After weeks of war, tax cut fights and preseason Democratic presidential exhibitions, anyone avoiding the National Hockey League playoffs is missing a most refreshing spring inspiration. Of the final four teams, three were recent expansions and two were underdog longshots, including the once anything-but-Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
Could this be a replay of last fall's World Series, when the once sad-sack, overlooked Anaheim Angels surged to the title? Can the Ducks continue a dominance that so easily crushed higher seeds Detroit and Dallas and now the Minnesota Wild?
How'd the expansion Wild players, only three seasons from being the athletic discards of other teams, make such come-from-behind playoff history under a wily coach with eight championship rings? Can the Ottawa Senators, seeking a new owner after years of on-ice stumbling and now financial bankruptcy, salvage Canadian pride and win the Stanley Cup? Or will New Jersey's aptly named Devils capture the Cup as they did not so long ago before firing the guy now coaching the Wild?
These two months of playoffs, probably the most grueling in pro sports, have produced incredible moments of individual athleticism. There is, for instance, no way the Ducks' castoff goalie with the hyphenated name and rubbery legs should have so consistently stopped so many opposition shots. But Jean-Sebastien Giguere has. No NHL team ever before has twice climbed back from 3-1 game deficits in one year's playoff series. But the Wild did under Jacques Lemaire, alternating goalies and using their no-name roster to stifle more talented Colorado and Vancouver. It has all unfolded during 19 sudden-death overtimes, including one epic Ducks' struggle (now there's a new combination of words!) that went five OT periods.
