one of the weirdest series i can remember: vancouver vs winnipeg, 1992.
i'm not sure there's a moment, per se, but if there is it's either pavel scoring late in the first
or a couple minutes later when pavel's stick broke on his point shot on the PP and sandlak redirected his floater past tabaracci
so let me set the scene for you. 1992 was a great year for the canucks. kirk mclean had the regular season of his life and finished 4th in hart voting and runner up to roy for the vezina. linden was blossoming as one of the best power wingers in the game, picking up a stray hart vote and finishing 4th himself in all-star voting at RW. the life line (courtnall, ronning, linden) that
was so good in the playoffs the previous year was complemented by a formidable second line of rookie bure with greg adams and a resurgent larionov. the bottom half of the lineup was filled with promising young guys (nedved, sandlak, kron) and veteran experience (momesso, tom fergus, ryan walter). they won the smythe for the first time ever and finished... you guessed it, 4th in the league.
game one: winnipeg steals one on the road, 3-2. no biggie. bure scores
his first playoff goal.
game two: vancouver evens the series.
but then winnipeg wins the next two at home. vancouver doesn't score in either game until the third period, while already down four and three goals, respectively. and bure is pointless since game one.
meanwhile, two rookies you've never heard of are giving vancouver fits. some big kid named keith tkachuk is a force of nature and hitting everything that moves, while rick tabaracci is playing lights out. i mean light out like his .932 SV% (in
1992) is actually misleadingly low because three of the eight goals he let in were during garbage time in games where he was pitching a shutout deep into the third.
so when that bure goal went in, it was important both because he got on the board again (remember, he ended the regular season on a 22 goals in 23 game run) and because they finally got an early one on tabaracci, who was looking unbeatable.
and when that sandlak goal went in, making it 2-0, that was the kind of lucky bounce that can do things to a hot team and hot goalie's concentration and confidence. which is exactly what it did.
vancouver wins game five 8-2. tabaracci gets chased after five. bure is on the ice for four of them and finishes with a goal and three assists.
paddock starts tabaracci again, confident in his bounce-back ability and plus he was so good at home. big mistake. i call this
the phil housley game. bure scores a hat trick. 8-3 vancouver.
vancouver caps off the 1-3 --> 4-3 series comeback with a resounding 5-0 win in game seven. natural hat trick by geoff courtnall. tabaracci started again, for some reason that only hitler knows.
a weird series. bob essensa was a young guy thought to be a future star, coming off his best regular season, where he was the 3rd vezina finalist and himself got a stray hart vote, but didn't start a single game in the series. bure co-led the series with eight points but seven of them came in those two games. meanwhile, tom fergus, who also scored eight points, picked up a point in every game.
and as for itchy scratchy tabaracci,
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