Goalies, grit will decide NHL playoffs

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There is an advantage to examining the playoffs from the mountain top of statistics rather than the valley of the games themselves. The view is much clearer.The most visible factors of postseason success are team quality and goaltending. Regular-season success is the best predictor of success in the playoffs. Goaltending is the biggest potential perturbation of the predictive power of the regular season. A hot goaltender can hijack a series.The final factor is grit -- an ability to play both at a high energy level and within oneself. Grit is difficult to identify before the postseason and therefore a major force of randomness in playoff results.Each of these factors has emerged in the first two rounds of the playoffs.Detroit Red WingsThe Wings entered the Stanley Cup tournament as the team with the top record, but very few analysts have called Detroit the team to beat this year. Their recent history of playoff 'failure' has been blamed on a lack of grit. However, the untold story is that the road to the Stanley Cup final has been through Joe Louis Arena for some time.Last season they bowed to the eventual Cup winners, the Ducks, only after a terrific tussle. They provided tougher competition for Anaheim than did the Senators in the finals, outscoring the Ducks 17-16 and losing three one-goal games including two in overtime.In the 2006 spring tournament, they bowed out in the first round. But, again, the loss was to a Stanley Cup finalist - the surprising Edmonton Oilers.This is a profile of arguably the finest team in the NHL over the past five seasons. They are my favorite to win the Stanley Cup.Dallas StarsMarty Turco looks like he may be the goaltender most likely to perturb. The veteran netminder has elevated his game substantially from the regular season, outgunning Anaheim's J.S. Giguere in Round 1 and then besting Vezina Trophy finalist Evgeni Nabokov to carry the Stars into the conference final. His save percentage of .929 trails that of Detroit's Chris Osgood (.937) and that of the Penguins' Marc-Andre Fleury (.938). But he has been carrying his team more so than the other two (goal support average of 2.63 versus 4.11 for Osgood and 3.41 for Fleury).Dallas looked very good against the Sharks, a team whose regular-season success suggested that they were a conference finalist. And, prior to that, the Stars were the team to dismiss the defending champions. In both series they opened with two road wins and then prevailed in six games. I think that defines grit.Philadelphia FlyersPhiladelphia is the deepest seed (No. 6) to make it to the conference final. Recent NHL history has been populated with success from such darkhorses. In 2006, Edmonton conquered the West as the eighth seed. Calgary performed the same feat in 2004 and the Mighty Ducks won the west in 2003 as the seventh seed.The deep-seed darkhorse benefits from low expectations. The Flyers have looked cool, calm and collected -- and, I might add, well-coached. The opening round saw them dispatch one of the NHL's hottest teams. In Round 2, they beat the top seed in the East. It looked gritty to me.Pittsburgh PenguinsIt was hard to evaluate Pittsburgh in the opening when they easily dispatched the Senators, a team that only made the playoffs because of their performance over the first 20 percent of the season. But the Penguins' performance in the conference semi-final was impressive. They made short work of the Rangers, a team that impressed in the opening round against the perennially tough Devils. So far, it looks like Pittsburgh has more talent than grit, but in the endless scuffle between the two, talent usually prevails.Which means that the most likely final sees the Penguins opening at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)