Monday, May 5, 2008
The Perils of Playoff Hockey
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On Saturday evening, a garden-variety weekend sports report by Joe Trahan of WFAA (Dallas' ABC affiliate) foretold of the possible but seemingly unthinkable doom that the Dallas Stars could be facing in the next few days.
"Only two times in NHL history has a team come back from down three games to none to win a best-of-seven playoff series. The 1942 Maple Leafs and 1975 Islanders both accomplished the feat," Trahan said.
"Guess what? You may not want to hear it, Stars fans, but it's been 33 years."
Joe was right. We didn't want to hear it.
Before mid-October 2004, the down 3-0 comeback was a myth of sorts.
The question would always be asked something like this, "No one's ever comeback from three games down, right?"
"A couple of hockey teams did it way back in the day," the answer would go, with the clear intonation that the two renegade hockey teams didn't truly count. After all, who, other than the oldest Ontarians or the day one Long Island hockey fans remembers actually following a three games to none comeback?
But four years ago, we saw it happen. It doesn't matter that the Yankees/Red Sox ALCS had as much to do with hockey as Buzz Bissinger has to do with sports blogging. It was a seven-game series and a team found their inner Lazarus.
When your team has gone up 3-0 or has been gone up on, the feeling was clear. The series was over.
That sentiment is probably still in effect today, in fact. But for whatever reason, I didn't feel that way after the Stars' 2-1 overtime win over the Sharks in Game 3 to go up three-love. Nonetheless, unsubstantiated hubris led me to call my friend David (the type of hockey fan who probably watches 40-50 regular season Stars games) to say, "Bring on the Wings!"
"Dude, knock on wood! NOW!"
Of course, if this comeback happens, I can't help but feel a wee bit responsible for, as Denny Green would say, "letting 'em off the hook."
And yet, I know that my comments have no effect on a sports team. But these are the tension-stuffed NHL playoffs, where my team losing under these circumstances might have me ill to even look at an ice rink for the foreseeable future.
David and I weren't completely confident after Game 3 because we knew that the Stars hadn't produced the type of dominant performance that resulted in four multiple-goal wins against defending Cup champions Anaheim in the first round. The San Jose series to that point could have credited the Stars with two third periods bossed in Games 2 and 3 and an 18-shot Game 1 win that had all Stars fans saying, "I don't know how we won that game."
Game 4 saw Dallas give up one too many power plays and all-everything (but just back from injury) defenseman Sergei Zubov make a goal-allowing mistake on the blue line on Dallas' power play for the second straight night. Game 5 was aggravating in that San Jose outworked the Stars in the third period, something that has been a Dallas trademark thus far this spring. In addition, two Brendan Morrow goals were disallowed.
The situation Stars fans are in right now can't be helped by the sports developments of the past 24 months in Dallas, where the Mavericks and Cowboys (of which I am a fan of the Mavericks only) have earned the deserved labels of "playoff choke artists" and the Rangers are one of the most consistently irrelevant big-market clubs in any sport.
However, by the time you read this, the Stars will have closed things out at home in Game 6, the last 20 or so paragraphs of "oh, no" can be rendered null, or sports' fourth historic comeback will be just a home win in the Shark Tank away from happening.