Wild stuns Colorado 3-2 on Brunette's OT goal

Minneapolis Star Tribune ^ | 4/23/2003 | Chip Scoggins

[Alberta's Child]

The Jets didn't dump anyone -- the players were restricted free agents, and they signed with other teams because the Jets could not match the qualifying offers due to salary cap constraints.

If I remember correctly, the Panthers were remarkably similar to their baseball counterparts in Florida, the Marlins. Both teams built their rosters for championship runs, but lost a lot of money in the process. Once they reached that pinnacle (or came close to it) they couldn't keep running in the red, so they traded their most talented players or lost them to free agency.

[discostu]

The Panthers didn't really build for a run at the cup, it just sort of happened. The Marlins rented a championship team, really sick when you get down to it. I'm not sure you can even say the Marlins couldn't afford to keep running in the red, they disassembled that team during the off season, over half the championship Marlins went to spring training in new uniforms. That roster of Marlins was never intended to last more than one season.

The Panthers just over achieved, the only real star player they had was Beezer, in the second tier they had Stu Barns and Ed Jovonovske, other than that it was a bunch of no name AHLers who would be lucky to be brought up during injury blights. Then they just played obnoxious clutch and grab hockey to hold their way through the Eastern Conference, then the Avs showed them how things are done in the NHL, we overrate them because the final game was a epic goalie duel but we shouldn't forget that in game 1 they gave up 8 goals and were really outclassed through the whole series. Side history note, Beezer got one final chance to get a ring backing up Brodeur his almost final year in the league... once again Roy said no, and the Beez very quietly announced his retirement while Ray Borque kissed Lord Stanley, he got talked into coming back again but didn't get near the Cup.

[discostu]

Still confident about the Stars making it to the Cup? Told you guys, there's not much you can do against a .969 save percentage. Great series though.

[Alberta's Child]

FYI.

In all of my analysis about New Jersey's defense pairings, I neglected to mention that the team also has a fourth pair of NHL-caliber defensemen who were healthy scratches for many games down the stretch. Pat Burns scratched the Daneyko/Tverdovsky pairing for last night's game after the Game 1 loss to Ottawa on Saturday (a mistake by Tverdovsky led to the 2-on-1 that resulted in the winning goal, and Daneyko got a lot more ice time than usual because of the double-overtime game and because the team was down to five defensemen after Niedermayer went out with an injury). Richard Smehlik and Tommy Albelin replaced them for Game 2, and the team didn't miss a beat (Albelin scored the first goal of the game, in fact).

[discostu]

They played well last night, looks to be a good series. I'm starting to fear that Disney has bribed all the sports gods though.

[Alberta's Child]

The big question is this -- Will Minnesota score a goal in this seried (18:02 left in the third period as I type!)

[discostu]

I don't think so. He's in their head, all their shots suck and they're passing when they should be shooting.