Stars are champions/Tuesday notes

Patrick Nemeth’s goal 14:30 into overtime has made a champion of the Texas Stars. Nemeth ended a back-and-forth overtime in a back-and-forth Game 5, and Texas took the Calder Cup with a 4-3 win. Travis Morin follows Jason Krog, 2008, as the only players to win both the regular-season and playoff MVP awards in the AHL.

The former Sound Tigers stayed involved for the IceCaps, though Kael Mouillierat didn’t score for the first time in the Final. After the Stars took a 2-0 lead, Jordan Hill scored through traffic, the Caps tied it before the end of the second, and then Blair Riley scored off a Jamie Oleksiak giveaway to give St. John’s a lead. But the Stars tied it with a bounce off a glove in the third.

OT went back and forth — Oleksiak hit a post, Eric O’Dell was stoned in front, Michael Hutchinson made big saves — before Nemeth finished it.

And so it’s summer everywhere, two months after summer got here. Free agency is just two weeks away.

Couple of familiar young coaches on the Portland staff: Trent Whitfield and Alfie Michaud.

And RIP, Larry Zeidel.

Michael Fornabaio