Wings Sweep Into Second Round
Penalty killing and power plays carried the Detroit Red Wings and at the same time doomed the Los Angeles Kings to another first-round playoff bust.
The Red Wings got power-play goals from Pat Verbeek and Larry Murphy 1:57 apart late in the first period, and Chris Osgood earned his eighth career playoff shutout in a 3-0 victory Wednesday night.
"When you can get out of a series as early as possible and rest everybody, that's huge," Verbeek said.
Detroit clinched the best-of-7 Western Conference series 4-0 in Scotty Bowman's 100th playoff game as coach. His playoff record of 67-33 in seven seasons includes consecutive Stanley Cup championships.
|
Los Angeles went 0-for-23 on the power play in the series including 0-for-7 Wednesday against a Detroit penalty-killing unit that is tied for first in the NHL.
"Power play, penalty kills, specialty teams. They dominated and we didn't," said Kings captain Rob Blake, who was limited to four shots in 31 minutes. "When your power play doesn't score at all, the guys on the ice for those are the ones that have to be accountable."
The Kings were swept out of the playoffs for the second time in thee years, having lost four straight to St. Louis in 1998. They have lost 12 consecutive playoff games since winning Game 1 of the 1993 Stanley Cup finals against Montreal.
"Everybody looks at a four-game series as a blowout, but this wasn't a blowout at all," Detroit's Darren McCarty said. "This was a battle, each shift, game in and game out. We're close to playing exactly the way we want to play. We're competing every shift, and our work ethic is there."
The Kings were done in by penalties once again. They lost 2-1 after two high-sticking penalties led to Detroit power-play goals in Game 3 Monday.
"We know what we did wrong again. They were smarter all series. They didn't retaliate like we did," Ian Laperriere said. "Even if you were hitting or slashing them, you didn't see any retaliation. We took way too many penalties and it hurt us again."
Detroit led 2-0 when Mattias Norstrom was called for holding Sergei Fedorov's stick, setting up Murphy's first goal of the series on the power play at 19:41 of the first period.
A shot by Brendan Shanahan hit the post, resulting in a wild six-player scramble that caught Kings goalie Stephane Fiset at the bottom. With his legs blocked, Fiset wasn't able to get up, and Murphy fired a sharply angled shot into an open net.
"McCarty ran at me and he was sitting on me," Fiset said. "He's right on top of you and the referee doesn't see that. That's bad. That gave them a lot of momentum."
Kings coach Andy Murray said one of the two referees was told by the other officials that McCarty interfered with Fiset, but the referees didn't see it.
"To us, McCarty came in behind him and bumped him and he wasn't pushed," Murray said. "We're not going to condemn the refereeing. It was a real scramble in front of the net. At the time, I was not real pleased."
With Jozef Stumpel off for crosschecking Chris Chelios, Verbeek gave Detroit a 1-0 lead with his only goal of the series at 17:10 of the first period.
Fedorov scored an empty-netter on a breakaway with 51 seconds remaining. Some of the numerous red-and-white-clad Red Wings fans tossed octopuses entwined with strips of red cloth onto the ice after th final goal.
Osgood made 25 saves for his second 2-0 shutout of the series. Detroit won the first game by the same score. Fiset stopped 25 shots.
The start of the third period was delayed for 25 minutes when a computer glitch knocked out the arena's halogen lights. The game's first delay occurred in the second period when two plexiglass panels broke, resulting in a seven-minute stoppage.
©2000 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed