WESTERN SEMI-FINALS
GAME SUMMARIES
GAME 6:
#1 DALLAS STARS vs #5 ST. LOUIS BLUES
Dallas wins 4-2
Next Game: Dallas advances to the next round vs Colorado
Brett Hull, a star for 10 years who scored 527 goals with the St. Louis Blues, helped eliminate his former team from the playoffs as a setup man.
Mike Modano scored on a rebound of Hull's shot at 2:21 of overtime as the Stars knocked off the Blues in six games with a 2-1 victory Monday night. Hull also assisted on Derek Plante's goal late in the third period.
"Brett was really into the game, playing hard," Modano said. "He was probably hungrier than anybody. He did all the grunt work."
The Blues also were impressed.
"Hull played pretty well," coach Joel Quenneville said. "I think it was his best game of the series."
Throughout the series, Hull maintained he had no special incentive to beat his former team. He and the Blues parted ways last summer because the team refused to give him a no-trade clause, then they ended up giving one to Al MacInnis.
"It's something that I wanted to do, but I'm not going to say it's more satisfying," Hull said. "But in a situation like this you've got to take those memories and put them in the back of your mind and remember that I play for Dallas."
On the game-winner, Hull skated around the net with the puck and shot a low backhander into Grant Fuhr's skates. Modano was stymied on his first rebound shot, but the second got through for his fourth goal and 11th point of the playoffs.
Four of the last five games in the series between the NHL's regular-season champions, who had 114 points, and the Blues, who had 87, went to overtime. Each team won twice.
"We were expecting to win the series," Blues center Craig Conroy said. "It's going to be a long summer thinking about little things here and there. For a while, this one is going to sting."
The Stars now await the winner of the Colorado-Detroit series in the Western Conference finals. Colorado leads 3-2.
"We'd love to have another crack at Detroit," Modano said of the team that beat them in the conference finals last season. "That's what we're hoping for."
Plante tied it with 6:02 to go in the third-period with his first point in six playoff games.
MacInnis scored his first goal of the second round on his 29th shot for the Blues, who went to overtime in seven of their 13 postseason games. St. Louis won four of them, including a double-overtime victory over Phoenix in Game 7 of the first round.
"I don't think anybody can question the character of this team, to come back against Phoenix and to battle the best team in the league," MacInnis said. "I think everybody in this room can certainly keep their head held high."
Plante tied it with a soft sliding shot that went between teammate Mike Keane's legs in front of the net before eluding Fuhr. Fuhr had just righted himself after being accidentally tripped by MacInnis.
Plante, who had six goals and 20 points in the regular season for Buffalo and Dallas, was a healthy scratch in Games 4 and 5.
The Blues scored first for the first time in the series. MacInnis, who ended the postseason with four goals and 12 points, one point behind team leader Pierre Turgeon, beat Ed Belfour at 6:51 of the second period.
With time winding down in a hooking penalty to the Stars' Joe Nieuwendyk, Turgeon won a faceoff and kicked the puck to Jeff Finley, who moved it along to MacInnis at the right point. His rising slap shot soared past Belfour for his 12th point of the playoffs just as Nieuwendyk's penalty expired.
The Blues came out strong in an effort to avoid falling behind early for the sixth straight game. They got two good chances by rookie Jochen Hecht in the opening minute, with the crowd already chanting BEL-FOUR!, BEL-FOUR! Neither team ended up with the early jump in the first scoreless first period of the series.
#2 COLORADO AVALANCHE vs #3 DETROIT RED WINGS
Colorado wins 4-2
Next Game: Colorado advances to the next round. vs Dallas
It's all over for the Detroit Red Wings, who saw their hopes for a Stanley Cup Threepeat come crashing down Tuesday night.
And -- again -- it was the Colorado Avalanche who did them in.
Peter Forsberg scored twice and Colorado goaltender Patrick Roy continued his outstanding play as the Avalanche beat the Red Wings 5-2 to win their second-round series in six games.
"It's not that we didn't play well," said Steve Yzerman, the Red Wings' captain. "we just couldn't score goals. It was just so frustrating."
Milan Hejduk, Chris Drury and Joe Sakic also scored for Colorado. Nicklas Lidstrom and Darren McCarty scored for the Red Wings.
"It was a tough game and we gave it everything we had," said coach Scotty Bowman, who never won another game after the Red Wings gave him No. 200 in the playoffs by winning the first two games against the Avalanche. "We came back, but a couple plays here and there hurt us.
"But, overall, when you lose four straight like we did...," he said before his voice trailed off.
Roy, extending his NHL playoff record for wins to 107, had 35 saves. Chris Osgood had 26 saves for the Red Wings, who were attempting to become the first team to win three successive Stanley Cup championships since the New York Islanders won four straight between 1980-83.
"Patrick's a winner," Colorado defenseman Adam Foote said. "We all know it here. We just followed his lead."
It was the fourth straight win for the Avalanche, after falling behind 0-2 by losing the first two games on their home ice in Denver.
It was only the fourth time in team history the Red Wings had lost three home games in a playoff series, and the first since 1966 against the Montreal Canadiens.
"To win four straight against Detroit, I never thought we had a chance," Roy said. "But we had no choice. We put ourselves in a really bad position, losing those two games in Colorado.
"Winning three games in Detroit, it's not every team that can do that."
With the victory, the Avalanche -- who eliminated Detroit in the 1996 Western Conference finals en route to the Stanley Cup title -- move on to the conference finals for the third time in the last four years. They will face the Dallas Stars for the right to play in the Cup finals.
Forsberg broke open a tight first period, sending a hush over Joe Louis Arena, with his fifth goal at 16:15. After snatching the puck near center ice, Valeri Kamensky skated in on Osgood from the right circle.
As Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios gave chase, Forsberg glided in on the left side. When Osgood finally committed, Kamensky slid the puck over to Forsberg for an easy goal into an almost-empty net.
"It was an awesome feeling, coming back from 0-2," Forsberg said. "Everybody's been stepping up, from the last guy to the first guy. And Patrick's been great in net."
The Red Wings, on the brink of elimination for the first time in three years, seemed tight during the period. None of their 11 shots gave Roy much trouble. Osgood, meanwhile, was at times brilliant at the other end, yet still trailed at the first intermission.
The Avalanche, as they did in Game 3, broke it open with a powerful outburst to start the second period. In the third game, they scored three times in a span of 2:15 en route to a 5-3 win. This time it was three in a span of 4:02 to put an end to any dreams of a Detroit Threepeat.
Hejduk scored his fifth goal at 4:12 when he got his stick down between the circles to deflect Aaron Miller's shot from the point past Osgood.
Drury's third goal, at 5:46, went under Osgood's stick. Sakic's second goal, at 8:14, only added to Detroit's humiliation since the Avalanche were shorthanded.
Still, the Red Wings managed to bring the partisan crowd back to life with two goals in a 29-second span late in the period.
Lidstrom scored his second goal on a power play at 17:24, ending a scoreless streak of 98 minutes, seven seconds dating back to the third period of Game 3. McCarty made it 4-2 with his first of these playoffs at 17:53.
"It seemed like when Nick got the goal, it gave us a jump," Detroit forward Brendan Shanahan said. "Then, after Mac scored, I thought it was really going to happen."
Forsberg scored an unassisted goal with 6:29 remaining.
Since 1996, Colorado is 6-1 in Game 6 when leading a series 3-2 going in.