Okay, so did anyone stay up and watch the entire Dallas Stars-Sharks OT playoff game last night? Better yet, did anyone go to the game?

If so, you are pretty tired today as the thing went for four overtimes and wasn’t over until 1:30 or so this morning.

Whew.

Congrats to the Dallas Stars, who now get the rather dubious pleasure of playing the Detroit Red Wings in the next round of the playoffs. No, I didn’t stay up the entire time either. Although I was fortunate to get to watch the game in HD, here in the swamp no less — as the Fox Southwest sports network broadcast it.

I still remember the three overtime Stars win that Brett Hull led in 1999–which gave the Stars the NHL Championship. (Yes, I lived in Big D back then, as many of you know.)

Gotta hand it to the NHL. The best thing it does is playoff games. And the best of those are the overtime playoff games. This one was right up there with the best.

Meanwhile, tonight, closer to home, the Beehive comes alive again as the New Orleans Hornets go up in game two against the hated and despised San Antonio Spurs. Let’s go Hornets! They soundly defeated the defending champs Saturday night — it will be interesting to see what changes San Antonio puts into effect tonight in an attempt to snatch one at the Bee’s home court.

Hopefully the Hornet’s mascot, Super Hugo, won’t be trying to fly through any more burning hoops on his way to making a slam dunk tonight. Saturday night his “ring of fire” wouldn’t go out like it was supposed to and some wary firefighter types decided it was time to get out the real fire extinguishers. Yep, all that white stuff, all over the basketball floor.

The game ended up being delayed by almost 20 minutes as they tried to clean up all that white stuff. Then the half-time show was cancelled so they could clean it up some more.

Only in New Orleans. Gotta love it. Now that I think about it, It’s a wonder he wasn’t trying to eat a soft-shell crab po-boy out of his non-shooting hand as he went through the ring of fire on his way to the basket.

Which he made, by the way.

I admit it. I love this time of year. Can’t you tell?