20/20: Joe Pavelski hits 1,000 point mark as Stars smash Red Wings

Sometimes great stories write themselves, right?

DETROIT — Well, the 20/20 is back.

With the Dallas Stars in town, a team I covered for nearly a decade, it seemed like a fitting time to bring back the game format near and dear to my heart.

The Stars won 6-1 it was a blowout. I wrote close to 3,000 words about it. Enjoy.

1. During the first intermission I ran into Dallas Stars director of analytics Matt Rodell in the press box and showed him the clip of the Ottawa Senators clearing the bench to celebrate Claude Giroux’s 1,000th career point.

I told him it set a precedent, if Pavelski had a point tonight, that was the new expectation.

Rodell told me, jokingly, I think, that he’d, “let the boys know in the locker room.”

And then in the second period, Pavelski scored, fittingly on a tip for his 1,000th career point.

The benches cleared, Pavelski got the group celebration like Giroux got with Ottawa and the Detroit crowd gave a nice ovation when it was announced why the Stars had cleared the bench.

2. When I wrote my first book about the history of the Stars, one of my first calls was to Ralph Strangis, the former Dallas play-by-play announcer.

Strangis asked me, “You know who the most important player in the history of the franchise is, right?”

I answered Mike Modano, I was told I was wrong.