The NHL playoffs have arrived, and not a moment too soon. After a regular season marred by ham-handed scorers, fighting goalies, skates in the crease, contract holdouts, injuries that shelved star players (Paul Kariya, Eric Lindros, Mike Modano) for a month or more and the sophomoric high jinks of U.S. Olympians in Nagano, the 1997-98 highlight tape could have been shot with an MRI machine and a security camera. All of which makes this Stanley Cup tournament so critical. If the postseason is magic, it can make the regular season disappear.

The playoffs have their own rhythm: Teams play almost every other day, with short practices and more film work than Matt Damon. There is a passion to these games, a sense of purpose far more noble than earning money. After all, if a team needs, say, 25 games to win the Cup, each player's cut of the $1.75 million winner's share works out to little more than $3,000 a game—hardly a bounty for eight weeks' work. But most NHL players revere the postseason because it triggers memories of childhood, when they played for kicks and a trophy at the end-of-season banquet, although not one that weighed 35 pounds and had the names Howe, Richard, Orr and Gretzky engraved on it.

This is our seven-step program for winning the Cup.

1. Avoid Sabres goaltender Dominik Hasek in the early rounds

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Swift but smallish Buffalo has a gang of forwards who all look as if they wear 40 regular, a spotty defense and a bleak playoff history of only two series victories since 1984, but Hasek can win one or two rounds by himself. After finishing with 13 shutouts and a .932 save percentage—Hasek has topped the latter category for five straight seasons—the human Gumby has validated himself as the world's best player. (That's a tag hung on him by Gretzky, an expert on the subject.) The only thing missing on Hasek's résumé is a memorable playoff performance.

Last year he was sidelined by a mild knee sprain in Game 3 of the Sabres' first-round series against the Senators, an injury some believed he could have played with. That triggered a bizarre incident in which Hasek punched a reporter who had suggested the goalie's problem was more mental than physical. Playing without Hasek, Buffalo went on to beat Ottawa, then lost to Philadelphia. However, his gold medal performance for the Czech Republic in the Olympics removed any lingering doubts about his nerve.

Even though Hasek has never won a playoff series, he's the one goalie no team wants to meet.    (Bill Wippert)

"These playoffs are really important for Dominik," says Bruins coach Pat Burns. "With that contract he recently signed [a three-year, $23 million extension] and what happened last year, he's still got something to prove. But he's at the top of his game. He's like an excellent pitcher. Get him some runs, he wins. The Sabres know that if they get one goal, they might win. If they get two, they usually do win."

2. Come up with an unsung hero

Blues coach Joel Quenneville says that in the playoffs your best players have to be your best players—logic as circular as a Hasek goose egg—but few teams have won a Stanley Cup without help from unlikely sources. Grinding forwards Joe Kocur, a former beer leaguer, and Darren McCarty each scored an artistic goal in last year's Cup finals for the champion Red Wings. Those two players joined a list of small-timers who came through big time in the past dozen years, including Brian Skrudland, who scored a record nine seconds into overtime for the Canadiens in Game 2 of the 1986 finals; Petr Klima, who was buried deep on the Oilers' bench in Game 1 of the '90 finals until he was finally given a shift and scored at 55:13 of overtime; John Druce, who spent a third of the '89-90 season in the minors, then scored 14 goals in 15 playoff games for the Capitals, including four game-winners; Stephane Matteau, whose wraparound goal in double overtime of Game 7 in the '94 semifinals against the Devils allowed the long-suffering Rangers to play for the Cup; and Randy McKay, who had eight playoff goals in New Jersey's Cup run in '95, three more than he scored in the regular season.

"You know other players are going to have to carry you a little because your stars are going to be checked [very closely] in the playoffs," says Kings coach Larry Robinson, who finished his 20-year Hall of Fame career with Los Angeles. "I remember when we played the Oilers in '92, and Edmonton put Esa Tikkanen on Gretzky. The coaching staff here played Gretzky 28 or 30 minutes a game. Tikkanen almost single-handedly controlled him, and the Oilers won, a perfect example of how dangerous it is to expect one guy or one line to carry you. If our [Jozef] Stumpel line is being checked, I'm going to look to my second and third lines."

3. Be ready to play 60 minutes—and more

In an era of constipated offense, the number of sudden-death overtime games has zoomed. In 1980, when first-round series were best of five, a then record 13 overtime games were played in the Stanley Cup tournament. In the past nine years there have been an average of 17.4 overtime matches per postseason, including 28 in '93, when Montreal won the Cup with wins in its last 10 OT games. Last season Detroit won three games in sudden death against Anaheim in the second round.

While overtime success is rooted in goaltending, depth becomes a factor when ESPN Hockey Night turns into Good Morning America. Conventional playoff wisdom suggests teams shorten their benches in the postseason, but the four 70-second TV timeouts per period that coaches use to rest their top lines in regulation vanish in overtime. "You hope you have a decent fourth line that can eat up [overtime minutes equal to] what would have been the TV timeout," Burns says. "It depends on how you approach overtime. I tell my guys [to play cautiously], but some teams go out and shoot their bolt. Teams like us will be looking to play long overtimes."

