CALGARY - By now, you know why Jarome Iginla is considered the future. He is dynamic, charismatic, explosive. He seems on the verge of becoming the NHL's most admired player.
Don't you just hate him?
By now, you are aware of the way Martin Gelinas is seizing the present. Time after time in these playoffs, you have seen him close the door on Detroit and Vancouver. Around here, they refer to him as The Eliminator.
Doesn't he annoy the dickens out of you.
By now, you know all about Robyn Regehr. You have seem him draped across Martin St. Louis, and you have seen him shoving against Vinny Lecavalier. In particular, you saw him pound Ruslan Fedotenko into the boards in an attempt to rearrange his face.
And doesn't he tick you off?
It is ugly now. It is down to hard feelings and bad blood, and to chips on the shoulders of two teams that look very much like the Canadian Rockies in the distance. It is down to Hatfields and McCoys, one team's scorn against another team's rancor. Hate, it seems, is also a many splendored thing.
The Flames do not like the Lightning, which in turn abhors the Flames. Teams really do not get on each other's nerves until one threatens to take something precious from each other. In hockey, what could be more precious than the Stanley Cup? One team is going to wreck the happy ending of the other. What do you expect to happen?
If anything, you might expect the dislike to grow for Game 4 after Regehr's vicious, villainous shot on Fedotenko late in Game 3. Already, we have seen six major penalties for fighting - the most in a Stanley Cup series since '87. We have seen Lecavalier exchanging blows with Iginla. Already, we have seen the constant use of a harsh word: Hate.
"We're learning to hate them," Nolan Pratt was saying the other day.
Said St. Louis: "I don't think you can win against a team unless you hate them."
Good news, then. The Lightning may be down 2-1 in the series, but it has built a sufficient reservoir of animosity, that clean, ill-tempered ill will that serves as fuel in a playoff series. By now, the Lightning hates the Calgary tower, the Red Mile and green hard hats. The players hate Mike Commodore's hair style, Miikka Kiprusoff's mask and Darryl Sutter's Droopy-Dog speech patterns. They hate them more today than yesterday, but only half as much as tomorrow.
The feelings have hardened quickly. Only a few days ago, the Flames and Lightning were barely in the same league. The teams had played one time in two seasons, and if there were any thoughts about the other, it was probably a slight admiration. There is something of each team in the other, of nobodies becoming somebodies at the same time.
That disappeared a few lacerations ago. Now, the dislike has grown into something lasting. It's odd. The Lightning won its first series against New York with nothing more than a slight annoyance, and it beat Montreal with no more than a casual dislike. It didn't work up a good spite until the Flyers' series.
"I guess hate is the right word," Lightning forward Andre Roy said. "I certainly don't like anything about them. Usually, I don't use the word hate. I hate olives, and bad traffic, and soft music. And, yeah, I hate the Flames."
Yeah, but if you walked past their pregame spread, might you do something to the food?
Roy grinned.
"Maybe."
Okay, okay. For those of us who grew up in the '60s, for us tree-hugging, Kumbaya-singing, Age-of-Aquarius graduates, hate is a word that makes you cringe. On the other hand, it's a lot more honest than all that "we sure do respect our opponents" verbiage you hear so often these days.
"I don't know about the word "hate,' Lightning defenseman Brad Lukowich said. "I'd say they annoy me. I played juniors with a lot of these guys. I grew up not far from here. But at a time like this, all ties are cut. Nothing matters but winning. You have to want to win more than they want to win."
Tim Taylor, the Lightning forward, puts it this way: "If two of us go into the corner for the puck, I'm coming out with it. If you're skating by the boards, I'm going to put you through the boards. That sort of hate."
Given the position of the Lightning, given the necessity for a victory tonight, it's hard to blame Tampa Bay's players for using whatever fuel they can find to get back in the series. After three games, there is a nastiness to the Flames that most teams lack. All teams hit; the Flames assault. All teams leave you bruised and battered; the Flames take your wallet and watch.
For the Lightning, that is perhaps the most hated aspect of the Flames. Calgary has retreated so far to its defensive zone, it resembles a wagon train encircling its own net. As a result, the Lightning offense is gasping for air.
Now, with the possibility of playing without Fedotenko, the Lightning must find a way to counterattack. It has to find a way to free the ice for St. Louis, it has to absorb the sheer force of the Flames, it has to withstand the energy that comes from the rabid fans in the stands. The key scorers - St. Louis, Lecavalier, Richards and the imminently invisible Cory Stillman - have to play big.
Otherwise, the Lightning faces the possibility of going down 3-1 in the series and scrambling to stay alive.
