DALLAS — Good playoff teams have good playoff goaltending. It’s a hockey thing — you can’t have one without the other, right?
Then there is this seven-game series between the Dallas Stars and the St. Louis Blues, in which three different goalies have been pulled after shaky starts. The result is a Game 7 with a twist: two coaches who are semi-confident in their starters.
Now, you won’t find either coach admitting to it. But Dallas’ Kari Lehtonen lost the starter’s job in Round 1, found his game again, then lost it again midway through Round 2.
He’s now had three good games in a row. While history tells us that means the goalie is due for a stinker, Dallas head coach Lindy Ruff is saying the right things after Lehtonen’s strong Game 6.
“We went into a real tough situation (in Game 6) and he stood tall, and I think that’s just a sign that he’s comfortable inside a big game right now,” Ruff said.
He had no playoff book on Lehtonen, because the big Finn only had eight playoff starts — and two wins — prior to this spring, despite an NHL career that began over a decade ago as a high draft pick of the Atlanta Thrashers.
“You never know until you get there, or you’ve been there and tried to do it,” Ruff said. “A lot of times you learn from your losses. It hardens you, makes you better. As hard as that is, you’ve got to grab something from that and say, ‘The next time around, I’m going to do this.’
“You don’t get any do-overs.”
Across the way, Blues coach Ken Hitchcock had a resurgent Brian Elliott rolling through the first 13 playoff starts in flawless fashion. He was playing the best hockey of his life at age 31, that late-blooming goalie who finally figures it out.
Until that Mattias Janmark wrister floated over his glove hand just 4:53 into Game 6. By the time the first period was over, so too was Elliott’s night.
Hitchcock had to do some investigative work before deciding to hand the reins to Elliott for tonight’s Game 7.
“I just wanted to talk to him, see how he was feeling,” Hitchcock said, declaring Elliott his starter after the morning skate. “He came to the rink (Tuesday) to stop pucks, which surprised everybody. He wanted to go on the ice and I think he’s earned the right to go at it.
“He had a tough start to the game like our team, we had the tough seven minutes, and paid for it. But he’s given us a chance to get to Game 7 again, and I couldn’t think of a better opportunity for him or for us.
“(The decision was) really a no-brainer, to be honest with you. But I wanted to talk to him and make sure he was feeling good about himself.”
Two goalies, two nervous coaches. Welcome to Game 7 folks, where everyone has something to worry about.
“A Game 7 kind of feels like overtime for 60 minutes,” said Stars veteran Patrick Sharp. “It’s a great experience. Crazy things happen.”
Sharp was watching the Washington-Pittsburgh Game 6 on Tuesday night, up until the Penguins took a 3-0 lead. Then he walked away from the TV to play with his kids, only to receive a text from teammate Cody Eakin that said, “Can you believe this?”
The Caps had tied it and they were heading to overtime — another huge comeback in these playoffs.
“You hear people say that the team can stick with their style of play the longest comes out on top,” Sharp said. “With a 3-0 (deficit), maybe in the regular season you move on to the next game, the game’s out of hand. But in the playoffs it seems like teams are battling back more often than not.”
Hitchcock said he’d be looking for players who won’t “spit the bit” when this game — and this series — is on the line tonight.
“I’m looking for people that I think can (add something),” he said, when asked about his lineup tonight. “I know this is going to be a very difficult game and it’s going to be played with a lot of emotion and a lot of intensity, more than probably even our players realize. I want people who are not going to spit the bit when that happens. I’ll put those guys in accordingly.”