Undoubtedly, any hockey fan who treats his NHL statistics seriously has debated the question whether regular-season numbers mean a thing when two teams hook up in a postseason series.

The Western Conference finals matchup between Detroit and Dallas, which kicks off Thursday night, presents a high-profile test of that question.

Heading into Game 1, Stars goalie Marty Turco has won just twice in 18 career appearances against the Red Wings -- all in the regular season. He has an .897 save percentage facing the Wings, and a .914 mark in all other games over his seven seasons. Although Turco made 28 saves and blanked Detroit, 1-0, on Feb. 18, he has allowed four goals to the Wings in three of his last five games against them. Oh yeah: he’s 0-7-2 all time at Joe Louis Arena, where Game 1 will be played.

On the other hand, Turco has been terrific this postseason. He stopped 61 of 62 shots in Dallas’ 2-1, four-overtime victory over San Jose in the series clincher. Four of the six games with the Sharks required overtime, and Turco stopped 34 of 35 shots in sudden-death action. He ditched the reputation as a poor postseason performer a year ago, and he faces Detroit with a 1.56 GAA and .938 save percentage in his last 18 playoff appearances, dating to April 2007.

The sample size to make any kind of definitive statement about regular-season numbers or Turco’s performance against Detroit is far too small, of course, but it will be interesting to see if he can shut down Detroit’s scorers after handling the Sharks and Stanley Cup champion Ducks.

The goalie who will be on the other end of the ice has been every bit as good as Turco since taking over for Dominik Hasek in Game 4 of Detroit’s opening-round series with Nashville. Chris Osgood is 6-0 since assuming starting duties, and his 1.52 GAA ranks first among playoff goaltenders.

Osgood has a chance to lead the Red Wings to the Stanley Cup championship 10 years after he was the man in net for the 1998 team that claimed the second of two titles in a row for Detroit under Scotty Bowman. The postseason numbers back up the obvious. Osgood is a much better performer this spring than he was a decade ago, when he allowed soft center-ice goals by Phoenix's Jeremy Roenick, St. Louis' Al MacInnis and Dallas' Jamie Langenbrunner.

The other holdovers from the 1998 Wings are Nicklas Lidstrom, Tomas Holmstrom, Darren McCarty, Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby. They’ve been through the lows of early-round exits from the playoffs in 2003, 2004 and 2006, when the dominant Red Wings were upset as the West’s No. 1 or 2 seed.

Plenty of Red Wings have come and gone over the last decade. The mainstays are inching closer to 40th birthdays -- and then there’s 46-year-old Chris Chelios -- but the geezers still get the job done. It’s easy to think of Detroit as an old team, but that’s not the whole picture.

Nearly half of the Wings’ 2007-08 goals, 121 of 252, were scored by four players in their prime: Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Johan Franzen and Daniel Cleary. The 27-year-old Zetterberg led the Wings with 43 goals during the regular season. Datsyuk, 29, collected a team-high 97 points. It’s the 28-year-old Franzen, though, who tops the team with 11 goals and 14 points in 10 playoff games this spring.

Detroit’s 1998 championship run passed through Dallas, as the Red Wings took a six-game Western Conference finals from the Stars. That’s the last time Dallas and Detroit have met in the postseason, and Osgood blanked the Stars, 2-0, in the series clincher.

Though the two teams didn’t meet in the playoffs the following season, it was the Stars who dethroned the Wings by winning the franchise’s only Stanley Cup in 1999. This Wings-Stars matchup moves the winner one step closer to regaining the Cup.