Ed Belfour broke out skates that he hadn’t worn since his Dallas Stars clinched the Stanley Cup against Buffalo last season.
Mike Keane arrived in a tacky red jacket that he first sported in Montreal’s memorable, overtime-filled Cup run in 1993 and also wore to Dallas’ Game 7 victory over Colorado in this year’s Western Conference finals.
But the real question is: Who had the Bobby Holik voodoo doll?
Dallas, superstitious to the maximum Thursday night, forced a Game 6 in the Stanley Cup finals when Mike Modano scored at 6 minutes 21 seconds of the third overtime early Friday morning to give the Stars a clutch 1-0 victory over New Jersey. It was the fourth-longest game in finals history.
Besides Modano’s winner and Belfour’s rock-solid, 48-save shutout, the Stars can thank Holik that there will be a hockey game Saturday night in Dallas. The Devils forward had more chances to score than Shaquille O’Neal with a point guard on him.
Holik whiffed on a two-on-one in the first period and banked a shot off the skate of Dallas defenseman Richard Matvichuk that slid just wide of the post in the second. He also hit the post on a wide-open chance and got stopped by a Belfour pad save on a point-blank blast later in the period. In the third, Belfour stopped back-to-back chances with 3:09 left.
In the first overtime, Holik whiffed on another two-on-one after Claude Lemieux set him up. Holik finished with eight shots on goal.
Modano was more than happy to take advantage of Holik’s near-misses, silencing a Continental Airlines Arena crowd of 19,040 that came ready to blow the roof off the joint.
“Bobby Holik could’ve scored six goals tonight,” Devils coach Larry Robinson said. “But Belfour stood on his head.”
Modano skated past Vladimir Malakhov and beautifully redirected Brett Hull’s wobbly shot from just inside the blue line to end the longest 1-0 game in Stanley Cup finals history. One hundred six minutes 21 seconds of hockey. That’s grueling. That’s classic.
“We’re running on fumes, but this is a big win,” said Modano, who scored his first goal of the series. “We feel lucky that we’re going to see Saturday.”
Belfour is a big reason why as he and Martin Brodeur, with 40 saves, staged a goaltending battle for the ages. Belfour somehow gloved Alexander Mogilny’s breakaway attempt midway through the second overtime.
“I don’t think I’ve seen anything better since I’ve coached in this league,” Dallas coach Ken Hitchcock said. “I felt that we were just going to have to take a timeout and play next week because nobody was going to score. And there were a lot of quality chances.”
The Devils almost won at 3:58 of the first overtime when a scrum in front of the net sent the puck off Sergei Nemchinov’s skate and off the post.
The loss marked New Jersey’s seventh straight overtime playoff loss.
“Our motivation is the fact we just want to keep playing hockey,” Hitchcock said. “We don’t want to go away quietly. We like being together. “This is a very critical time, but heck, we’re still playing hockey and it’s the second week of June. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
And with that, Keane exited into the night, still wearing the red jacket. The thing wasn’t in fashion in 1993. It might not have been in fashion in 1953.
But expect to see it as Keane strolls into Reunion Arena on Saturday night. He’s 13-0 when he wears it, and as far as Dallas is concerned, that’s as beautiful as it gets.
