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DETROIT (Ticker) -- By the time Darren McCarty was through, the hats easily outnumbered the octopuses on the ice at Joe Louis Arena. McCarty made his first career hat trick a natural one as he scored three times in the third period to rally the Detroit Red Wings to a 5-3 victory over the Colorado Avalanche in Game One of the Western Conference finals. Shaken up late in the second period following a collision with defenseman Rob Blake, McCarty got even in the third with his first hat trick in 650 NHL games -- regular season and playoffs. "It's a wonderful effort from a guy who gives his all every game," Red Wings coach Scotty Bowman said. "They were all great goals. I think when you are doing that against one of the greatest goalies ever to play, they were great shots. There wasn't anything lucky about any of them." Just 78 seconds into the final period, McCarty used sliding defenseman Adam Foote as a screen and snapped a wrist shot from the high slot over the glove of goaltender Patrick Roy to end an 11-game postseason scoring drought. "I guess when you only score five during the regular season and haven't scored any in the playoffs, you're due," McCarty said. "Why it happened, who knows? The bottom line is we won. I'll just keep shooting, but by no means am I a goal-scorer. I know my role." With 7:16 remaining, McCarty got a pass from Kirk Maltby at his own blue line, moved into the Avalanche zone and ripped a blast from the top of the right faceoff circle over Roy's left shoulder. That matched his production for the previous 25 playoff games. "It was 2-2 after two, they just got that early one," Colorado captain Joe Sakic said. "On the fourth goal, everybody all of a sudden seemed to lose it. We all thought that it was behind the net and it dropped in the slot and they go down 2-on-1." Three minutes later, Maltby picked off Roy's clearing attempt at the top of the right circle. Roy scrambled back and made a sliding stop on Maltby's slap shot, but McCarty lifted the rebound over the goalie to make it 5-2 as hats -- and an occasional octopus -- littered the ice. "It's my kid's birthday. He put a lot of pressure on me, he wanted a goal," McCarty said, referring to his son, Griffin. "Hopefully, he'll be happy tonight." "I have a better chance of winning the lottery than him getting a hat trick," Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman said. "Three really nice goals. Mac's feeling good when he holds onto it, spins around and puts it in the top corner again." Tomas Holmstrom and Brett Hull also scored for the top-seeded Red Wings, who erased a pair of deficits to maintain home-ice advantage in the best-of-seven series. "It's the playoffs, no doubts. So it's nice to be ahead because (Roy) can steal some games. We know that," said Dominik Hasek, who made 24 saves. "I was glad he gave up a couple goals in the third period." Joe Sakic had a power-play goal and an assist for Colorado, which lost the opener for the second straight playoff series. "Nobody got the job done tonight," Sakic said. "Early on, we had chances to get up one or two. Dominik played pretty well for them. I think we let it slip and they took control in the third." Game Two is here on Monday. "It's a loss and that's all," said Roy, who has won his last nine starts after allowing at least five goals. "We have to come back next game and adjust and try to be better, try to find a way to win games." Colorado got off to a promising start, scoring just 2:48 into the first period on the game's first power play. With Detroit's Brendan Shanahan in the penalty box for interference, Sakic beat Hasek from the left circle for his league-leading eighth playoff goal. The Red Wings tied it on the power play exactly 16 minutes later. After Shanahan sent a shot wide of the left goalpost, Holmstrom was on his backside in front of the net when he swept the rebound past Roy for his fifth goal. The Avalanche regained the lead with 6:24 to go in the second period. Off a 3-on-2, Hasek stopped a shot by Sakic. Alex Tanguay got the rebound and made a one-handed pass across the slot to Milan Hejduk, who had an easy tap-in for his third playoff goal. But Detroit needed less than three minutes to tie it again. Pavel Datsyuk had his shot from the right circle blocked but got back the puck and got off a wrister that Roy stopped with his right pad. Hull put in the rebound for his 96th career postseason tally. "We had our chances earlier to put them away and we had a little bit of a lapse and they capitalized on a couple of chances," Colorado defenseman Adam Foote said. "We just have to not get discouraged. We were in that game, especially early. It seemed like we gave them a little too much room and they made us pay for it." Tanguay got a late power-play goal -- just the third allowed at home by the Red Wings in the playoffs -- to cap the scoring. |
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