The Red Wings have played the Colorado Avalanche five times in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Twice have they won -- and both years they did, the Wings captured the Cup. In two of the three years that the Avs beat the Red Wings, Colorado won the Cup.
And I have just wasted about five seconds of your time with that first paragraph, unless you believe in omens and history repeating itself and all that other superstitious nonsense. Oh -- I forgot. We're talking hockey, a sport with playoff beards and "upper body injuries" and so rife with players' quirks and routines all designed to bring good luck that its logo might as well be a rabbit's foot. So maybe there is something to what I pointed out, after all.
It's Detroit-Colorado, Part VI in round two -- the first meeting between the Motor City and Ski Town since 2002. Call it the Snow Tire series.
But seriously, folks -- the truth is, there probably isn't much truth in the notion that anything that happened between the Red Wings and the Avalanche in playoffs past (1996, '97, '99, 2000, and '02) will have any bearing on what happens this spring. Only a few key characters remain from each squad. The big Colorado villains, Patrick Roy and Claude Lemieux, are long gone -- though Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg remain. The Red Wings don't have Brendan Shanahan or Steve Yzerman anymore, but Darren McCarty and Kris Draper are still around -- as are Kirk Maltby and Nick Lidstrom. And Chris Chelios, who was around for the great Red Wings-Canadiens rivalries of the 1950s. Just kidding, Cheli.
Oh, I suppose it might be a little fun, in a nostalgic sort of way, to see that God-awful logo on the Avs sweaters skating around JLA again, but other than that, the Avalanche are merely another team on the Red Wings' checklist of clubs to be dispatched before they can hoist Stanley once more. To treat them as anything more than that runs the risk of that dreaded playoff malady: losing one's focus.
But worry not. These Red Wings are a cerebral bunch. They're good at not getting caught up in things that others -- namely bottom-feeding bloggers -- tend to pay attention to. I'm sure that the Red Wings appreciate the history of the rivalry and what it's done for hockey -- and they might get a little more juiced up as those memories flutter through their brains occasionally -- but they idealize more what awaits them at the end of this yellow-bricked road. My guess is that Lidstrom, Draper, McCarty and the rest will merely smile politely as the past is brought up again and again, vis a vis Red Wings-Avs playoff matchups.
This is not to say Colorado should be taken lightly. No team should, when hockey games are played while regular season baseball games are occurring. The Avs, sixth-seeded, upended the no. 3 Minnesota Wild, and while that's hardly an upset of shocking proportion, it's not to be dismissed casually. Forsberg's late-season return has impressed several, including Sakic. The Avs aren't as tight defensively as they used to be (oops, there I go, mentioning the past again), but they're formidable. They have some good, young talent. It should be a fun series.
The Red Wings will win it, of course. They'll win them all, I reckon, all the way thru May and into that first week of June. How could they beat the Avs and NOT win the Cup? History says so.
Sorry.
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