Kirjoittanut Paul Hunter:
RALEIGH, N.C. — It is one of cruel injustices of both sport and life. Sometimes, size does matter.
As the Stanley Cup finalists take the measure of each other, one of the areas in which Carolina is coming up short and Detroit is grabbing a big advantage is in goal.
Arturs Irbe is a tremendously witty and thoughtful man. He's got great reflexes and does the splits in a way that hurts to watch. But he is and will always be 5-foot-8. And when the Hurricanes goaltender drops to his knees quickly, as has been his habit in this final, he leaves a lot of white mesh to shoot at above him.
In the last two games, both Carolina losses, Detroit has exploited that for five of its six goals. It's no coincidence.
"It's something we thought about for quite a while," Wings centre Sergei Fedorov said. "Small goalies have to go down to cover the corners and to cover everything."
And if they go down, the best place to shoot is up. The Maple Leafs realized it, too, in their Eastern Conference final against the Hurricanes, but they could never take advantage of it the way the Wings have.
"Everybody tries to shoot high on (Irbe)," Carolina coach Paul Maurice said. "And he's been very good at not letting (them go in). What are you going to do? We're not going to stretch him."
Kris Draper, who put a goal over Irbe's catching glove in Game 2, said it's not so much a plan of attack as a reaction to what is happening in the game. "I think guys are just taking a look and seeing what happens," he said.
Of course, unspoken in that is that what they are seeing is space instead of a net blocked by scruffy white padding.
"I know Irbe. I played with him ... on national teams (in the former Soviet Union)," Fedorov said. "He was much quicker back then and much younger, but he is still playing with tremendous style. He's kept Carolina in games. There's lots of pressure on the guy right now. And, with any goalie, when you make a play fast and he's coming across, there lots of room."
Irbe, as you would expect, isn't keen to evaluate the motivation of Detroit's shooters, who seemed to have stopped targeting his stick side in favour of the area above his catching glove, where they put all three goals in Game 2.
"There were a lot of shots (Saturday)," he said. "A lot of high ones and a lot of low ones, so it's for you to assess it and for me to stop it."
Another aspect of the Canes' game that is coming up short is the line of Bates Battaglia, Rod Brind'Amour and Erik Cole. Maurice, though, said the line can't be measure only by its production.
"They have been effective for us in a lot of ways; they just haven't been putting pucks in the net," Maurice said. "And, similarly to the (Ron) Francis line in the New Jersey series, I think the same thing is happening to them in this series; it's quite a bit harder to get to the net. The things that they did against Montreal they were not able to do."