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NHL
April 24, 2003
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- A night after a loss to Colorado left the Wild down 3-1 in its first postseason, coach Jacques Lemaire and general manager Doug Risebrough gathered their players for a pep talk.
Nothing innovative was said, center Jim Dowd said.
"It was just, 'Hey, guys, stick together. It's our group. It's our little family here. Stay with what got us here,"' he said.
"Never quit. That was the bottom line right there."
The Wild never did and pulled a huge surprise by winning three consecutive games, capped by Andrew Brunette's overtime goal in a 3-2 victory Tuesday.
When it opens the second round against Vancouver on Friday, the Wild certainly will feel less pressure than any other team in the playoffs. No one, not even their coach, expected it to go this far.
"We were out. We were going nowhere," Lemaire said of his posture after Game 4.
Lemaire said when Brunette scored, he thought one of his assistants was going to faint.
"The first thing that came to my mind ... Is this possible? Is this true?" Lemaire said. "It was hard to believe."
A day after the victory, the Wild still seemed dazed.
"To beat that kind of team ... I still couldn't believe it," said right wing Marian Gaborik, whose power-play goal with 4:28 left in the third (and 2:17 after Colorado took the lead) sent it to overtime. "I had to pinch myself."
Meanwhile, Vancouver showed resiliency of its own. It also fell behind three games to one before beating St. Louis three consecutive times, capped by Tuesday's 4-1 victory. It was Vancouver's first playoff series win in eight seasons.
Last season, the Canucks led Detroit 2-0 in the first round before losing the next four. It was the second straight year Vancouver was knocked out in the first round by the eventual champions. Colorado swept the Canucks in 2001.
"Obviously, losing in the first round last year to the eventual Stanley Cup winners, there are lessons as you go along," said center Brendan Morrison, who scored the winner in Game 7. "I think we were able to apply them in this series."
SABRES: B. Thomas Golisano, who completed his purchase of the team, is among the 400 wealthiest people in the world but said he won't spend freely to make the team competitive.
"Do we have a real open mind about this type of thing? Absolutely," Golisano said. "Are we going to go out and select the top seven paid players in the league? Absolutely not. But somewhere in the middle is the balance, and that's what we're going to try to achieve."