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Given a Snoball's Chance, Wings Bury Avalanche
By Viv Bernstein
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 27, 1997; Page D1
DETROIT, May 26 — The Detroit Red Wings had waited a year for this moment, a year of anguish, embarrassment, frustration, even anger.
The Red Wings will tell you they have won nothing so far, and it's true. They don't yet hold the Stanley Cup, which they haven't won since 1955. But with tonight's 3-1 victory over the Colorado Avalanche in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals, the Red Wings eliminated the team that knocked them out of the playoffs a year ago. And finally answered their doubters.
"Right now, we're thrilled," left wing Brendan Shanahan said. "There's a lot of history between these two teams. To knock off the Stanley Cup champions and to play the way we did is exciting."
Indeed, the Red Wings had been the overwhelming favorites to take the Cup last season, having won an NHL-record 62 games in the regular season. But in a bitter, mean-spirited series, it was the Avalanche that prevailed in last year's conference finals on the way to winning the Stanley Cup.
This time, the Avalanche was favored to repeat and the Red Wings the underdogs. Now Detroit, winner of the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl as Western Conference champion for the second time in three years, will battle Philadelphia for the Cup in the best-of-seven series beginning Saturday in Philadelphia. While the Red Wings will be looking to end their long championship drought, the Avalanche will be looking for answers.
"Every year you go for it, but when you're expectations are so high and you don't achieve them, that's the most frustrating thing," Avalanche captain Joe Sakic said. "We didn't play up to our potential. It's one thing to lose by playing great. But getting outplayed the way we got outplayed, we have a better team than what we showed. They had the hunger."
It was that way throughout the series, the Red Wings dominating the first four games to take a 3-1 lead. But after the Wings were blown out of Game 5 Saturday in Denver, 6-0, the doubts began again. The Wings treated Game 6 as if it was the final game of the series — a must win — knowing a trip back to Colorado for a Game 7 would be potentially disastrous.
"I told the team" on Sunday, Coach Scotty Bowman said, "that in today's hockey, it's so hard to get through to the finals, they would rue the day if they didn't show up [tonight] and play the game of their lives. When you can knock out a Stanley Cup champion in one game, you've got to do it."
And Detroit did, despite a near perfect performance by Colorado goalie Patrick Roy. He made 39 saves, the Red Wings buzzing the net all night while the Avalanche struggled to keep the puck out of its end.
"Patrick kept us in the game and gave us a chance to steal one but you can't, at this time of the year, try to steal games," Colorado Coach Marc Crawford said. "Our hats go off to them. They were by far the better team in this series."
Better because their stars played better when it counted. Center Sergei Fedorov, who missed nearly 20 minutes of play after a bruising check in the first period left him breathless and sick to his stomach, returned to score the game-winner early in the third period.
"I lost my breath for a while," Fedorov said. "I couldn't catch it for quite a long time. I felt kind of dizzy, I almost threw up. I guess this came with the intensity of the game. When you want something a lot, those things happen. As soon as I was able to breathe right, I felt fine."
Fedorov buried his rebound at 6 minutes 11 seconds of the third, giving the Wings a 2-0 cushion and padding a lead built on right wing Martin Lapointe's second-period goal.
Detroit appeared to need the cushion after right wing Scott Young ended Red Wings goalie Mike Vernon's shutout bid with 5:12 remaining in the third. But the victory was assured when Shanahan scored an empty-net goal in the final minute.
"It was a relief," Fedorov said. "We beat a pretty good team. I guess we feel like we wanted it really bad, more than anything probably in our lives, to win this game and get a chance at the Stanley Cup."
