WESTERN QUARTER-FINALS
GAME SUMMARIES
GAME 3:
#1 DALLAS STARS vs #8 EDMONTON OILERS
Dallas leads 3-0
Next Game: Tuesday April 27th, 1999 9:30pm at Edmonton
Even though they're making it tough on the Edmonton Oilers, the Dallas Stars haven't made it easy for themselves in their Western Conference series.
For the second time in the series, the Stars spotted the Oilers the early lead before coming back to win 3-2 Sunday night.
"I'm proud of how we came back because they're a young aggressive hockey club and they're not going to go away," said Dallas coach Ken Hitchcock after his team took a 3-0 lead in the best-of-7 series. "I thought that when we turned it on in the third, we got our game going and made the most of our chances."
Ryan Smyth had scored power-play goals in the first and third periods before the Stars rallied to win on late goals by Mike Keane, Mike Modano and Joe Nieuwendyk.
"There's not much to choose between these two hockey clubs right now," added Hitchcock. "Every game has been a one-goal game and the difference between winning and losing is a pretty fine line. That's why this game is so important for us because we stayed on the right side of that fine line."
The Oilers had a tough night, with two goals disallowed.
"It's hard to take, but we know we could look at ourselves for the reasons," Smyth said. "After we got our second goal, we sat back a little and let them take control of the game. They shot the puck when they had an opening and good things could happen when you do that."
The top-ranked Stars can finish a sweep with a victory Tuesday night against the eighth-ranked Oilers.
Only two teams in NHL history have come back from 3-0 deficits in a best-of-7 series -- the last the New York Islanders against the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1975.
Dallas eliminated the Oilers in five games in last year's conference semifinals. Keane scored Dallas' first goal on a long wrist shot and Modano popped in a rebound at 10:20 to tie it.
Nieuwendyk then beat Oilers goaltender Tommy Salo with a 50-foot wrist shot at 12:32.
Nieuwendyk skated to the edge of the left circle and put a shot over Salo's glove that gave the Stars their third one-goal victory in as many games.
Dallas also won for the second time in the series when trailing after two periods.
#2 COLORADO AVALANCHE vs #7 SAN JOSE SHARKS
Colorado leads 2-1
Next Game: Friday April 30th, 1999 7:30pm at Colorado
Mike Ricci insisted it was nothing personal.
But after scoring four points against his former team Wednesday night, you had to wonder. Ricci, who played on Colorado's Stanley Cup championship team in 1996 but was traded to San Jose on Nov. 20, 1997, sparked the Sharks to a 4-2 victory to cut the Avalanche's lead in the best-of-7 first-round series to 2-1.
Games 4 and 5 are scheduled for Denver on Friday and Saturday nights.
Wednesday night's game was the first at McNichols Arena for the Avalanche since the Columbine High School tragedy on April 20. Before the game, the crowd observed a moment of silence for the victims.
Because of mourning over the shootings, the first two games of the Western Conference series, originally scheduled in Denver, were postponed, and the series opened in San Jose instead.
"We knew we had to come out and play hard in Game 3," Ricci said. "That was our only goal, to win Game 3. Our guys battled hard. But we're still down 2-1 and now have to look to Game 4."
Asked if he drew motivation from playing against his former team, Ricci said, "No. I get up for playing in the playoffs, for playing in big games. That's all behind me. It's a couple of years now for me. I'm in a teal sweater and I love it here."
All four of San Jose's goals were scored by a newly formulated line of Ricci, Marco Sturm and Owen Nolan. Ricci had a goal and three assists, Sturm scored two goals, and Nolan added an empty-netter.
Asked his reason for the change in lines, Sharks coach Darryl Sutter said, "No particular reason. We had been saying we had to get more opportunities from different sources."
Sturm said it was "great to play with Ricci and Owen. Those two guys pushed me a lot."
Ricci, who scored in the first period, helped put the Sharks ahead at 9:52 of the third period when he stole the puck from Adam Deadmarsh at the blue line and fed Sturm, who beat Patrick Roy from the right circle.
Barely three minutes later, Ricci shoveled the puck ahead to Sturm on a breakaway, and Sturm's second goal made it 3-1 at 13:08.
Deadmarsh cut the deficit to 3-2 with a power-play goal at 18:09 while Roy was off the ice, but Nolan then scored into an empty net at 19:21.
Sharks goalie Mike Vernon had 34 saves in gaining his 76th playoff victory, fifth on the all-time list. Roy, the all-time playoff winner with 101 victories, turned in 29 saves. "You can talk about the forechecking," Avalanche coach Bob Hartley said, "but the bottom line is they (Sharks) had one word in their dressing room that we didn't: desperate. They played with lots of desperation and they deserved to win, plain and simple."
