Are you ready for the soap opera?
No shortage of plot lines in Stanley Cup final
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By BILL BEACON
Canadian Press
OTTAWA
The plot lines are obvious as the New Jersey Devils prepare to face the upstart Anaheim Mighty Ducks in the Stanley Cup final.
Game 1 of the best-of-seven NHL championship series is set for Tuesday night in East Rutherford, N.J. (CBC, 8 p.m. EDT).
There's Niedermayer versus Niedermayer, Martin Brodeur against Jean-Sebastien Giguere and some of the players involved in the seven-man deal between the two clubs last summer, including the hero of New Jersey's Game 7 win over Ottawa in the Eastern Conference final on Friday night, Jeff Friesen.
That's not to mention that the Ducks are owned by Disney and that Wayne Gretzky once referred to New Jersey as a "Mickey Mouse organization" (although that was before they became a superpower in the east).
This will be the Suburbia Series, the almost-ideal U.S. television market match-up featuring the suburbs of New York City in the Jersey swamplands against the bungalow and mall sprawl of Anaheim, south of Los Angeles.
What effect will it have that Anaheim, which swept Minnesota in the Western final, will have been idle a record 10 days before playing their first Stanley Cup game? Or that New Jersey will have had only three days off since their hard-fought series with Ottawa?
How much of an advantage is it that Jersey won the Cup in 1995 and 2000 and reached the final in 2001, while Anaheim has never before been beyond the second round in its 10-year existence?
And there's the coaching match-up _ crusty veteran Pat Burns for New Jersey versus NHL rookie Mike Babcock. They have one thing in common: neither has ever won the Stanley Cup, although Burns also made the final as a rookie coach in 1989 with Montreal.
It's a given that among the first to be besieged by the camera and notebook set will be the Niedermayer brothers _ defenceman Scott of the Devils and forward Rob of the Ducks.
They met once before in the playoffs in 2000, when Rob was with Florida. Scott's Devils swept the Panthers in the first round.
Both are enjoying strong playoffs.
Scott is third in New Jersey scoring with two goals and 11 assists while Rob, a strong two-way centre, is tied for third on his club with three goals and five assists.
Then there are the two French-Canadian goaltenders, with Brodeur as the accomplished veteran and Giguere the upstart staking a claim on elite status in the NHL.
"I will answer a lot of questions from now until the end of the series about Giguere, but that's not new," Brodeur predicted. "I played a final against (Colorado's) Patrick Roy a few years ago and it was the same.
"He's a butterfly goalie," Brodeur added of Giguere. "He doesn't play the puck as much as I do, so that's the big difference between us.
"Technically, he's as good as anybody out there and he's playing with a lot of confidence. But the fact that he's a butterfly goalie makes him more similar to (Ottawa's) Patrick Lalime or Patrick Roy than to me."
Where Giguere holds the edge is in numbers of appearances on Jay Leno's Late Show _ 1-0 after he was a guest on the show on Friday night.
"I wish I could be," Brodeur admitted.
With all these plot lines, they shouldn't have to get into Brodeur's home life, in which his wife Melanie filed for divorce and custody of their four children last week, claiming adultery involving the goaltender and her brother's wife.
Brodeur refuses to discuss it.
Meanwhile, Friesen called it "unbelievable" that his first taste of a Stanley Cup final will be against the team that traded him to New Jersey last July 6.
In that deal, Anaheim sent Friesen, defenceman Oleg Tverdovsky and prospect Maxim Balmochnykh to New Jersey for Peter Sykora, Mike Commodore, Igor Pohanka and goalie Jean-Francois Damphousse.
Only Sykora has played for the Ducks in the playoffs, but he has become a key offensive player and has two goals and six assists in the post-season.
The speedy Friesen had three goals in the Ottawa series, including two game-winners.
The risk-taking Tverdovsky has dressed for only nine of New Jersey's 17 post-season games and did not play after the series opener against Ottawa.
Still another story is that of veteran Joe Nieuwendyk, whose Calgary Flames beat Burns' Canadiens in the 1989 final. Now a Devil, Nieuwendyk had to be helped from the ice in overtime of Game 6 against Ottawa.
In the seventh game, he played only two shifts and had to leave again with what Burns said was a "bad bruise in the hip area."
Will he be able to play?
A sub-plot to it all will be TV ratings, particularly in Canada now that the Senators are out.
Anaheim and New Jersey both excel at keeping the puck out of their nets rather than scoring fancy goals, so it may not make for riveting viewing.
Then again, with all the story lines, it may make a good soap opera.