4. Win the first round

Have we mastered the obvious or what? In the past four years top seeds have twice lost to the No. 8 team (Detroit fell to San Jose in '94, and Quebec lost to the Rangers in '95), and No. 2 seeds have been eliminated four times. Last year Edmonton used speed and superior goaltending to knock off second-seeded Dallas, even though the Stars had won all four regular-season meetings with the Oilers by a cumulative score of 18-6.

There are surprises in the first round because the series format and the sudden rise of intensity can be a shock to the players' systems after they have meandered through the seemingly endless regular season. "It might be the most difficult round to get out of because everything is fairly even," says Maple Leafs coach Mike Murphy, whose team didn't qualify for the '98 postseason but who has 11 years of playoff experience as a right wing for three teams from 1971 to '83. "The adrenaline is pumping. Mental strength and endurance are very important."

If referees call games tightly, then the Blues, with power-play specialists such as MacInnis, will be tough to beat.    (David E. Klutho)

5. You need special play from special teams

The $1.75 million question is, How will referees call the games, especially obstruction? If the annual spring rodeo returns—when some of the striped shirts figure, no autopsy, no foul—then power plays and penalty killing will be as important as ever. But if the league continues its war on obstruction and there is a constant flow of players to the penalty box, something that has yet to happen in the postseason, then the Blues' potent power play with sniper Brett Hull and dangerous point men Al MacInnis and Steve Duchesne, could practically win a Cup by itself.

"Most playoff teams match up pretty evenly skating five-on-five," Robinson says. "The team that gets knocked off is the team that takes the most penalties and doesn't kill them. You don't want to give five or six power-play opportunities a game because that's asking for trouble." That theory would seem to favor a tough, disciplined team such as New Jersey, which allowed the third fewest power plays—and the second fewest power-play goals—during the regular season.

6. Do not self-destruct

There is a long, inglorious history of postseason suicide that stretches from Boston coach Don Cherry, whose team was assessed a penalty for having too many men on the ice in the dying moments of Game 7 of the '79 semifinals in Montreal, to Oilers defenseman Steve Smith, who shot the puck off the leg of goaltender Grant Fuhr and into his own net in Game 7 of the '86 quarterfinals; from defenseman Marty McSorley, who was penalized for an illegal stick when the Kings were 1:45 from taking a 2-0 lead back to Los Angeles in the '93 finals, to Philadelphia coach Terry Murray, who labeled his team's performance in the finals last spring a "choking situation."

As important as avoiding odd acts of self-destruction, teams must not give up soft goals. Consider: Jacques Lemaire's shot from center ice that beat Chicago's Tony Esposito and turned Game 7 of the '71 finals in Montreal's favor; Ron Francis's 65-foot bouncer in '92 that eluded Mike Richter with the Rangers poised to take a 3-1 series lead back to Madison Square Garden in the second round against Pittsburgh; and Flyers goalies Garth Snow and Ron Hextall fanning on 55-footers in last year's finals.

"Those bad goals can just zap the life out of a team," Robinson says. "It's not so much what you keep out but what you let in."

7. Stick with one goalie

In the last 25 years no team has won a Stanley Cup without a clear-cut No. 1 goaltender. In '96 Red Wings coach Scotty Bowman vacillated between Chris Osgood and Mike Vernon and lost in the semifinals, but then avoided making the same mistake last year by starting Vernon in every game. On the other hand, in the finals against Detroit, Philadelphia shot itself in the head playing netminder roulette with Hextall and Snow. On Monday, new Flyers coach Roger Neilson named Sean Burke, who was acquired for Snow in March, the starter for the postseason, distancing himself from Murray's blunder in '97.

With overtime games more common these days, deep teams like Bobby Holik's Devils have a big advantage.    (Al Bello/Allsport)

Montreal coach Alain Vigneault, who divided the team's work almost evenly between veteran Andy Moog and youngster Jocelyn Thibault, seems prepared to ride out the playoffs with the 38-year-old Moog. Ottawa's Jacques Martin, meanwhile, is going with Damian Rhodes over Ron Tugnutt, although neither is going to scare anyone. Those are the goalies and those teams better stick

to them. So who will take home the coveted trophy? There will be a long, bumpy ride in the Western Conference, where the three established powerhouses—Dallas, Detroit and Colorado—have been joined by a fourth, St. Louis. However the Red Wings can win either by banging or with finesse, and they should advance to the finals, assuming Osgood's goaltending holds up.

The class of the Eastern Conference is the Devils. New Jersey will scuffle for goals and won't play the most eye-catching hockey, but it is more committed to its system than the 15 other playoff teams are to theirs. "The bottom line," says Robinson, a New Jersey assistant when the Devils beat Detroit in the 1995 finals, "is winning the Cup."

That's what the Devils will do.

Issue date: April 27, 1998