NHL STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS : North Stars Eliminate Blues, Face Oilers

Bob Gainey, the first-year coach of the Minnesota North Stars, played on five Stanley Cup champions with some of the best Montreal teams ever and knows a winner when he sees one.

He doesn’t want to hear that Minnesota--the NHL’s 16th-best regular-season team--isn’t a worthy playoff semifinalist.

“If you took our record the last three months, we’re competitive,” Gainey said after his team’s 3-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues Sunday sent Minnesota into the semifinals for the first time since 1984.

“We’re better than competitive. We proved it by beating one team in six games and the next team in six games. We’re the champions of the Norris Division because we deserve it and we earned it.”

Chris Dahlquist snapped a scoreless tie 19 seconds into the third period and Bobby Smith added two goals for the North Stars, the first team since the 1980 New York Islanders with playoff victories over the top two regular-season clubs.

Minnesota stunned Chicago in the first round. St. Louis finished one point behind the Blackhawks and 37 ahead of Minnesota. The North Stars won’t get a shot at the No. 3 team, the Kings, but they will face the defending Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers next.

The North Stars are 17-2-2 at home since Jan. 17, but will be on the road Thursday for the first game of the Campbell Conference finals against Edmonton.

The Oilers, the league’s 11th-best team this season, swept the series the last time the North Stars went this far.

St. Louis Coach Brian Sutter said the better team won this series.

“The finality of it is absolutely devastating. It hurts,” he said. “We played a good hockey club and they deserved everything they got.”

It marked the fourth consecutive year that the Blues finished second in the Norris before losing in the division finals.

“Obviously, this shows that we’ve got to be better,” Sutter said. “We had a better year this year than last and we’ve got to be better again.”

After leading the NHL with a 23-13-4 road record, St. Louis was able to win only one of five postseason road games. The lone victory came in Game 6 of the Blues’ opening-round victory over Detroit, helping them become only the eighth team to ever rally from a 3-1 series deficit.

Dahlquist, acquired from Pittsburgh on Dec. 11, beat Blues goalie Vincent Riendeau on a slap shot from the right point after taking a pass from Neal Broten. Riendeau didn’t appear to be screened on the play. It was Dahlquist’s first-ever playoff goal.

Smith, acquired in the off-season from Montreal for a 1992 fourth-round draft choice, scored his third goal of the postseason on a backhander in front of the net with 16:10 left. Now a 33-year-old role player, Smith was the North Stars’ top player before he was sent to Montreal in a 1983 deal that former General Manager Lou Nanne still ranks as his worst.

For the Blues, Brett Hull scored with 2:42 to play, just his third goal of the series after netting 86 during the season and eight against Detroit.