MacInnis Sparks Blues’ Victory

Al MacInnis had a goal and two assists, and the St. Louis Blues defeated Phoenix, 3-1, Thursday night at Phoenix to take a 1-0 lead in the first-round Western Conference playoff series.

Grant Fuhr had 26 saves and didn’t give up a goal until Robert Reichel put a wrist shot past him with 1:52 left. But the Blues’ steady defense secured the victory when MacInnis picked up a loose puck and sent it to Scott Pellerin for an empty-net goal with 41.1 seconds remaining.

Fuhr also assisted on the play as he improved to 87-44 in the postseason, with 16 victories in 17 games against the former Winnipeg Jets. His 87th victory moved him one behind No. 2 Billy Smith on the all-time playoff-victory list. Colorado’s Patrick Roy leads all goalies with 99.

The Coyotes, completing their third season in Phoenix, had home ice for only the third time in 14 postseasons and for the first time in 14 years, and they were 10-3 in first-round openers.

But MacInnis took the white-clad crowd out of it with an early goal, and the Coyotes seemed dispirited without top scorer Jeremy Roenick, who sustained a broken jaw and thumb against Dallas three games before the regular season ended.

The crowd wore white in honor of a longtime franchise tradition called a “White-Out” carried over from when the team was in Winnipeg.

Phoenix, which was next-to-last in power-play scoring, failed to score in six such chances and was saved from an even bigger loss only by Nikolai Khabibulin’s 24 saves, many in the face of short-handed breakaways by St. Louis.

New Jersey 3, Pittsburgh 1--Petr Sykora scored twice and the Devils started making amends for recent playoff failures at East Rutherford, N.J.

Martin Brodeur had 24 saves, Patrik Elias set up two goals and Jay Pandolfo scored into an empty net as the Devils struggled more than expected against the eighth-seeded Penguins, who had more good scoring chances than New Jersey.

Jan Hrdina was the only Penguin to beat Brodeur, but the Devils’ goaltender had to come up with at least seven good stops to prevent Pittsburgh from tying the score at 2-2. His best were glove saves against Jaromir Jagr late in the second, another on Kip Miller with 3:27 to play and a pad save with 2:07 left on a shot by Jagr in full stride.

It was what the Devils’ needed to prevent doubts from starting to creep in again in the postseason. New Jersey, which has been the conference’s best team in the regular season the past three years, was eliminated by Ottawa in the first round last year and by the New York Rangers in the second round two years ago.

The Penguins played without Alexei Kovalev, a 23-goal scorer who sprained his right wrist Sunday in the season finale.

Boston 2, Carolina 0--Unlikely scorers Rob DiMaio and Ken Belanger had third-period goals as the Bruins won at Greensboro, N.C., in the Hurricane franchise’s first playoff game since 1992.

DiMaio had seven goals during the season and Belanger had two, but the pair scored 5:47 apart to break a scoreless tie and give the Bruins a 1-0 lead in the series.

Byron Dafoe, who led the league with 10 shutouts, stopped all 19 shots by the Southeast Conference champion Hurricanes.

Carolina, which moved from Hartford, played most of its first playoff game in the state of North Carolina without veteran Ron Francis. Francis, the team’s best player in the second half of the season who appeared in all 82 games, injured his right ankle midway through the first period and skated only one shift from the second period on.

Carolina also went without playoff veteran Paul Coffey, who missed the game because of a hamstring injury.