Stars host Sharks in important Pacific clash

Hockey Betting Lines

02/18/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Two Pacific Division powers will collide this afternoon at the American Airlines Center, where the Dallas Stars host a San Jose Sharks club looking to stop a two-game losing streak.

San Jose currently resides in second place in the rugged Pacific with 73 points, three more than the Stars, who have played one fewer game than the Sharks. Both clubs are looking up at Anaheim, who leads the division with 78 points, in the standings.

Dallas has been the better of the two teams of late, as the Stars had won three straight games before being overtaken by powerful Detroit on Wednesday. Henrik Zetterberg scored the tiebreaking goal with 4:36 remaining in the third period and the Red Wings tacked on an empty-netter in the final seconds to come away with a 3-1 victory at the American Airlines Center.

Mike Ribeiro scored the lone goal for the Stars, who mustered just 18 shots on the evening. Mike Smith finished with 29 saves between the pipes.

Dallas wraps up a five-game homestand this afternoon and brings an 18-9-1 record as the host into this showdown.

The Sharks will be playing the fifth test of a grueling eight-game road trip. After winning the first two contests of the swing, San Jose has been shut out in back-to-back games against Nashville and Columbus.

On Friday, Fredrik Norrena turned aside all 29 shots he faced to lead the Blue Jackets to a 3-0 triumph. It marked the first time since January 26-30, 1999 that the Sharks were blanked in consecutive contests.

San Jose was without captain Patrick Marleau, who sat out with an upper body injury and is questionable to return to the lineup today. The star center, who leads the club with 29 goals, had a string of 173 straight games played come to an end.

The Sharks did make a move towards bolstering their offense on Friday, re- acquiring veteran forward Alex Korolyuk from New Jersey for a conditional third-round draft choice. The 31-year-old spent six seasons in San Jose from 1997-2004 and totaled 62 goals and 80 assists in 296 games.

Korolyuk, who has not played in the NHL since the lockout, was in his native Russia at the time of the trade and is expected to join the team later this week.

In other injury news, Dallas center Eric Lindros is expected to miss his third straight contest with a lower body injury.

The Stars have won four of the six meetings between the rivals this season, although the teams have split a pair of games in Dallas. The road team has emerged victorious in each of the last four matchups in this series.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.