Red Wings Refuse to Suffer to Blues

It was the game that could have ended their season and made them victims of the biggest upset in NHL history, but the Detroit Red Wings refused to panic.

They decided to approach it as just another date on the schedule, removing from their minds the pressure that had interrupted the flow of their trademark high-tempo game. That change in attitude Tuesday was more effective than any of Coach Scotty Bowman’s clever line changes, freeing them to dictate the pace in a 4-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues at the Kiel Center that tied their quarterfinal playoff series at 3-3.

The seventh game will be played Thursday at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena, where the Red Wings are 2-1 in the series and 4-2 in the playoffs. The winner will face the Colorado Avalanche for the Western Conference title.

“We were in a situation where we just decided, ‘Let’s behave and act the way we’d normally act.’ There was no sense in getting uptight,” said Detroit center Steve Yzerman, who played an outstanding game defensively and assisted on Nicklas Lidstrom’s game-clinching goal, scored with 28.1 seconds left in the third period. “We said, ‘Just treat it like you normally do.’ We had nothing to lose.”

All they had to lose was the series and everything they accomplished in winning a record 62 games this season and finishing with a league-high 131 points.

The Blues finished 51 points behind the Red Wings, but that was forgotten when they bumped the Wings and jangled their nerves in winning Games 3, 4 and 5. No team has ever eliminated an opponent that had so large a regular-season point advantage--the biggest gap is the 48-point difference the Edmonton Oilers had over the Kings before losing to them in 1982--and the Blues looked very much the inferior team Tuesday.

“They came out and really out-hit us in the first period and took away what was supposed to be our strength,” Blues Coach Mike Keenan said. “Our team didn’t feel the sense of urgency to begin with, and then they were put on their heels by a very aggressive and assertive team.”

The Red Wings’ main objective was to play with the lead instead of playing catchup, and they accomplished that in the first period. Igor Larionov deflected a shot by Vyacheslav Kozlov past Blues goalie Jon Casey at 10:17 for his first goal of the series, and Kris Draper padded that to 2-0 at 14:05 when he intercepted a bad clearing pass by Casey and ripped it past the startled goalie while the Red Wings were short-handed.

That gave Detroit confidence, and forced St. Louis to open up defensively. Detroit extended its lead to 3-0, on a power-play deflection by Dino Ciccarelli at 9:15 of the third period, before the Blues mounted any pressure on goalie Chris Osgood. Steve Leach and Brett Hull scored within a 59-second span late in the third period, giving the 20,796 fans a brief thrill, but Lidstrom sent them streaming out the doors when he scored on a slap shot from the slot.

“The biggest thing we did was score early. That’s something we’d been wanting to do,” Draper said. “We knew they’d have to do things differently if we had the lead. And once we did, Osgood made some good saves.”

Said veteran Blues defenseman Charlie Huddy: “They came out extra fired-up. They realized the situation they were in, and we didn’t come out the way we should have. I don’t know what it was. You have to give them credit.”

Detroit Coach Scotty Bowman deserved credit for breaking up the previously ineffective all-Russian line of Sergei Fedorov, Larionov and Kozlov and creating two energetic lines that were also strong defensively. Fedorov played instead with Yzerman and Darren McCarty, while Larionov skated beside Kozlov and Keith Primeau.

Gretzky admitted to disappointment that the Blues couldn’t end the series, “especially after we came roaring back to win three in a row and we had so much momentum.” He added, “We go up there to Game 7 and play as hard as we can and see what happens. It’s as simple as that.”

The Blues’ record in seventh games is 4-5. The Red Wings lost their last two seventh-game situations, to San Jose in 1994 and Toronto in 1993. The last time they won a seventh game was 1992, against the Minnesota North Stars--whose goalie was Casey.

“We responded to the situation tonight and you learn how to deal with it. Game 7 is what counts,” Yzerman said. “We get to do it again in the same situation and we have to respond the same way. I’m very confident in our team and I expect us to respond again.”