Menu

2006 NHL playoffs

The 2006 Carolina Hurricanes Turn Tobacco Road Into Hockey Country

, , , , , ,

When it comes to sports, Tobacco Road is known mainly for its basketball, particularly that of North Carolina and Duke. But the 2006 Carolina Hurricanes gave the region a memorable spring where hockey was pre-eminent. The Hurricanes followed a strong regular season by winning the franchise’s first and only Stanley Cup.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
Start reading today. 

Carolina was built primarily on its offense. 21-year-old center Eric Stall scored 45 goals and dished 55 assists, as he led an attack that finished third in the NHL in goals scored. Justin Williams and Rod Brind’Amour were 30-goal scorers, as was Erik Cole.

The Hurricanes struggled defensively, finished 18th in the league. The problem was in the net, and over the course of the season, 21-year-old Cam Ward eventually supplanted Martin Gerber as the starting goalie. Carolina still got enough defense to go 52-22-8, win the Southeast Division and earn the #2 seed in the Eastern Conference.

Carolina’s postseason had an inauspicious beginning, with two losses to the Montreal Canadiens. The Hurricanes stormed back to win four consecutive games and advance. The momentum continued in the second round, as Carolina beat New Jersey 6-0 to open the series and cruised to the conference finals in five games.

The Buffalo Sabres had upset the East’s top seed, the Ottawa Senators, so it would be Buffalo-Carolina for the Eastern Conference championship. The Sabres grabbed the first game by 3-2 count. Carolina answered with a 4-3 win in Game 2 that wasn’t as close as it looked—the Hurricanes led 4-1 in the third period and Buffalo’s final goal came with three seconds left.

Carolina traveled north, and Ward played his worst game of the playoffs in Game 3, being chased from the game and in spite of two goals from Cory Stillman, Carolina lost 4-3. Gerber got the start in Game 4 and whatever problems the veteran had in the regular season, he paid for them in full with this game. Gerber saved all 22 shots fired at home and Carolina tied the series with a 4-zip win.

The next two games were overtime affairs. Playing in front of the home crowd in Game 5, Carolina trailed 3-2 with ten minutes to play. Brind’Amour scored a power play goal to tie it, and Stillman converted another power play in OT. Carolina tried a similar path in Game 6, tying the game with four minutes left, but this time it was Buffalo who won in overtime.

Game 7 was back in Carolina, and the Hurricanes found themselves trailing 2-1 after two periods. Stillman again came up big, with two third-period assists in a three-goal flurry that sent Carolina to the Finals with a 4-2 win.

The Western Conference had been gutted by upsets, and the 2006 Edmonton Oilers shocked everyone by winning the conference as an 8-seed. It was the Oilers’ first time in the Finals since the Wayne Gretzky/Mark Messier period that saw the franchise win five Stanley Cups from 1984-90. If Carolina was going to win the 2006 Stanley Cup Finals they were going to have to beat a team that seemed to have destiny riding with them.

Game 1 was a roller-coaster, with Carolina jumping out to a 3-0 lead, blowing it and sitting in a 4-4 tie late in the third period. Brind’Amour scored with 32 seconds left to win it. Game 2 went much easier, as Carolina scored three power play goals, Ward saved all 25 shots he saw and the Hurricanes won 5-0.

The series went to Edmonton, and while the Oilers got a 2-1 win to make it a series, Carolina answered with a victory by the same score that seemed to give the Hurricanes firm control of the Finals.

With a chance to clinch in front of the home fans, Carolina might have come out tight, because Edmonton peppered them for three first period goals in Game 5. The Hurricanes rallied behind two goals from Staal and eventually forced overtime, but the Oilers won 4-3 and kept the series going.

Game 6 was a defensive disaster, and it wasn’t all about the goalie. Ward was exposed to 34 shots, as Edmonton rolled to a 4-0 win. Destiny was still alive and heading back to Tobacco Road for a Game 7.

The Hurricanes would win a seventh game that was good, but not epic. They led a tight 2-1 game before an empty net goal with a minute left made it permissible to start the celebration. Brind’Amour finished the playoffs with 12 goals. Staal had 19 postseason assists. But the star was Ward, who allowed just 2.14 goals per game in the 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs and was named the winner of the Conn Smythe Award as postseason MVP.

For one glorious spring, the 2006 Carolina Hurricanes had turned their home region into hockey country.

The 2006 Edmonton Oilers Return To Prominence

, , , , , ,

The Edmonton Oilers had been enduring an up-and-down road in their attempt to become relevant in the NHL since the end of their dynasty in 1990. The franchise that dominated the late 1980s with Wayne Gretzky had seen The Great One leave for Los Angeles following the 1988 season. The Oilers won another Cup with the rest of that team, led by Mark Messier, in ’90. After reaching the conference finals the following two years, Edmonton fell of the NHL map.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
Start reading today. 

Edmonton missed the playoffs each year from 1993-96, something tough to do in the NHL. From 1997-2001 they made the postseason each time, but never advanced past the second round. Then there were two misses in 2002 and 2004 sandwiched around a first-round exit in ’03. The NHL’s 2005 season was canceled due to a lockout and a young team came back in 2006 hoping to resume their building process.

