HAVING looked certain death in the eye in winning for only the 10th time in their last 13 road playoff games, the Devils were supposed to kneel last night to kiss a sheet of ice where they are 5-7 in their last 12 playoff games.
They were home sweet home in an arena they can’t wait to vacate and had the Leafs where they wanted them. Even if the record (4-1 on the road in these playoffs) shows Toronto is exactly where it wants to be, too.
“We worked hard to get home-ice advantage through the playoffs,” Scott Stevens said. “There has to be a reason for that.”
And as soon as we find one, we’ll let him know. In the nine series completed so far this spring, teams with home-ice advantage are 4-5. While that bucks a larger trend that has the higher seed winning 91 of 150 series over the last 10 years, those include series – some of them mismatches – that went four, five and six games.
In Game Sevens, however, the home teams are 2-5 in the last three years, 4-6 in the last four, 5-7 in the last five. This, in a league where, since series went to a best-of-seven playoff format in 1939, 61 per cent of Game Sevens have been won by home teams.
“I think it just shows how much closer the teams are,” Devils coach Larry Robinson said.
There is some truth to that, seeing as how there has been only one year in the last decade where a No. 7 or No. 8 seed didn’t advance at least a round. But there are deeper reasons pertaining to the depth into which the visitors put the puck.
The all-out first-period assault by the wired home team that once won a lot of Game Sevens before the first period was over doesn’t happen any more. The defensive systems are so clogging, patience has become a more desirable trait than fervor, making a visiting team mentality the healthier one to maintain.
“People expect more from you at home,” Stevens said. “Fans get impatient and that helps players get impatient. You think about playing a simple game on the road. Teams can frustrate the home team with the trap.
“But you do still get last change at home. And that can be important.”
The importance diminishes as players who spend the regular season as scorers turn themselves into checkers for the common good. The importance of the first goal hasn’t diminished, but it’s harder for the home team to get it or to keep the anxiety level down if the visitors do instead. It doesn’t get any more stressful than in Game 7. And the transference from fan to player becomes the road team’s best weapon.
“We feel better on the road, no doubt about it,” Marty Brodeur said. “If we have a minute of power play and are doing nothing, on the road people will be cheering. Here they are booing. People are expecting big things.”
Like the Leafs fans did Monday night, passing on the disappointment to the players when they were unable to get a lead. Logic says all the pressure was on the Devils, who were in a win-or-be-gone situation, but that’s underestimating how much stress was created by Toronto’s opportunity to seal the deal.
Losing it was a terrible blow until the Leafs realized they may now have an even better chance in a more comfortable situation. The more people who think they already blew it, the more able they are to rally themselves.
If you think the pressure of being favored doesn’t wear on an athlete, then you probably have tuned out the sometimes-comical attempts by coaches and players on the superior team before many series to make themselves the underdog. These are attempts to disavow themselves of outside expectations that put 10 more pounds of shoulder weight on every Devil last night.
“It’s hard to be in charge from the first [puck] drop to the last,” Bobby Holik said. “When you force things, you open up and the visiting team takes advantage of you. They go back to the passive forecheck or the trap, or whatever you want to call it, and then it gets even harder to score.
“At home, you have to be as patient as a visiting team. I’ve been asked many times about the importance of the first goal. Well, if it’s scored 55 minutes into the game, obviously, it’s huge. If it comes 30 seconds in, it’s only as important as you want to make it.
“The home ice advantage becomes a battle of minds more than anything.”
And the way the game is played today, the visitors have the better frame to deal with it.