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Fab four NHL's remaining quartet full of intriguing storiesPosted: Friday May 09, 2003 4:53 PMUpdated: Friday May 09, 2003 5:28 PM
To preview the NHL's conference finals, SI.com spoke to Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Farber, who likes the depth of the Senators and the Wild. SI.com: Is New Jersey vs. Ottawa a clash of styles or of two teams that play similar transition games very well? Farber: There are stylistic differences. New Jersey head coach Pat Burns has carried on a lifelong affair with his checkers, so the third lines on his teams are the de facto stars. Ottawa approaches the game slightly differently because of its great speed and even better transition game than that of the Devils. The Senators will push the play a little more. There is that contrast, but both teams are rooted in defense first, so there's not as much of a boxer-vs.-puncher difference. Overall, though, I think Ottawa has more firepower. The Senators can score from a number of lines and rarely have to depend on their goaltending to the extent that New Jersey does with Martin Brodeur. SI.com: What are the keys to the series? Farber: Beyond goaltending, it is how well the checkers play for New Jersey and whether the Devils can generate some offense from the back end. Scott Stevens scored a big goal against Tampa Bay after coming back from nearly having his ear ripped off, which must make him Vincent Van Goal. The other key is the power play -- both teams have been excellent on the penalty kill. SI.com: Is Ottawa capable of sending New Jersey into one of its scoring slumps? Farber: Ottawa is sound enough defensively to put anyone into a slump, but the Devils tend to do it to themselves. There isn't a plethora of great scorers there. Once you get past Patrik Elias, there are no obvious home run hitters on that team. Ottawa, on the other hand, can score. The Senators are explosive. They have one position -- right wing, with Marian Hossa, Martin Havlat and Daniel Alfredsson -- that's flat-out embarrassingly good. New Jersey has had a relatively soft ride to this point, but the Devils have a tough six or seven coming up against Ottawa. SI.com: Each team will be facing the best opponent it's seen to this point in the playoffs. Will the disparity in time off figure into the early part of the series? Farber: Both are well rested; New Jersey might be over-rested, but that sorts itself out rather quickly and we shouldn't obsess over it. SI.com: Can Brodeur steal the series? Farber: Oh, yeah. Brodeur is the goalie remaining in the playoffs who's most comfortable protecting a one-goal lead, and the Devils are the team most likely to give that to him. If New Jersey wins, it's not going to be a stolen series, though. The Devils are a capable team. This isn't a bank job. It's not even knocking off a 7-Eleven. SI.com: Will the outcome of the series affect the way Ottawa does business or is viewed as a franchise? Farber: In the case of the first question, no. Ottawa has a business model and will stick to it no matter what happens. And it's not as if the Senators are playing with house money here. But they have moved beyond the old label of softness and the old knocks against them. Even a loss to New Jersey would not tarnish the reputation, nor would the additional home dates affect the bottom line so significantly that Ottawa would put a lampshade on its head and begin signing free agents willy-nilly. General manager John Muckler identified some of the soft spots on the team and filled them with players such as Bryan Smolinski and Vaclav Varada. Clearly this is a tougher team, but by tougher we don't necessarily mean being physical, but the willingness of players such as Hossa to fight through the traffic and the challenges of good physical teams. Ottawa has not won the Cup yet, though it is the odds-on favorite at this point, but the Senators have won a few series and extra amounts of respect. SI.com: Whom do you see as the series MVP? Farber: Patrick Lalime. I like the way he's playing, and I like Ottawa to win a low-scoring series. The Senators might break loose in one game, but I think we're looking at games of 2-1, 3-2, and in close games we look to the goaltenders. SI.com: Moving to the Western Conference, which team is the better story, Anaheim or Minnesota? Farber: That's like asking which is the better amusement park, Disneyland or Disney World? These are both terrific stories, improbable teams coming out of a conference that was top-heavy with Dallas, Detroit and Colorado. That being said, neither team was exactly a no-hoper. Anaheim had a terrific second half, led by the strong play of Jean-Sebastien Giguere and some extraordinary moves by general manager Bryan Murray, who picked up Sandis Ozolinsh, Steve Thomas and Rob Neidermayer to give some gravitas to a team that might have been blown away in the first round without them. Minnesota was strong all season, finishing with 95 points, although the