Glancing across the board at Cup chances
By Al Morganti
Special to ESPN.com
Fair warning: What you are about to consider
are the projections, thoughts, opinions and handicapping from the one person -- hopefully
there was only one -- who predicted last October that the 2000 Stanley Cup would be won
by the San Jose Sharks in a final series against the Boston Bruins.
Oh well, the Sharks actually went into the final day of the season with a
chance for the first winning season in their history, and the Bruins ... well, that's
another story. And, by the way, about a year ago this was the lone crystal ball which predicted
in the preseason that the Dallas Stars would beat the Buffalo Sabres in the Stanley
Cup finals.
|  | | One major question this postseason is whether Bourque will get to hold the elusive Cup. |
So, like Theo Fleury, we have our good years and our bad. It's just that some of us don't get paid $7 million to fall off the charts.
Now, without fear of failure, and positive that the Sharks and Bruins
simply had some bad luck along the way, here is everything you need to know about the
2000 Stanley Cup playoffs, or at least as much as you need to know before the first puck
gets dropped.
The big questions as the playoffs approach:
Will Ray Bourque get that first Cup?
Can the Dallas Stars get rid of that dark cloud which has hung over
their season, and defend their championship?
Are the St. Louis Blues for real? We already know they were
for real in the regular season, but none of that will matter unless goalie Roman Turek, defenseman Chris Pronger
and everybody else with a Bluenote on his jersey can do it through the
postseason.
And, have the Detroit Red Wings decided it's time to take back "their"
Stanley Cup?
Those are the big questions.
What's that? You don't see any questions
about the Eastern Conference? Well, the entire East is one big question mark, but none
of the answers appear to indicate an ultimate champion.
Basically, you can split the playoffs into two distinct camps. Forget the
terms East and West. Much like the "playoffs" in the America's Cup races, the NHL should
rename these two conferences as the Defender series, and the Challenger series.
The "Defenders" are out West. The last four Cups have been awarded to
teams from the Western Conference, with a couple of Detroit championships
sandwiched by Colorado in 1996, and Dallas last season.
Handicapping the Western Conference
What you've got in the West this season is a two-class system. The group
of four elite and hungry teams, and then a group of four which appear to be
nothing more than first-round appetizers.
|
ODDS TO REACH FINALS
|
|
Team
|
Odds
|
|
Colorado
|
2-1
|
|
St. Louis
|
2-1
|
|
Detroit
|
2-1
|
|
Dallas
|
2-1
|
|
Los Angeles
|
12-1
|
|
San Jose
|
15-1
|
|
Phoenix
|
20-1
|
|
Edmonton
|
30-1
|
Those four appetizers are the Edmonton Oilers, Phoenix Coyotes, Los
Angeles Kings, and yes, the San Jose Sharks.
In the first round, the Blues, who will likely be missing Pavol Demitra (concussion), will meet either the Sharks or Oilers. It should not matter. The Blues drilled the Sharks during the regular season 3-0-1, and did the same with the Oilers
4-0-1.
The Blues have so much depth, they overcame stretches without both Pierre
Turgeon and Al MacInnis during the regular season. The game plan against the Blues will be to try and punish their forwards, so you can expect a very physical series.
The biggest question concerning the Blues will be Turek. Remember, he
started the season slowly as he was suddenly a No. 1 goalie, and then played
wonderfully when he got over those jitters. In the playoffs, there is no time to adjust
to those jitters, so he has to be confident from the start.
The Dallas Stars have battled through a Stanley Cup hangover, and injury
problems, all season. They appear to have their game in order as the playoffs begin,
and goalie Ed
Belfour has never been a problem -- at least ON the ice.
What the Stars have to regain quickly is the swagger of a champion. If
there is a top team to go down early in the West, Dallas would be the upset candidate,
especially if the Stars face the Sharks, a team which beat them in the regular season, four games
to two.
The Colorado Avalanche have an injury issue with Peter Forsberg. However, there is little chance the Avs will lose the first-round series to a Phoenix team
which again stalled around Christmas -- and even without Forsberg for a game or two, or
even the entire first round, the Avalanche should reach the second round.
The management in Phoenix might be praised for holding the line on free
agent goalie Nikolai Khabiboulin -- who, by the way, came into this week with a 1.16
GAA and .937 save percentage with Long Beach of the IHL -- but wouldn't his
presence make a big difference?
The Coyotes can only hope that Jeremy Roenick reverses his second-half fade, Keith Tkachuk plays like a man out to prove he's worth $8.5 million next year, and the Avalanche take them lightly. None of which is going to occur.
In San Jose, there is no dancing in the streets about the mad scramble to
save a playoff spot. The Sharks should be able to count upon Owen Nolan to return from a shoulder injury, but his healthy shoulders are not big enough to get the
Sharks past more than a round or two.
For whatever reason, the Sharks dealt away goalie Mike Vernon at the mid-point. They will find out over the next week, or weeks, if they can now count
upon goalie Steve Shields.
No matter what happens, the Sharks are built for a bright future, as
defenseman Brad Stuart would be a wise choice for this season's rookie of the year. Maybe, they'll be a more popular choice to win the Cup next spring; this is just a season too
early.
Detroit is likely to have a stubborn opponent in Los Angeles, and the
Kings will certainly have a new wrinkle or two devised by first-year coach Andy Murray.
Ultimately, no matter how game and well coached, the Kings do not have the weapons to
hang with the Red Wings.
It says here that the top four get through the first round, which would
set up the "round from heaven" in the second. How about Detroit and St.
Louis, with Dallas and Colorado?
