Canucks' Cup hopes may be way off-center

Sporting News, The, June 6, 1994 by Larry Wigge

Pat Quinn hasn't forgotten what got him to the Stanley Cup finals in 1980, his last visit to hockey's big show.

Quinn's Flyers had compiled an NHL-record 35-game unbeaten streak in the 1979-80 season and their 48-12-20 record was the best in the league.

"We had Pete Peeters in goal and Bobby Clarke, Rick MacLeish, Ken Linseman and Mel Bridgman at center," Quinn says. "I've always believed next to goaltending, center ice is the most important position to winning championship."

But the Islanders had something to say about Quinn's hopes for a Cup victory, beating the Flyers in six games - even though the Flyers were 25 points better in the regular season.

Quinn, now the general manager and coach of the Canucks, is in the finals again. And he still uses that Flyers team as his blueprint in Vancouver.

"We though we had that here with Kirk McLean in goal and Petr Nedved, Anatoli Semenov and Cliff Ronning at center. We had won two straight division titles," Quinn says. "But we lost Anatoli to Anaheim in the expansion draft, and Petr became a free agent and refused to sign with us."

Nedved instead signed with St. Louis. Quinn says he was able to accept that because the Canucks were getting center Craig Janney from St. Louis as compensation, but Janney balked at reporting and eventually was traded back to the Blues for defensemen Jeff Brown and Bret Hedican and utility forward Nathan Lafayette.

That left Quinn with no centers of attention and a 41-40-3 regular-season record.

The Canucks entered the playoffs without any notions of grandeur and quickly fell behind Calgary, 3-1, in a first-round series. That's when Quinn decided to switch captain Trevor Linden from second-line right wing to first-line center with Pavel Bure and Greg Adams. Magically, the Canucks went on a 10-2 run and reached the Cup finals.

"It doesn't remind you of Bobby Clarke, Rickj MacLeish, Ken Linseman and Mel Bridgman does it?" Quinn says of Linden, Ronning, John McIntyre and Lafayette at center. "But Trevor has done what Bobby Clarke did for us in Philadelphia, with his performance on the ice and unselfishness in making the switch."

Just as there were more reasons why the Flyers did not beat the Islanders in 1980 - New York goalie Billy Smith and defenseman Denis Potvin are two that come to mind - there are, well, about 1940 reasons why the Rangers will beat the Canucks.

Here are a few:

* This isn't a matchup of No. 1 vs. No. 2 like when the Rangers were taken to double overtime in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals by the Devils. This is No. 1 vs. No. 14.

* Mark Messier, a man on a mission, combines with Alexei Kovalev, Sergei Nemchinov and Craig MacTavish to give the Rangers a big edge at center over Linden, Ronning, McIntyre and Lafayette.

* The Canucks had trouble stopping AllStar defenseman Al MacInnis in the first round, and they didn't have to face offensive defensemen as good as Brian Leetch and Sergei Zubov against Dallas or Toronto.

* The Rangers learned to fight through the Devil's stifling 1-2-2 zone defense. But the Canucks didn't rank second in defense in the regular season like New Jersey. The Canucks were 17th.

* Vancouver goalie Kirk McLean doesn't handle the puck as well as New Jersey's Martin Brodeur on dump-ins, causing the Vancouver defensemen to come back deeper in their own zone - dangerous territory against the Rangers.

* The Rangers' ability to get through the first wave of Vancouver defenders will allow them to go to the net. That is something McLean hasn't faced since early in the Calgary series and why you can look for Adam Graves to have a big series.

* Only Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and Winnipeg took more regular-season penalties than the Canucks. And that means the Rangers' No. 1-ranked power play should take advantage of the Canucks' penalty killers, who ranked 12th.

* The Canucks are bigger than the Rangers, but the Rangers have outhit every team they have faced, even the much larger Devils. Toronto didn't come close to crushing the Canucks into submission as the Rangers will.

"I think the Rangers are going to win it," Devils Coach Jacques Lemaire says. "They are a powerful team ready to break out offensively after facing us."

Lemaire is right. We've seen No. 1 vs. No. 2. The rest is anticlimactic.

Rangers in five games.

Tick, tick, Tikk

A lot has been made of the fact that Rangers players own 26 Stanley Cup rings. But the Canucks have four players with championship rings - Geoff Courtnall with Edmonton in 1988, Tim Hunter and Dana Murzyn with Calgary in 1989 and Martin Gelinas with Edmonton in 1990.

The Canucks, however, will go only as far as Pavel Bure takes them - and Bure is about to meet Esa Tikkanen, his shadow for the finals.

"Tikk could be Bure's worst nightmare," Rangers Coach Mike Keenan says. "Twice when I got to the finals at Philadephia and played Edmonton, he was in the face of our best players all night."

G.M. Gretzky

Over the years, Wayne Gretzky has been accused of being the unofficial general manager of the Kings. Maybe that's true after all.