IT’S getting old for the Senators, Flyers and Leafs, wait ing for the Devils to get old.
This downsized version of the 2000 team that won the Stanley Cup and the 2001 club that should have needs two new defensemen, a No. 1 center, a scorer, and whoever kidnapped the real Patrik Elias to say what he did with him and bring him back.
When your hot stick in the conference finals belongs to Jay Pandolfo, your only business in getting to a third Stanley Cup final in four years is knowing how to take care of business. By now, this team has an M.B.A. The Devils shook off Game 5 and Game 6 defeats, an early goal in Game 7, an average performance from Marty Brodeur and the inability of Joe Nieuwendyk, their best player in Game 6, to play more than three shifts.
Pat Burns found Nieuwendyk with a tear running down his cheek in the training room and used it for motivation to help the Devils find a way, which was staying within their means better than did the younger team with, in particular, the less experienced blueliners.
Wade Redden, as good a young defensemen as there is in the NHL and as big a disappointment in this series as there was, lost Jeff Friesen behind him and the opportunity to win a wide-open Cup. No forward was watching Redden’s back on the winner, but in the end Ottawa didn’t have a backline strong enough this time to support the weight of its dreams.
Redden was on a knee tweaked in Game 2. If Zdeno Chara wasn’t playing hurt, his performance didn’t recommend him for any future Norris Trophies, and Chris Phillips, dominant against the Islanders and excellent against the Flyers, was ordinary. The Senators’ best guy, Karel Rachunek, coughed up the puck on the second of the two fast Jamie Langenbrunner goals that turned the game around.
The Devils were unrattled by Magnus Arvedson’s score only 3:33 into the game, an unscreened shot from the dot that Brodeur normally gobbles up, because the four defensemen Pat Burns leaned on were better than Ottawa’s. They sealed the slot and the deal, practically the only way the Senators had to get the puck there being the legs and strength of Marian Hossa. The puck wasn’t passed out to many Ottawa chances all night.
“Scott Stevens is the old master that glues this together,” said Burns. “You saw the way they were keying on him and hitting him. He just kept bouncing back.”
Stevens is a 39-year-old freak. No defenseman has ever played this physically, this well, at that age. Scott Niedermayer and Brian Rafalski moved the puck more efficiently than their Senator counterparts, who had a lot of unforced errors and continually were caught flatfooted as John Madden split the middle. Colin White took his piece of whatever came his way.
“Heart is hard to beat,” said Burns, who wouldn’t let his team get down after Radek Bonk beat Brodeur on the short side to tie the game early in the third period. “You’re pushing those guys on because that’s your job.”
The coach has had semifinalists in three of his four NHL stops, finalists now in two. The Devils have 15 players who have won a Cup. The Senators had only Curtis Leschyshyn, a third-pair defenseman. It showed by a little, just enough. At the breakthrough point of the Senators’ first conference final, they broke down, while the Devils acted like they had been there before.
Experience doesn’t guarantee results. But history shows if you have a history of success, it helps, boy, it helps.