Colorado captain Joe Sakic said Ricci "is a player. We can't leave him free next to the net. We have to do a better job of putting a body on him. In general, we found ourselves standing around a lot instead of forechecking."
After Colorado failed to score on four straight power plays early in the first period, San Jose went ahead 1-0 on its first power-play opportunity.
Ricci, battling Colorado defenseman Greg de Vries just left of the goal, deflected Jeff Norton's long shot past Roy at 15:18.
A sprawling Roy avoided further damage late in the period, robbing Stephane Matteau on a point-blank shot.
The more active, aggressive Sharks outshot Colorado 15-8 in the period.
Colorado killed off a 5-on-3 penalty for 1:24 of the second period, and a half-minute later Peter Forsberg made it 1-1 with a controversial goal.
Theoren Fleury came out of the penalty box, took control of the puck and fed Forsberg. Forsberg, being ridden down by Mike Rathje, took a shot that was deflected by Vernon. But as Forsberg slid head-first toward the right post, he appeared to punch the puck with his glove into the net.
Vernon protested, but referee Lance Roberts ruled it a goal after consulting with the replay official.
Vernon made a diving save to rob Milan Hejduk early in the third period, and Nolan missed an open net when Roy and defenseman Aaron Miller came out to cut down his angle on a breakaway.
#3 DETRIOT RED WINGS vs #6 ANAHIEM MIGHTY DUCKS
Detriot leads 3-0
Next Game: Tuesday April 27th, 1999 10:30pm at Anahiem
With five goals in three games, the Detroit Red Wings' Steve Yzerman has scored just one fewer than the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.
Yzerman had the go-ahead goal in the second period Sunday as the Red Wings, who swept Anaheim in the Mighty Ducks' only other year in the playoffs, took a 4-2 victory to move to the brink of another sweep.
"Things are going his way," Detroit coach Scotty Bowman said after Yzerman scored with the Red Wings holding a two-man advantage. "He's around the net, he's picking up rebounds, and he really has good energy and is really focused."
Up 3-0 in the best-of-7 series, Detroit can wrap it up by winning Tuesday night in Anaheim.
Red Wings defensemen Chris Chelios and Niklas Lidstrom again shackled the Mighty Ducks' high-scoring duo of Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya. Selanne, who led the NHL with 47 goals this season, didn't so much as get a shot on goal, and Kariya had three shots, only one in the last two periods.
Lidstrom also assisted on Detroit's tying and go-ahead goals, as the Red Wings came back from a 2-1 deficit in the second period.
Heading into the third game, Bowman didn't want the Red Wings feeling too secure despite their 2-0 lead.
"I told the players that these are dangerous games," he said. "I told them to play like they were down (in the series), even with a two-game advantage."
The Red Wings, who outmuscled and outhustled the Mighty Ducks in the first two games, capitalized on a critical error in judgment by Anaheim defenseman Stu Grimson in Game 3.
Yzerman's goal came with Travis Green in the penalty box for elbowing and Grimson in the dressing room after getting a five-minute match penalty for checking Kris Draper into the glass from behind.
Grimson's penalty, for deliberate attempt to injure, came with an automatic game misconduct -- and probable suspension by the league.
"That was very undisciplined," Anaheim coach Craig Hartsburg said. "You can't do that in the playoffs. You hate to learn those kind of lessons at this time of the year."
Grimson readily admitted that he messed up.
"I thought the game turned on that moment," he said. "It was overly aggressive and it was inappropriate."
The two-time defending Stanley Cup champions swept Anaheim in four games in a second-round series two years ago, the Mighty Ducks' first time in the playoffs.
With the score tied at 2, Yzerman got the puck behind the Ducks' net, skated to the right of the crease and jammed the puck past Guy Hebert on his own rebound for his sixth point of the series.
Slava Kozlov gave Detroit a two-goal lead when he knocked his own rebound past Hebert 1:54 into the third period.
The Red Wings' Tomas Holmstrom had evened it 2-2 on a disputed goal 1:51 into the second period. Brendan Shanahan passed the puck to Holmstrom, parked just outside the crease, and the puck hit Holmstrom's skate and flipped into the air.
Holmstrom batted the fluttering puck over Herbert's left shoulder. The Mighty Ducks claimed Holmstrom's stick was above the crossbar, but after a review, the officials let the goal stand. It was Holmstrom's second of the series.
Shortly afterward, Grimson drew his costly penalty.
"I still think it was a high stick," Hartsburg said of the Detroit goal. "But then we cracked and it gave them the game."
The Red Wings again got off to a quick start. Just 1:43 into the game, Sergei Fedorov sailed a 30-foot slap shot past Hebert for his first goal of this year's playoffs and 38th of his career.
