DETROIT -- Dallas Stars goalie Marty Turco was asked if he did anything differently before Game 5 to change his horrible luck vs. the Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena.
He claimed it was business as usual.
Captain Brenden Morrow has seen his teammate bear the brunt of the criticism for the Stars' inability to win in Detroit. He asked Turco if he wanted to tell everyone "about that chicken."
"No, no, there's no chicken. It was a rooster," Turco said with a laugh.
It was the laughter of great relief.
There was no chicken or rooster, no magic potion or ritual. It was just good solid hockey by Turco and his team in a 2-1 win over the Wings yesterday.
WINGS CLIPPED, TWICE
It was the second straight victory for the Stars, dragging them back into contention in the Western Conference final. The once-hot Red Wings have seen their 3-0 lead turned into 3-2, and now face a Game 6 on the road in Dallas tomorrow night.
Turco was 0-9-2 at Joe Louis before yesterday; 0-10-2 would have meant the Stars were going home for the entire summer.
"It feels good. It feels more good about the situation we were in," Turco said. "The environment we were in and the ability we had to overcome it. It's a huge challenge. It only fractionally got better (yesterday)."
Turco made 39 saves. His best might have come in the first 1:30 when Wings' Dan Cleary was set up 30 feet in front of the net on a one-timer. Turco came across the top of the net and got the hard shot with his pad. It was an omen.
Turco was just as good moving the puck. He earned an assist on Joel Lundqvist's second-period winner, finding Lundqvist at his own blue line. Lundqvist skated into the Wings zone and beat goalie Chris Osgood with a wrist shot.
The Stars' Trevor Daley and the Wings' Jiri Hudler exchanged goals in the first.
Turco's puck-handling ability thwarted the Wings' forechecking. They couldn't generate pressure because Turco was always first to the puck.
The Wings were also constantly getting trapped on line changes, including on the Stars' first goal. Turco took the puck on a dump-in and the Wings never saw the puck until it was in the net. Turco cleared the zone, with the puck finding its way to Nicklas Hagman. He hit Brad Richards, who dropped the puck to Daley and it was 1-0 Stars.
"He looked really aggressive," Stars centre Mike Modano said of Turco. "He didn't second-guess himself.
"When he's jumping out of the net like that, making moves, making plays, you know he's involved. You know he's into it mentally."
Turco looked -- and felt -- confident.
"It was probably the best I've felt in this building, probably ever," he said.
With the Red Wings' dominance at Joe Louis, maybe they simply expected to win.
"I didn't think that at all," said coach Mike Babcock. "I thought we were actually a little uptight at the start ... We didn't come out of our zone with speed like we normally do."
Seeing this kind of comeback can get a team thinking bad thoughts.
"We know being in that situation (losing two games after going up 3-0), that doubt starts to creep in," Morrow said. "We know that it's gonna be tough in our building (for Game 6)."
