As the Warriors vs. Cavaliers and Sharks vs. Penguins series simultaneously continue, I was moved to look back and count.
I’ve been lucky.
I’ve covered the NHL or the NBA Finals 13 times.
It started with the Canucks-Islanders Stanley Cup Final in 1982.
Four times — twice in Portland and twice in Denver — I was writing about a “local” team competing for a championship. The other times, I was an “outsider.”
This is a hockey column, of course, so bear with me. I’ll get around to an ultimate plug for the merits of the Stanley Cup playoffs. But this takes some background.
Because of the transcendent nature and impact of the superstars involved, two of the three most memorable Finals for me were in the NBA.
Those series:
1984: Lakers (Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) vs. Celtics (Larry Bird). For Game 7, the Boston Garden was a sauna and even the rats were sweating.
1992: Bulls (Michael Jordan) vs. Trail Blazers (Clyde Drexler). What I won’t ever forget was Jordan hitting six 3-pointers — and shrugging about it at one point — while scoring 35 points in the first half of Game 1.
2001: Devils (Scott Stevens, Alex Mogilny, Martin Brodeur) vs. Avalanche (Joe Sakic, Patrick Roy, Ray Bourque .. with the spleenless Peter Forsberg watching).
In the NHL, the catch is I never covered a Final with Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux. Their championship teams certainly were star-driven, as were the Avalanche’s two title teams. But it’s different in hockey. You’re as likely or more likely to remember Colorado’s Alex Tanguay (2001) and Pittsburgh’s Max Talbot (2009) scoring twice in Game 7s as you are the stars.
That said, the specific most memorable moment for me after that Avalanche 2001 Cup win also was about star power, but in a way that illustrated what at times makes hockey unique.
That was Sakic’s touch pass of the Stanley Cup to Bourque after Tanguay’s two-goal Game 7.
I was going to self-consciously say I realize that’s a weird thing to remember above most else, but thought about it for a moment and realized that many share that opinion — and that Bourque’s long-awaited visceral yell and moist eyes capture the essence of the Cup’s allure. And it also was a terrific seven-game series, full of dramatic swings, culminating with the Avs winning the final two games.
There can be no disputing that the Stanley Cup routs all other trophies … and so decisively, the mercy rule should be invoked. But it’s not just what the trophy is, it’s what it represents.
The NHL calls its championship round the Stanley Cup Final. That’s because it really is about a four-round chase for that trophy, for the right to hold it overhead, for the right to take it to a hometown, wherever it is, for a day. It is about becoming immortal with a name engraved on the Cup.
The NBA does not call its championship round the Larry O’Brien Trophy Finals. Somebody holds it up, but the spotlight and the confetti and the hats and the parades and the T-shirts and rings are the things. The trophy might not be an afterthought, but it is not a fixation.
This year — and all years — the Stanley Cup Final represents the climax of pro sports’ most relentlessly testing run, both physically and mentally. That’s why it’s almost unfair and even misleading to isolate the NHL Final for evaluation.
Home ice doesn’t mean as much as home court. Anyone in the playoff field can win the championship and upsets abound in earlier rounds. When was the last time you could say that about the NBA?
In the NBA, the Thunder-Warriors series in the Western Conference finals was so compelling, it should have been played on ice. It was Avalanche-Red Wings in a Western Conference series in the rivalry’s prime.
The Stanley Cup being held overhead can be as much about what happened in the earlier rounds, and about resilience, as it is about what unfolded when the Cup was in the building, being handled with white gloves.
The NBA Finals, especially if the major marquee names get there, often are “better” than the Stanley Cup Final.
But the NHL playoffs almost always are “better” than the NBA playoffs.
