Quick Work Does the Trick

Colorado Avalanche center Peter Forsberg deflected the praise heaped on him Thursday night for his first-period hat trick as swiftly as he deflects pucks past goaltenders.

He tried to downplay his record-tying exploits, but his superb play was undeniable--as was the Avalanche’s superiority in crushing the Florida Panthers, 8-1, and sweeping the first two Stanley Cup final games played at McNichols Arena.

“I just got a couple of lucky breaks,” said Forsberg, who became the sixth player in Stanley Cup final history to score three goals in one period. “As long as you’re working hard as a team, it doesn’t matter who scores the goals. . . . It’s more important over here [than in his native Sweden] to score goals than set up goals. But on our hockey club, we don’t really care who scores the goals.”

Little-used forward Rene Corbet scored twice and center Joe Sakic became the ninth player to collect four assists in a game in the final round as the Avalanche set a franchise record for most goals in a playoff game and cruised to the second-largest margin of victory in the finals.

But it was Forsberg who set the rout in motion with his three goals, one more than Pittsburgh Penguin stars Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr combined to score against Florida in the seven-game Eastern Conference finals.

“If he shot the puck a little bit more, I think he’d be even a greater goal scorer than he already is,” Avalanche Coach Marc Crawford said of Forsberg, the 1995 rookie of the year and fifth-leading scorer in the NHL this season with 30 goals and 116 points. “He’s such an unselfish player. Often a player like that thinks shooting is cheating. He’d rather feed somebody else for a goal than score himself.

“He’s learning that he has to change things up, that sometimes you have to shoot to keep the goaltenders honest. He was kind of lucky on the first goal, which he just squeaked through John Vanbiesbrouck’s legs [with a one-handed swipe at 4:11], but the other two were pretty nice.”

They weren’t nice for the Panthers, who set a franchise record for largest margin of defeat.

“I think we were fully embarrassed,” said Vanbiesbrouck, who was replaced by Mark Fitzpatrick after yielding four goals on 11 shots in the first period. Vanbiesbrouck had previously allowed more than three goals only once in this spring’s playoffs, yielding four to the Boston Bruins on April 25 in a first-round game.

Florida Coach Doug MacLean said he had “no complaints about John Vanbiesbrouck,” and predicted Vanbiesbrouck would return to top form in Game 3 Saturday, when the series shifts to the Miami Arena. Vanbiesbrouck took the blame for the loss and said the flap over having to change the color of the tape on his stick before Game 1 had no effect on his performance Thursday.

But no loss for the Panthers this spring was like this one.

Although the Panthers matched Forsberg’s first goal when Stu Barnes lifted a rebound over Patrick Roy’s left arm at 7:52 in the last second of a power play, they were soon flattened by the Avalanche. Corbet’s re-direction of a shot by Scott Young at 10:43 put Colorado ahead for good and was the first of three straight power-play goals in a span of 4:22, a burst like the second-period spree in Game 1 that lifted Colorado to a 3-1 victory.

“I guess we didn’t eliminate that, did we?” MacLean said, with more than a touch of sarcasm in his voice. “We’ve got to work a little more on that, I guess. I think I’ll spend the flight home working on that.”

Forsberg padded Colorado’s lead to 3-1 at 13:46, finishing a sequence of deft passes. “Sandis and Joe made good plays,” Forsberg said, “and [Vanbiesbrouck] came out and I don’t think he saw the shot.”

He touched off a shower of hats from the sellout crowd of 16,061 at 15:05, batting down the rebound of a shot by Sakic that caromed off the glass and into the slot. “It was just a baseball swing,” Forsberg said modestly, ignoring the timing and positioning needed to pull it off. “I was kind of lucky to hit it in the air as [Vanbiesbrouck] was going up with his glove to grab it in the air.”

Corbet’s wrist shot into the upper-left corner of the net at 4:37 of the second period and Valery Kamensky’s wrist shot at 5:08 put the game out of Florida’s reach before defenseman-turned-forward Jon Klemm added his first two playoff goals.

“I looked down the bench and I thought of all the Dolphins’ comebacks. I didn’t see Dan Marino on the bench and I knew we were really screwed,” Panther captain Brian Skrudland said. “We needed a touchdown to win.”

The Panthers need something close to a miracle. Since the best-of-seven format was introduced in 1939, only three teams have rebounded from a 2-0 deficit in the finals to win the Cup: the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, the 1966 Montreal Canadiens and the 1971 Canadiens. “If we come out and do what we did this evening, we’re going to watch someone else carry the Cup around,” Skrudland said, “and those words just kill me to say.”