Craig MaTavish had been the head coach since ’01, an eternity for a head coach in the NHL and his lineup had only one core player over the age of 30, in defenseman Chris Pronger. The team’s scoring tilted to the left wing, with the top three goal scorers—Ryan Smith, Raffi Torres and Shawn Horcoff all filling that spot on the ice, while Ales Hemsky was a great passer on the right side.

The Oilers suffered through an early seven-game losing streak, but reached .500 by November 13, and then won 13 of 18. January was tough, with ten losses, but four of them were in overtime or a shootout, so the team was able to still accumulate points and they were staying competitive. The Oilers righted the ship and finished strong, with a final record of 41-28-13. Though they were the #8 seed in the Western Conference playoffs, they’d made it with room to spare—ironically because Los Angeles collapsed down the stretch.

Edmonton might have had a nice year, but the best team in the NHL was the Detroit Red Wings and that was who awaited in round one. The Oilers dropped a heartbreaker in the opener, allowing the Wings to tie the game 2-2 with 6:14 left and then win in overtime. It might have been the kind of narrow loss that crushes a young team, but instead it had the opposite effect. Goaltender Dwayne Roloson got locked in, and over the next two games he saved 77 shots, the Oilers won both and took the series lead.

When any team makes a surprise postseason run it requires unlikely heroes and for Edmonton that was Fernando Pisani, a player who did little in the NHL prior to this season and little after, but in the spring of 2006 he caught fire. After Detroit tied the series in Game 4, Pisani scored the first goal in the second period Game 5 and the Oilers won 3-2. The series went north of the border for Game 6 and trailing 2-0 in the third period, Pisani scored twice to tie the game. Then after Detroit regained the lead, Hemsky scored twice and Edmonton had the first-round upset.

The NHL playoffs are known for gutted brackets and 2006 provided one in the West. Second-seeded Dallas also lost in the first round, so Edmonton’s next opponent was San Jose, with its one-time Hart Award winner in Joe Thornton at center. When the Sharks took the first two games by 2-1 counts, there was no reason to think the Oilers’ magic would extend past the first round. There was even less reason to think it when they fell behind 2-1 in the third period of Game 3. Then Torres scored with less than seven minutes left, and the fact Edmonton outshot San Jose 58-34 eventually took its toll and the Oilers saved their season with an overtime win.

After that Game 3 surge, Edmonton took over the series. They won consecutive games 6-3, getting goals from six different players in one game and holding San Jose to 18 shots in another. Even more surprising was that they trailed both games 3-1 before taking over. In Game 6, the Oilers combined a strong defensive effort, holding San Jose to 24 shots, with goaltending—Roloson saved them all. The 2-0 win put Edmonton in the conference finals for the first time in 14 years.

The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim were a year away from a Stanley Cup championship run, but in these finals, the #6 seed ended up overmatched by a red-hot Roloson. The goalie saved 64 of 66 shots in the first two games, both 3-1 wins for Edmonton. The Oilers led 1-0 in the third period of Game 3. It turned into a wild finish with each team scoring four times, but the 5-4 win put Edmonton in command. Even though they lost Game 4 and trailed 1-0 after two periods in Game 5, the Oilers got two third-period goals and clinched a trip to the Finals behind another great outing from Roloson.

NHL fans are accustomed to seeing “the hot goalie” dominate the playoffs and it seemed like Edmonton had him in Rolson. That made his injury in the first game of the Finals against Carolina all the more devastating. The Hurricanes were a good team—the #2 seed in the East—and in fairness, they had peppered Roloson for three goals in Game 1 to build an early lead. But you have to wonder what might have happened had the goaltender not been injured.

Edmonton still almost came back in Game 1, as Pisani scored the first of four third-period goals, but the final was 5-4. Juss Markkanen was now in the net and looked helpless in Game 2, a 5-0 loss. He played better in the next two games on home ice, but the Oilers only split a pair of 2-1 games. They needed to win three in a row—two of them on the road to claim the Cup.

Pisani easily led his team in scoring this postseason, with 14 playoff goals and he had a “get on my back and I’ll carry you” kind of night in Game 5. Pisani scored sixteen seconds into the game, and in a 3-3 tie in overtime he scored again to extend the series. Then in Game 6, Pisani scored the game’s first goal early in the second period, dished an assist and keyed a 4-0 win. Now they were back to Charlotte for the decisive Game 7.

There was a little more magic left—trailing 2-0 early in the third period—Pisani scored to keep the Oilers alive, but Carolina held them off and scored an empty-netter to clinch the Cup.

This is the point of the story where we like to say that Edmonton, with its band of twentysomethings, and emboldened by Pisani’s playoff breakout, started a new and glorious era. Well, not quite. Edmonton fell back into obscurity as quickly as its unlikely playoff hero did. Roloson would get close to the Finals again, reaching Game 7 of the Eastern finals in 2011, but that would be with Tampa Bay. In the post-Gretzky era, 2006 was the great high point in Edmonton.