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Goalies can steal a playoff series. In few best-of-sevens does the best goaltender lose, so in the short run, he is the most important player to a team.
But if the goalie has to be the best player in every series, all the way through
the Stanley Cup finals, then his team is not good enough. The Mighty Ducks were
beaten last June when Jean-Sebastien Giguere turned human in a finals not exactly
dominated by the Devils' Martin Brodeur, the game's most accomplished active
goalie. In fact, one series earlier, in Game 7 at Ottawa, Brodeur allowed two
mediocre goals, but his team won anyway, 3-2.
During the two months of the playoffs, the Stanley Cup-winning team will at some point have to pick up after a goalie, so success means having a guy who excels at picking up the puck and carrying it from danger. Specifically, the winner needs the kind of fast, smart and tireless defenseman who has proved to be even more critical to going the distance than a star goaltender. He must be a guy who can be counted on to play well and play often when the game, the series, the season, are on the line. Last year, the Devils had this player in Scott Niedermayer. The Mighty Ducks did not.
The Red Wings won with Mike Vernon in the nets in 1997 and repeated with Chris Osgood in 1998. Although each rose to the occasion, neither will ever rise to deliver Hall of Fame induction speeches. Instead, many credit minute-munching Nicklas Lidstrom for playing a larger role in the Red Wings' triumphs in those years.
Puck-moving, reliable defensemen have helped to turn aside such finals upstarts as the Ducks, Hurricanes, Sabres, Capitals, Panthers and Canucks. Each of those teams had hot goalies and strong systems that ultimately couldn't hide pedestrian defenses.
"You can't go four rounds with the goalie carrying the load," Flyers general manager Bob Clarke says. "If shots come from scoring areas, eventually the puck goes in."
So you need the guy who, for 30 minutes or more, keeps the puck away from the slot. Even defensemen known for physical play, such as Scott Stevens of the Devils and Derian Hatcher of the Red Wings, move the puck well in addition to blocking shots, standing up to the game's top power forwards, keeping the opposition's speed to the outside and blocking passing lanes.
"(The elite defenseman) gets you out of danger by playing minutes against top people others aren't capable of playing," says former coach Mike Keenan, who rode Brian Leetch to the Rangers' 1994 Cup win. "They have the puck so often, they alleviate pressure."
Sometimes these elite defensemen work better in pairs. An example is Hatcher, who works better partnered with an offensive type such as Sergei Zubov, his teammate with Dallas, as Stevens works better with Niedermayer.
Stevens' physical play against the Stars' grinders made him the obvious Conn Smythe Trophy choice in 2000. Against a quicker Mighty Ducks team, Niedermayer should have been the Smythe winner instead of Giguere. This year will be different because Stevens is sidelined indefinitely by a concussion.
In the playoffs, it's more important that these defensemen play the kind of minutes coaches wouldn't dream of giving them in the regular season.
"For me, the playoffs becomes 'How good are your top four?' " says Ken Hitchcock, who coached the Stars to their Cup win in 1999 and is trying to do the same for the Flyers. "You don't practice much; there's time off between series. You can get away with it."
In 1987, when the Flyers played 26 playoff games in 54 nights and lost to the Oilers in the finals, Keenan relied on Mark Howe, a three-time Norris runner-up, for up to 39 minutes a game.
"It was always easy for me to skate, so a 33-minute-a-game load wasn't as hard as it would have been for most guys," says Howe, now a scout for the Red Wings. "But that was as tired as I've ever been.
"Today, the long TV timeouts, all that trapping and more time off between series keep guys on the ice as much as ever, even with the hurry-up faceoffs."
Playing a lot means rationing the number of rushes you make -- picking your spots. "I could play Lidstrom 30 minutes against their best guys because he would take few chances," says former coach Scotty Bowman, who won each one of his nine Cups with a Hall of Fame defenseman. "Most guys who play a lot, it's not easy for them to jump on the attack."
Hitchcock says: "An elite player's stamina also comes from smarts. Zubov is the only player I've coached who I swear could play the whole game. I've seen him in multiovertime games. He knows how to conserve energy.
"Guys like (Chris) Pronger, (Chris) Chelios, (Rob) Blake are almost freaks of nature. While the puck whirls around, they are in front of the net actually resting. Blake goes to the bench, leans on the boards, waits for the change, then comes back. I've coached in playoff games he was on the ice for every second in the defensive end."
If you've got 'em,
flaunt 'em -- for 30 minutes or more a game.