Captain Clutch

Every team, from Little League Baseball to the National Hockey League, needs a player who typifies its heart and soul. Someone who leads by example, shouldering an increasingly heavier load as the season wears on. Someone who can will a team to win. Simply, someone who isn't afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve.

In Dallas, that player is Brenden Morrow.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Morrow sent Dallas onto the Western Conference finals early (very early) this morning when he scored with 9:03 left in the game's fourth overtime, lifting the Stars to a 2-1 victory over the San Jose Sharks. Morrow's goal, his seventh of the playoffs and second OT winner in the series, ended the eighth-longest NHL playoff game.

The goal, too, also goes a long way to cementing that the Stars, who open the championship series Thursday in Detroit, have truly become Morrow's team. For the longest time, it was Mike Modano who drove Dallas' bus. Like Mark Messier was to the New York Rangers, Morrow is not only buckled in, but he's got a death grip on the Stars' steering wheel.

And though his naming as the Stars' captain may have ruffled some feathers within Big D a couple of seasons ago, Morrow's leadership, and not just against the Sharks, shows that, indeed, the pick was on the mark.