A week ago the Avalanche-Mighty Ducks series began in Anaheim, Calif. Based on seeding, both teams were coming off first-round upsets and feeling like they were at the top of their games.
Colorado was undoubtedly the fresher team, having gone four days without a game. The Ducks had just one day of rest, and that day included an early-morning flight from Calgary after winning Game 7 against the Flames.
But what happened in Calgary – or at least in the long series against the Flames – might have doomed the Avalanche before the second-round series began.
The young and inexperienced Ducks – whose average age is 28.2 but have gotten some of their best individual performances from early 20-somethings with no previous taste of the NHL playoffs – began flying in a special pattern in Calgary. They began playing a brand of hockey that led to a franchise record-tying sixth consecutive playoff win Thursday at the Pepsi Center.
Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle, himself a rookie when it comes to NHL head-coaching playoff experience, insists his team’s immaturity and insecurity dissolved in the Flames series and confidence and chemistry was created.
“Hopefully as a coaching staff the message that you send and the experience that they gain through one series provides them with the comfort level to what to expect,” said Carlyle, who was the head coach of the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League from 1996 to 2005. “When you go into a Canadian hockey market as crazed as the Calgary market was at that point, there’s pretty eye-opening situations to be put into, but you don’t know it until you experience it.”
The Ducks’ Game 7 victory at Calgary was their second consecutive win after losing three of their first five playoff games. After sweeping Colorado in four games, Anaheim has outscored its opponents 21-5 during its six-game winning streak and its penalty killing units have not allowed a goal in 36 consecutive disadvantages
“They had that Game 7 mentality coming out of the first series and they didn’t slow down,” Colorado coach Joel Quenneville said of the Ducks.
“You know they are not done,” Avs veteran forward Ian Laperriere added. “They are the team of the future in our conference.”
Goalie Ilya Bryzgalov and left wing Joffrey Lupul were Anaheim’s best young players against the Avs. Bryzgalov, 25, blanked Colorado in Game 1 and Game 2 in Anaheim and Lupul’s four goals in Game 3, the latter in overtime, gave the Ducks a 3-0 lead in the series.
“We got a lot of young guys and that Calgary series was a good indication what playoff hockey was all about,” said Lupul, 22. “It was physical series and it prepared us for this one. We just kept it rolling.”
Captain Scott Niedermayer, who won three Stanley Cups with the New Jersey Devils, said a team is capable of winning it all “when you have that feeling in the dressing room that guys are going to go out there and do things for each other, stick with the game plan and all those sorts of things.”
Mike Chambers can be reached at 303-820-5453 or mchambers@denverpost.com.
