DETROIT — The temperature inside Joe Louis Arena on Friday night was in the low 90s to start Game 7 of the Western Conference finals. Hot enough for a meltdown. What a meltdown it was for the Colorado Avalanche and goalie Patrick Roy.
The Avalanche wasn’t just beaten by the Detroit Red Wings in the showdown to see who would play for the Stanley Cup. The Avs were embarrassed. For the second time in six seasons, the Avalanche was dethroned as Stanley Cup champion by the Red Wings in Detroit, as the Wings won by a football score, 7-0.
Scoring goals on their first two shots and four of their first eight, the Red Wings made it a rout in shockingly quick fashion. By the middle of the second period, Roy was pulled from the game for the first time in a Game 7 of his long playoff career, having allowed six goals on 16 shots. It was the Avs’ most lopsided playoff loss in franchise history. The Red Wings advanced to the Finals to play the Carolina Hurricanes. Game 1 will be Tuesday night in Detroit.
“It was a bad dream. That’s for sure,” Avalanche defenseman Greg de Vries said.
Only it wasn’t a dream. The lesson again for the Avs was, if you’re going to play a Game 7, try to play it at home. For the third time in the past four seasons, the Avs lost a Game 7 of the Western finals, all on the road. In all three series, the previous two against Dallas in 1999 and 2000, the Avs had a chance either to end the series or put themselves in commanding position to win it. All they had to do in each case was win a game at home, but they couldn’t. The Avs will look back on Game 6 at the Pepsi Center on Wednesday night as the one that got away this time.
“We had a chance to do it at home,” Avalanche captain Joe Sakic said. “But we just didn’t come out like we needed to. I thought we were ready to play tonight, and felt real good, but things just didn’t go our way at the start.”
The first period was a total train wreck for Roy, now 6-6 in Game 7s. Just 1:57 into the game, the Wings were on the scoreboard, when defenseman Steve Duchesne put a shot on net from the blue line that was inadvertently tipped into the net by de Vries. One minute and 20 seconds later, Sergei Fedorov took a harmless-looking slap shot from the left boards that Roy normally stops 10 times out of 10. Not this time. Fedorov’s shot deflected off Rob Blake’s stick and then hit Roy’s right arm as he tried to knock it away, and it glanced into the net. It was 2-0 just like that, and the crowd noise was deafening. It would only get louder. Luc Robitaille and Tomas Holmstrom scored goals later in the period, and Brett Hull and Fredrik Olausson got two more in the second. After Olausson’s goal, Avalanche coach Bob Hartley decided enough was enough, and pulled Roy.
“They played well. You have to give them credit,” Roy said. “It’s disappointing to go out like this. We definitely did not play our best game, and it was not my best game. I thought we battled hard all year, but we just came up a bit short.”
“You imagine and you pray for something like this,” Hull said. “But you don’t realistically think that it’s going to happen.”
The Avalanche was outscored 9-0 in the final two games, and has been outscored 14-3 in the last three Game 7s on the road. Asked if the Avalanche just finally ran out of gas from playing too many games and battling through too many injuries, Sakic said no. “There’s no excuses,” he said.