The road is paved for a four-team quarterfinal series which boasts the
past three Cup champions -- Dallas, Detroit and Colorado, combined with a St. Louis team
which had the best record in the NHL this season. There will be enough Stanley Cup
rings in this round to open a hockey jewelry store, and it should produce some gems in
terms of hockey games.
It's not hard to imagine a rejuvenation in Detroit where Nicklas Lidstrom has quietly had a marvelous season, and Detroit has sort of laid back while St.
Louis has stolen some of the spotlight. In fact, it's not hard to imagine any of these
teams with the Cup in their hands.
However, the best guess here is that Colorado has a healthy Forsberg,
Bourque starts to picture his name on the Cup, Patrick Roy begins to realize he can shine in the twilight of his career ... and the Avalanche and Blues survive to meet in the
conference finals.
In that case, we'll go with emotion over X's and O's. We'll elect to lean
toward the side with the veterans who want it more -- along with some young leaders
and clutch players named Milan Hejduk and Chris Drury -- and pick the Avalanche to come out of the West, but only by an OT whisker against a St. Louis team guided by Joel
Quenneville, who is in no danger of being out-coached by anybody in the
league.
Handicapping the Eastern Conference
Why not just come out and say the No. 8 seed gets the nod to come out of the conference?
|
ODDS TO REACH FINALS
|
|
Team
|
Odds
|
|
Buffalo
|
2-1
|
|
Philadelphia
|
4-1
|
|
Washington
|
4-1
|
|
New Jersey
|
4-1
|
|
Florida
|
4-1
|
|
Toronto
|
4-1
|
|
Pittsburgh
|
5-1
|
|
Ottawa
|
5-1
|
The Sabres have the best in the business with goalie Dominik Hasek, and a couple of late-season trades loaded them up at center. Want a tough team to match against in a series? How about a triple threat of Mike Peca, Doug Gilmour and Chris
Gratton as the third-line middle man?
The Sabres, who got Gilmour and Gratton at the trade deadline, shook off
the slow start, and have played tough hockey over the past eight weeks. They are
the worst nightmare for any team in the East, and isn't it just fitting that the top
seed in the East, Philadelphia, gets to see that nightmare up close and very personal.
It's been that kind of year in the East. One of the best teams, the Devils, fired their head coach with about two weeks left to play. And the Flyers appear to have more cracks than the Liberty bell.
Can't you just see the Flyers winning the Cup and watching as Eric
Lindros hands the Cup to general manager Bob Clarke as they walk around the arena
hand-in-hand?
Neither can anybody else.
Despite the best record in the conference, the Flyers will struggle for
every win in the playoffs, and are as likely to fall in the first round as any top level
team. Then again, is there a real "top level" in the East?
The Devils went south after the first of the year. The Flyers are
dysfunctional. The Panthers rely too much on Pavel Bure, the Leafs too much on Curtis Joseph.
Perhaps the team of choice should be the Washington Capitals. The best in
the East since the turn of the year (31-11-5), and the best home team in the NHL (26-7-8), the
Caps have a great balance of lines. Veteran Adam Oates played all season like a Selke Trophy candidate in addition to passing like a Hall of Famer, and they can march out
six defensemen night after night.
|  | | Capitals goalie Olaf Kolzig is a major reason the Capitals are a threat to go far in the playoffs. |
They've obviously got goal covered with Olaf Kolzig, and coach Ron Wilson is a master motivator. Even the subpar year from Peter Bondra has been masked by an amazing season from Chris Simon. The Washington defense delivers as many hits
as any team in the East, and their short-term memory will recall what it takes to at
least get to the finals.
Amazingly, the Flyers won the conference amid all the off-ice chaos,
and nobody is yet sure if Lindros will ever return to Philly. However, what IS
known is that the Flyers will go into the playoffs with a rookie goalie, Brian Boucher, two
rookie defensemen, Andy Delmore and Mark Eaton, along with a key rookie forward in
Simon
Gagne. If ever a top seed looked ready to get rocked, it's the Flyers.
The Devils are as good a bet to leave early as they are to go all the way
to the finals. If coach Larry Robinson finds the right chemistry, and uses the
relatively new ingredients of Alex Mogilny and Vladimir Malakhov in the right dose, the Devils could make a real run.
And, oh yes, there is that guy Martin Brodeur who knows what it's like to win Cups, as does Claude Lemieux, and Scott Stevens.
Ottawa and Pittsburgh are the funky entries. Not so ironically, they
swapped goalies late in the season, and you wonder if either has what it takes in
that department to make a real run.
The big difference? Jaromir Jagr is in the lineup for Pittsburgh, and
hold out Alexei Yashin has not played all year for the Senators. Pittsburgh will be tough to
match up against at home, where Jagr can get away from whatever check the opposition
has in mind, but not all the games will be played at the Igloo.
It's not impossible that either team can go the distance, but even in the
wide-open East, it is unlikely. It won't be a new experience for either
Washington or Pittsburgh in the first round: The teams met five times in the playoffs
throughout the past decade, with Washington winning only once. But look for a better start in the
next millenium.
The real wild card in the East might be the Panthers. They've got the
game breaker and spirit breaker in Bure, and a coach in Terry Murray who will impose a
playoff tested defensive system to go along with that offensive threat.
And, courtesy of the Sharks, the Panthers have Vernon in goal, a guy with
a couple of Stanley Cup rings.
It's not likely you could call a single outcome in the East an upset.
So, through these glasses, it looks like Hasek and the Sabres
get back to the final again, this time facing Patrick Roy and the Avalanche. And, in the end -- Bourque gets his name on the Stanley Cup.
Maybe.
Al Morganti covers the NHL for ESPN. |
