Outlook Is Dim for Flyers, Snow

PHILADELPHIA — The Detroit Red Wings hoped Paul Coffey would one day help them win the Stanley Cup. They just didn’t know they’d have to trade him for it to happen.

Capitalizing on a second consecutive weak goaltending performance by the Philadelphia Flyers and indefensible lapses by Coffey, the Red Wings on Tuesday moved within two victories of ending a Stanley Cup drought that began in Gordie Howe’s heyday and has lasted more than 42 years.

Their 4-2 triumph over the Flyers before an early-departing crowd of 20,159 at the CoreStates Center followed the script they used in the opener: same score, same mistakes by Coffey--he was on the ice for three Detroit goals Tuesday and in the penalty box for the other--same grit shown by the Red Wings and the same soft goals given up by a Flyer goalie.

Only the name of the goalie was changed, from Ron Hextall in Game 1 to Garth Snow. Just as Hextall gave up a 60-foot goal to Steve Yzerman in the opener to deflate the Flyers after they had pulled within a goal, Snow on Tuesday negated a Flyer first-period comeback when he was beaten by a 50-foot shot by Kirk Maltby at 2:39 of the second period.

Brendan Shanahan’s goal off a two-on-one at 9:56 of the third period applied the final flourish to a solid effort that put the Red Wings in commanding position as the series shifts to Joe Louis Arena on Thursday.

“We’re pleased with the start of the series,” Yzerman said. “We’re in a position now where we have a great opportunity to go up 3-0. The next game will be big for us.”

That’s about as gleeful as the Red Wings got, although Stanley Cup history certainly favors them. Only two teams have won the Cup after losing the first two games at home: the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs and the 1966 Montreal Canadiens. In addition, the Red Wings are 7-1 at home in the playoffs and they know teams that have won Game 2 of the finals have won the Cup in 22 of the past 25 seasons.

“Of course there’s frustration, but there’s no time right now to be upset or feel sorry for ourselves,” Flyer defenseman Eric Desjardins said. “That’s not the way we’re going to come back. We’ve got to be positive.”

Coach Terry Murray was positive, all right--positive his goalies haven’t given him the timely saves the Flyers need if they’re to have any chance against a team whose heart is proving nearly equal to its superb speed.

Asked which goalie will start in Game 3, Murray said he didn’t know. “Again we do need to be better in that position,” he said. “We have to have a higher responsibility to ourselves as a team and to our fans and play better. It starts with our goaltending. It starts with our team play on the defensive part of the game. Again, we had just too many breakdowns. . . .

“Those kind of plays and not getting the big stops are your worst nightmare when you get to the finals.”

Coffey, the highest-scoring defenseman in NHL history and a future Hall of Famer, is living a nightmare, having been on the ice for six of Detroit’s eight goals in the series and directly accountable for several. Coffey, who played on the Red Wings’ Cup runner-up team in 1995 and was traded by Detroit to Hartford early this season and later dealt again to Philadelphia, left the arena without speaking to reporters.

“In an overall evaluation of his play, we need a better Paul Coffey,” Murray said.

Detroit Coach Scotty Bowman, who several months ago blasted Coffey’s defensive deficiencies and diminished Coffey’s contributions to the Stanley Cup they won in Pittsburgh in 1991, refused to bash Coffey again. “If Paul was with our team, the kind of [bigger] team we have now, it would have helped him,” Bowman said. “He went to a team like Philadelphia with that size. . . . I’m not going to tell you that we lost two out of three years because of Paul Coffey. That’s not right.”

The Red Wings did a lot of things right in the first period, connecting on their second shot on Snow. Flyer defenseman Kjell Samuelsson lost the puck in the neutral zone and Shananhan pounced on it and unleashed a shot that glanced off Coffey’s foot and past Snow’s stick at 1:37.

They made it 2-0 at 9:22, with Coffey in the box serving a hooking penalty, when Yzerman converted his own rebound. But the Flyers came alive in the last 10 minutes of the period and pulled even on nearly identical power-play deflections by Rod Brind’Amour at 17:42 and 18:51.

But Maltby’s goal stunned the crowd and the Flyers, taking both out of the game--and maybe taking the Flyers out of the series. “If I’m on top of my game, that’s a stop I make,” Snow said. “We’re ticked off. We needed to win.”