mark Parrish;
~ Twenty-four players and coaches, including Modano, Turco and Lehtinen, on Colin's team sheet
~ a game-used stick signed by Doug Janik; and
~ the 1,000th autograph of the season from James Neal.