Red Wings Advance the Cause on Blues

When nothing less than a Stanley Cup will do, the Detroit Red Wings figure there’s no use celebrating along the way.

Brendan Shanahan had two goals and two assists and Dominik Hasek made 16 saves for his third shutout of the playoffs as the Red Wings eliminated St. Louis with a 4-0 victory Saturday in Game 5 of their second-round series.

After the game, the Red Wings were businesslike--not the least bit giddy--despite reaching the Western Conference finals for the first time since 1998, the year they won their second consecutive Stanley Cup.

“I think we’ve got pretty good perspective,” Shanahan said.

Detroit will face the winner of the Colorado-San Jose series. The Red Wings have won eight of their last nine games.

The Red Wings had little interest in dragging out the series with a Game 6 in St. Louis.

“We wanted to win badly to not have to go back and wear out a lot of guys,” Coach Scotty Bowman said. “And maybe not even win.”

Detroit eliminated St. Louis from the playoffs for the fourth time since 1996.

Jiri Fischer and Tomas Holmstrom scored second-period goals and Shanahan sealed the victory with a goal with 3:03 left and then an empty-netter with 41.5 seconds left.

A difficult challenge was made even tougher for the Blues when they lost defenseman Chris Pronger, their captain, to a season-ending knee injury in Game 4.

“It wasn’t the same team,” Hasek said. “They really missed him.”

That fact didn’t make the loss any easier to take for the Blues.

“We were confident in this room; we always thought we’d win this series,” St. Louis’ Jamal Mayers said. “To lose like this is extremely disappointing.”

Detroit broke the scoreless tie at 4:42 of the second on Fischer’s wrist shot from above the left circle. The Red Wings went ahead 2-0 midway through the period when Holmstrom redirected Shanahan’s shot.

Hasek’s shutout was the ninth of his career.