second half was not quite as productive as the first. Trevor Linden of the Vancouver Canucks told me in January, when people were wondering if they were for real, that not only would the Wild make the playoffs, but they also had a chance to beat somebody. Now the Wild have beaten two teams, including Linden's Canucks. SI.com: Is Minnesota's rise at all comparable to what the expansion Panthers did several years ago? Farber: There are certain similarities. One, they are teams that think defense first. Two, they both have one star. In the case of the Panthers, it was goalie John Vanbiesbrouck. For the Wild, it's right wing Marian Gaborik. Also, Minnesota is an expansion team in its third season, as Florida was when it reached the Stanley Cup final in 1996. The differences, however, are more stark. The Panthers were a plodding, mostly veteran team who played a very static neutral-zone trap and tried to squeeze the life out of every game. The Wild, while not highly skilled, are a much quicker team that uses its defense to generate offense, with amazingly quick counterattacks. A better analogy, at least in terms of style, is the 1995 Cup champion Devils, also coached by Jacques Lemaire, who counterattacked with speed out of the neutral-zone trap. The difference is those Devils were bigger and more talented than the Wild. SI.com: Can a defensive-oriented team like Minnesota generate enough offense to beat Giguere? Farber: The Wild has had an unbelievably successful power play, which seems to have come out of thin air. A subpar power play during the season has managed to produce routinely in the playoffs, often in the dying seconds of the power play. But Minnesota has several elements of what you want in an effective power play: a good shooter from the point in Filip Kuba, a playmaker in Sergei Zholtok, a creative player in Gaborik, and Andrew Brunette, who does not have Todd Bertuzzi's size but still can create some havoc around the net and has a good pair of hands, which helps him with deflections and stuffing in rebounds. SI.com: Will Giguere ever cool off? Farber: Giguere already has cooled off, if you look at the last two games, Games 5 and 6, against the Dallas Stars; he was mediocre in Game 5 and merely solid in Game 6. Of course, there has to be some kind of a dropoff, because for the first eight games of the playoffs Giguere was playing at a level that the NHL perhaps has never seen over that extended a stretch. So some kind of falloff was inevitable. But people who think of Giguere as merely a hot goalie are missing the point: He is a good goalie -- highly technical, good on angles and superb on rebound control, an area of the game that undermined Dan Cloutier of the Canucks. Giguere is a scientific goalie in the mold of Patrick Roy, not surprising because both were schooled by current Ducks goaltending consultant Francois Allaire. SI.com: What are the keys to this series? Farber: Anaheim needs more from Paul Kariya. Kariya is the only player among the 24 highest-paid in the game who is still alive in the playoffs, and while he has had some moments, he rarely has looked like a $10 million player. The Ducks have managed to advance in a slew of close games based on sound goaltending and opportunistic goal-scoring, but a few breakout games by Kariya would simplify Anaheim's task. The Ducks also have to continue shutting down star players, a job that has fallen mostly to Steve Rucchin, one of three NHL players who played Canadian college hockey and one of the most underappreciated players in the game, and Keith Carney, a savvy defenseman. Look for coach Mike Babcock to use them against Gaborik's line whenever he can get the matchup. For the Wild, the playoffs are all about goaltending, as Dwayne Roloson proved again. You have to go back about 20 years to Grant Fuhr and Andy Moog sharing the job in the Oilers' first Cup in 1984 to see a tandem working so successfully. Remember, this is a team that has won two Game 7s in the playoffs with different goalies. Roloson is playing at a higher level than Manny Fernandez, however, and he needs to continue to play well, especially early in the game when Minnesota often seems tentative. Another key for the Wild is patience -- continuing to probe for turnovers and then making something out of them when they do have them, because Anaheim, as good a transition club as it might be, does not have the speed that the Wild has, especially at forward. The only key forward on Minnesota who does not scoot is Zholtok, but he has excellent hands and instincts. SI.com: Who's the MVP in this series? Farber: Gaborik. He has burst out of his shell, even while hindered by a touch of the flu. Over the course of a long series, he will have an opportunity to showcase a rare talent that seemed to falter in the second half of the regular season. Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Farber covers the NHL for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. |
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