DALLAS – It is what sets high-level hockey apart from every other game. It is, just as much as the skill of a Gretzky or the elegance of a Beliveau or the dignity of a Bossy, what is so compelling about a Stanley Cup playoff series that reaches the level the Western Finals reached in Denver on Friday night.
Playoff hockey at its best is fierce and unrelenting. Hockey players at this time of year are every bit as much warriors as athletes. Hockey at this time of year, the kind of high-risk, high-reward hockey we saw on Friday night in Game 4 of a series that is on the verge of becoming a masterpiece in his own right, is a war of attrition as much as anything else. It is a game of high-speed collisions with malice aforethought. It is not a game for the meek or polite.
The Stars and the Avalanche, the most talented and deepest teams in hockey, also are as mean and as committed as they come. They mean to cause harm and they are committed to emerging from this best-of-seven, even as the last men standing, no matter the price.
“This is what you do in the playoffs,” Claude Lemieux said following the Avalanche’s series-knotting 3-2 OT victory that set up this afternoon’s Game 5. “You have no choice.”
Lemieux appears to have been playing hurt ever since being taken into the wall from behind by Darren McCarty in Game 1 of the Detroit conference semis.
But he is hardly the only one at less than full physical capacity. Peter Forsberg, a super-sized Bryan Trottier who always gives as good as he gets, appeared to have hurt his shoulder when smashed into the boards by the galloping Richard Matvichuk just under two minutes into Friday’s third period.
Of course, Matvichuk paid a price himself for his blow on Forsberg, more of a price than the two minutes he spent in the box for boarding. The defenseman labored to get off the ice, suffering from either a hip, groin or leg problem that kept him out of the remainder of the match and is likely to keep him out of this afternoon’s confrontation.
Matvichuk skates with Derian Hatcher on Dallas’ first defense pair, the one coach Ken Hitchock likes to have on the ice at all times against Forsberg. Of course, if Forsberg is impaired this afternoon (or cannot play), the problem for Dallas is diminished.
Hatcher, himself one of the most imposing figures in the sport, was staggered himself at the 7:30 mark of the third, driven into the wall from behind by Adam Deadmarsh.
All over the ice, while the teams were engaging in spectacular rush hockey that proves the lie that Dallas has to play conservatively in order to thrive, players were hacking at one another. Brian Skrudland and Mike Keane played with a passion that must have been confiscated upon their respective arrivals at LaGuardia two summers ago.
“Both teams are maxing out,” said Hitchcock. “No one is leaving anything behind on the ice.”
Dallas-Colorado is becoming Colorado-Detroit of 1996, an unforgettable series. It is talent, of course. It is skating and skill. But it is more than that. It is 1999 hockey at its most primal.
It is what sets this sport, and this sport’s athletes, apart.