Detroit 2, San Jose 0 When two teams who fail to live up to their organizations and fans expectations in recent years, meet in the playoffs, one team is going to continue being on the outside looking in.
The Detroit Red Wings may have shed their title as the Western Conference’s biggest playoff underachievers and found a team in teal to take their place.Chris Chelios and Nicklas Lidstrom spent nearly all of Game 6 alternating turns on the ice, desperately grinding on their aging legs to keep the Detroit Red Wings ahead. “I thought (San Jose) just played the most physical game of the entire series,” Lidstrom said after playing 29 minutes to Chelios’ 26-plus. “You could tell that they were a desperate team. They were getting the puck in on us and putting a good forecheck on us the entire night.”
All for naught.
Mikael Samuelsson scored two first-period goals, Dominik Hasek posted his 13th career playoff shutout and the Red Wings moved on with three straight victories in their second-round series, beating the deflated San Jose Sharks 2-0 Monday night. “We feel pretty good about ourselves,” Chelios said. “I just hope we can keep our momentum going and our success going. We know we’re playing another great team.”
Talk of momentum shifts and any Sharks fan will probably leave the conversation. The Sharks blew a lead in each of their first three losses to Detroit, but the Red Wings made sure that wasn’t happening again. Samuelsson scored two first-period goals, giving him three in the last two games after not having scored in 16 previous playoff games. “It felt great,” Samuelsson said. “But it felt great to win. We didn’t want to go back and play Game 7.”
Hasek made 28 saves as he earned his third shutout in his last five series-clinching opportunities with the Wings (he also shut out St. Louis and Colorado in 2002). Hasek allowed one goal to Carolina in the 2002 Stanley Cup Finals and Calgary in the first round this season. Hasek made 10 saves in the second period (San Jose outshot the Wings 10-5), the best possibly being on Sharks forward Steve Bernier on a partial breakaway.
“I’m shocked at where we put ourselves in the series and how we let it get away,”
Coach Ron Wilson said. “I’m not totally shocked that Detroit beat us. They finished ahead of us in the standings. But we worked really hard to get a 2-1 lead in the series and also in Game 4 we had a 2-0 lead in the game and the way we lost it toward the end.That’s where the series went right out the window.”
“It’s tough when you have it happen pretty much the same way two years in a row,” right wing Jonathan Cheechoo said.
Sharks goalie Evgeni Nabokov said: “I’m not saying that we would’ve won the series if we won Game 4, but I would say we would definitely be going to a Game7.”
“I would say this was a pretty complete team,” Nabokov said. “We had all the pieces.”
The pieces just fell apart the last three games and the San Jose Sharks are going home after a 2-0 loss, again, same as last year.
