When Ducks Fly

By Helene Elliott

June 4, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. —

If it’s Wednesday, it must be New Jersey.

Again.

Which means the odometer on the Mighty Ducks’ playoff travels passed 19,000 miles when they returned here to prepare for Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals, to be played Thursday at the Continental Airlines Arena.

And they have many miles to go before they sleep.

They will return to Anaheim -- 2,417 miles, according to the csgnetwork.com Web site, which calculates the distance between airports -- and if the series goes seven games, the Ducks will have to fly east again to play in New Jersey next Monday, adding nearly 5,000 miles to their travels.

The Devils, by contrast, have traveled fewer than 10,000 miles in the playoffs -- 9,144 according to the distances listed on the csgnetwork.com site.

While the Ducks were traversing three time zones to play Detroit in the first round, two time zones (twice) to play Dallas in the second round and back to Central time to face Minnesota in the Western Conference finals, the Devils had it easy. Their first trip was to Boston, 198 miles each way. Tampa was 985 miles each way. Only in the East finals did they have to do laundry: they made three round-trips to Ottawa to win that series in seven games.

Even then, it wasn’t a huge strain. Ottawa is about 324 miles away and within the Eastern time zone. In fact, before the Devils were in Anaheim for the first two games of the finals, they hadn’t been outside their own time zone since March 5, when they played at Calgary.

“Yeah, it’s a lot of travel,” Duck defenseman Keith Carney said Tuesday, after the team’s charter flight arrived in New Jersey. “We get a break right now because we get an extra day, but we’re going to have to go back and maybe come back again.

“It tests you a lot.”

No wonder no team based in the Pacific time zone has won the Stanley Cup since 1925, when the Victoria (Canada) Cougars defeated the Montreal Canadiens.

True, for many years the NHL didn’t have West Coast outposts. But between the major expansion of 1967, which re-established a West Coast presence with teams in Los Angeles and Oakland, and this spring, teams in the Pacific time zone have advanced to the finals merely three times. The hardy finalists were the 1982 Vancouver Canucks, who lost in four games to the New York Islanders; the 1993 Kings, who lost in five games to the Canadiens, and the 1994 Canucks, beaten in seven games by the New York Rangers.

To get to the 1993 finals, the Kings had to get through Calgary (six games, two round trips), Vancouver (six games, two round trips) and Toronto, a seven-game series in which they crossed the continent three times. After winning the seventh game at Toronto they went straight to Montreal for the finals. After returning to Los Angeles, they had to go back to Montreal for the fifth and final game.

Wayne Gretzky believes the Kings’ long and winding playoff road, which followed a typically grueling regular-season travel schedule, worked against them in the 1993 Cup finals. By contrast, the Canadiens’ matchups had taken them to Quebec City, Buffalo and Long Island, all on Eastern time.

“It was a crazy division,” Gretzky said of the mileage the Kings accumulated in 1993. “There was a lot of travel involved. Not taking anything away from Montreal because they deserved to win the Stanley Cup, and good for them, but that might have had something to do with it.

“We saw a stat when [the Canadiens] came to L.A., it was the first time they left the Eastern time zone since February or something. We were a little haggard.”

Barry Melrose, then the Kings’ coach and now an ESPN commentator, agreed.

“People don’t understand how hard it is to play in the Western Conference, with the travel and stuff, and to do what we did and play so hard every night,” he said.

Recent expansions and franchise moves that placed teams in Anaheim, San Jose, Vancouver, Phoenix and Dallas have eased the travel burdens for West Coast teams. But after making their first major trip in three months, the Devils are glad they don’t have to play today and have an extra day between Games 4 and 5.

“That was one of the points, at the start of these playoffs, is that they’re probably used to the travel situation more than we are,” Coach Pat Burns said. “I think the two days will definitely be to our advantage and it will definitely be beneficial to us.”

He also suggested the unaccustomed travel might have factored into his team’s two overtime losses at Anaheim in Games 3 and 4, but rejected the notion his players’ body language after the Ducks tied the series indicated the Devils were discouraged.

“Two games in overtime, it’s very difficult to say that your team was down,” he said. “If you get swamped 6 or 7 to 0, then you can say, ‘Boy, we’ve got a problem here,’ but I don’t think it’s a problem.

“I think travel might have something to do with it. The time change might have something to do with it. But I don’t think this team’s down. Certainly I’m not. We’re still excited here and we’re dying for this game to get going again.”

Duck forward Rob Niedermayer, who played in the East with Florida and rarely experienced the kind of travel he has done lately, acknowledged the miles can take a toll. But at this point, it’s mind over mileage.

“You reach the point in the finals where you’re playing on adrenaline, anyway,” he said. “Yeah, it tests you. It’s a lot of travel. But it’s the way it’s got to be. These are the finals.”

Times staff writers Jerry Crowe, Lisa Dillman and Chris Foster contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Road to the Finals

Miles traveled in the Stanley Cup playoffs for New Jersey and the Mighty Ducks:

NEW JERSEY

VS. BOSTON

One trip to Boston 198 miles

One trip to New Jersey 198 miles

Total: 396 miles

VS. TAMPA BAY

One trip to Tampa 985 miles

One trip to New Jersey 985 miles