FanHouse Brenden Morrow

FanHouse's Adam Gretz takes a look at his top 50 players in the NHL. No. 49 is Dallas Stars forward Brenden Morrow.

Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Example: the 2008-09 Dallas Stars.

After coming within two wins of advancing to the Stanley Cup Final in 2007-08, the Stars followed it up with a disappointing campaign that saw them banish their big offseason pick-up because he didn't have a filter between his brain and his mouth, while key contributor after key contributor was lost to injury. Sometimes, more than once. On the plus side? Psychological reviews for all!

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It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We continue our division-by-division preview of the potential wheeling and dealing with the Pacific Division.

San Jose saw its Presidents' Trophy campaign come to a surprising end in the first round of the NHL playoffs, Los Angeles is still the perfect spot for Dany Heatley, and is there any hope for success on the ice in Phoenix?

The success of coaches in professional sports is difficult to predict. Bill Belichick was an abject failure in Cleveland, but is now considered one of the top coaches in all of sports. Flip Saunders did pretty well for himself in Minnesota, but could not bring a championship to Detroit. In the NHL, Claude Julien and Paul Maurice are two examples of coaches who got the proverbial walking papers and found great success at later jobs.

Since coaches are essentially hired to be fired, veteran NHL coach Marc Crawford has been fired. He's actually about to begin his fourth stop in the league, as the Dallas Stars hired him Thursday to replace the fired Dave Tippett.

A lot of the talk following last night's Game 2 in Detroit centered around Chicago's Brian Campbell and his turnover, which led to Mikael Samuelsson's game-winning goal, giving the Wings a 3-2 win in overtime and a 2-0 series lead. But it wasn't nearly the first time that Campbell has made a mistake that has cost his team a victory in a playoff overtime. This is actually the third time in this past three years that a misplay by Campbell has led to an overtime defeat for his team.

For the third time in three weeks we have a new team on top of our power rankings, as the NHL-leading San Jose Sharks take over the top spot.

The Devils take a fall thanks to their recent six-game losing streak, while Anaheim continues to climb the rankings.

Earlier this season I, like many, I assume, was quite critical of the play of Dallas Stars goalie Marty Turco. Mainly because for the first two months of the season he was the hockey equivalent to Swiss cheese on skates.

I like to think I'm a reasonable person, willing to eat my share of crow when the opportunity presents itself, and Turco has offered up quite a dish. While the Stars fell to Chicago on Saturday, 3-1, Turco put forth another strong performance in net, turning aside 33-of-36 shots, including an incredible stop on Jonathan Toews in the second period. Video after the jump.

Things just keep getting worse for the 2008 version of the Dallas Stars. Just two wins shy of the Stanley Cup Finals a season ago, the Stars are currently the second-worst team in the National Hockey League, and that's just the beginning of their current problems.

During their 6-3 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday night, captain Brenden Morrow left the game with just over six minutes to play with an undisclosed injury.

This evening, we've learned that the injury is a torn ACL, which will put Morrow on the shelf for the next six months, ending his season. Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News passes along the official press release from the Stars.

"We are obviously very disappointed to hear the news about Brenden's knee," said Co-General Manager Les Jackson. "As our captain, he will obviously be missed, but we have every assurance that he can and will come back from this injury at 100 percent. There is a lot of hockey left to be played this season, and we are confident our team will rally together and keep pushing."