"If you score early, everybody kind of feeds off that," Bowman said. "They came back, but we still would have been down by two instead of one if Sergei hadn't gotten that goal."
The Ducks, who crumbled after falling behind by three in the first period of a 5-1 loss in Game 2, this time fought back to move ahead 2-1 on power-play goals by Marty McInnis and Jason Marshall later in the first period.
McInnis knocked in a rebound at 9:33, and Marshall, a defenseman, scored the first playoff goal of his career at 15:14, beating Osgood with a slap shot from high in the right circle.
The Red Wings, who won the opening game 5-3, are dominating the Mighty Ducks more than they did in the 1997 sweep, when they went to overtime in three games.
"The difference is that before, we were playing them when they hadn't won a Stanley Cup," Anaheim's Paul Kariya said. "Now they've won two and they've got all the confidence in the world and they know how to win."
#4 PHOENIX COYOTES vs #5 ST. LOUIS BLUES
Phoenix leads 2-1
Next Game: Tuesday April 27th, 1999 7:30pm at St. Louis
The Phoenix Coyotes became the first team in months to make Grant Fuhr look his age.
The 36-old St. Louis Blues goaltender gave up three goals in the first 8:31 and surrendered four on 10 shots before taking a seat as the Coyotes regained control of their first-round playoff series with a 5-4 victory Sunday.
"It just didn't go well," Fuhr said. "You can't make excuses at playoff time. It's a bad time for it not to go well."
Coach Joel Quenneville said he didn't know whether he'd go with Fuhr or backup Jamie McLennan in Game 4 Tuesday night in St. Louis.
"We'll think about it," Quenneville said. "Grant's been very good for us."
Louie DeBrusk, who didn't have a point in 15 regular-season games, scored two goals on two shots for the Coyotes, who lead the series 2-1. Keith Tkachuk scored his first goal and point of the playoffs and Dallas Drake added his second goal and fifth point for Phoenix, which led 4-0 at 2:35 of the second period.
DeBrusk, 28, was an unlikely big gun. He played for four minor league teams during the season and has 20 goals in 297 career games.
"I'm not a big scorer, obviously," DeBrusk said. "You can look at my stats, they don't lie. The guys were joking, saying, `Go for the hat trick,' but I was more concerned with playing a sound defensive game."
Phoenix, scoreless in the first period of the first two games, took only 10 shots the last two periods as the Blues played catchup. The Coyotes were outshot 38-18 and needed a strong game in goal from Nikolai Khabibulin.
Pavol Demitra and Terry Yake scored power-play goals in a 12-second span late in the second period for the Blues. Geoff Courtnall made it three goals in three power plays when he deflected a drive by Al MacInnis at 5:51 of the third to cut the gap to 4-3.
Shane Doan scored into an empty net with 50.8 seconds to go, which turned out to be a big goal after Blair Atcheynum connected for St. Louis with 14.5 seconds left.
Fuhr struggled early in the season, but was 9-4-3 with a 2.10 goals-against average down the stretch after recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery. He rarely played on consecutive days this season and his followup after playing in a 4-3 overtime loss Saturday in Phoenix was a disaster.
Drake scored off a drop pass from Stephen Leach on the Coyotes' first shot at 3:46 of the first, although Fuhr may have been screened a bit. Tkachuk converted a cross-ice pass from Robert Reichel on shot No. 6 at 7:19 during a power play. Fuhr tried to cut off the angle on another Coyotes rush at 8:31 but DeBrusk slipped one past him on shot No. 7.
Fuhr was then benched in favor of McLennan, but for only 27 seconds. He was gone for good after DeBrusk beat him with an innocent shot from beyond the blue line that skipped beneath his pads at 2:35 of the second to make it 4-0.
Besides the two quick goals, the Blues' most entertaining moment came when McLennan abandoned the usual goalie practice of staying out of fights. He pummeled Reichel, necessitating a late rush down the ice by Khabibulin, during a dust-up that sent eight players to the penalty box at 3:48 of the second.
"Tkachuk got knocked into me and I fell on him and we were both down there," McLennan said. "I think he ended up coming up swinging at somebody and somebody gave me a bump from behind and then I don't know, it just kind of ended up getting silly."
Khabibulin said it's only the second time he's ever gone end-to-end.
"I just wanted to make sure we weren't outnumbered," he said. "I wasn't going to fight with anybody."
The Coyotes' lead has rendered moot both team's finishing stretch in the regular season. The Blues were 6-1-2 and the Coyotes lost five of their last six, plus lost leading scorer Jeremy Roenick for the playoffs with a broken jaw