How much did Joe Nieuwendyk's absence affect the 1998 Western Conference Finals?

[Jim MacDonald]

Good Afternoon Everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well. It's been a minute since I've posted!

Would love to hear takes from neutral observers, Wings fans and Stars fans---if the Stars have a healthy Joe Nieuwendyk in the 98 Western Conference Finals, in what ways do you feel this changes the series' outcome? To kinda "shoot from the hip" here as conversation pieces:

1. I don't know/can't remember now with the passage of time what kind of regular season and playoff Nieuwendyk was having prior to the injury against the Sharks....was he really kicking ass?

2. Stars with the home ice advantage this series.

3. Wings obviously playing with the "emotional intangible" of playing for Konstantinov and Mnatsakonov.

Boy the series went six games even with Nieuwendyk being out and both Yzerman and Fedorov were on top of their games. The "what-ifs" on a healthy Nieuwendyk both is fascinating and scary at the time time!-Jim

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

IMO, it didn’t.

Even with Joe in, Detroit was just better line for line. Osgood let in a couple of stinkers that series but the wings won anyway.

 

[Crosby2010]

Good Afternoon Everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well. It's been a minute since I've posted!

Would love to hear takes from neutral observers, Wings fans and Stars fans---if the Stars have a healthy Joe Nieuwendyk in the 98 Western Conference Finals, in what ways do you feel this changes the series' outcome? To kinda "shoot from the hip" here as conversation pieces:

1. I don't know/can't remember now with the passage of time what kind of regular season and playoff Nieuwendyk was having prior to the injury against the Sharks....was he really kicking ass?

2. Stars with the home ice advantage this series.

3. Wings obviously playing with the "emotional intangible" of playing for Konstantinov and Mnatsakonov.

Boy the series went six games even with Nieuwendyk being out and both Yzerman and Fedorov were on top of their games. The "what-ifs" on a healthy Nieuwendyk both is fascinating and scary at the time time!-Jim

Nieuwendyk believe it or not was having a heck of a year. 39 goals, that was the most by a Canadian in the NHL that year. Not a strong year for Canadian goal scorers, but still. Nieuwendyk was on the Olympic team and he was definitely playing well at this time. Got his knee taken out by Bryan Marchment in the opening round. Does that change anything vs. the Wings? I don't know. I'll say no. Because that Wings team was so deep, they were motivated to win one for Vladdy and to be honest with Osgood letting that woeful overtime goal in back in Game 5 it made the series go longer than expected. The Stars were a better team in 1999 and it showed. Detroit was still king in 1998.

 

[MadLuke]

This is next year Smythe winner, wings had won a game by a single goal.

Peak playoff Belfour, who knows how it goes with Nieuwendyk.

Dallas had the best record in the league for a reason, their power play scored a single goal in those 6 games while they did not had their best power play scorer in there, so it is easy to see in what direct way they could have improved.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

This is next year Smythe winner, wings had won a game by a single goal.

Peak playoff Belfour, who knows how it goes with Nieuwendyk.

Dallas had the best record in the league for a reason, Dallas power play scored a single goal in those 6 games, they did not had their best power play scorer in there.

The Wings had Belfour’s number from 1993 onward.

Edit: from 91-92 onward with a winning record against them 3 times. (Twice in Dallas, once with Toronto)
23-32-7 with an .899 save percentage and 2.95 gaa against the wings. 10% of his losses against were the wings with less than 5% of his wins coming against them.

The dude was one of my favorite players to hate in his heyday but I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for him. The wings figured him out and almost always found a way to throw him off his game.

 

[RocketCityRocker]

I always thought that Nieuwendyk being out kept that series from being a coin flip. The Wings defense could pretty much focus on the Modano line (remember, this was a year before the Stars got Brett Hull).

Fedorov had kind of disappeared offensively during the Stars series. He did have 20 points that year, but about half of those were racked up during the Phoenix series, where he single-handedly rescued the Wings from what was shaping up to be a first round upset.

Osgood’s goaltending was very strange that playoffs because each of the first three series, he’d let in a goal from center ice and then have a shutout the next game. I think with Nieuwendyk, the Stars probably take it and I’m a Wings fan.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I wonder how well the Stars did with face-offs. In the late 1990's, Nieuwendyk was arguably the 2nd best player in the league on the draw. (The only player who was better was Yanic Perreault. He played his best hockey in the face-off circle. He played his second-best hockey on the bench).

Granted, hockey "analytics" have showed that the impact of face-off wins are overrated. But in a close series, it's conceivable it could have made a difference, especially if the Stars were already doing poorly in that area.

 

[VanIslander]

Look.
I was there.
On the couch.
When ESPN informed me Joe was out.
I IMMEDIATELY phone called (we used to do pre-texting): DALLAS IS COOKED. SEE THEM NEXT YEAR.
TV media agreed, citing several saddened guys, of course ending with "but we can".

 

[VanIslander]

I wonder how well the Stars did with face-offs. In the late 1990's, Nieuwendyk was arguably the 2nd best player in the league on the draw. (The only player who was better was Yanic Perreault. He played his best hockey in the face-off circle. He played his second-best hockey on the bench).

Granted, hockey "analytics" have showed that the impact of face-off wins are overrated. But in a close series, it's conceivable it could have made a difference, especially if the Stars were already doing poorly in that area.

HO, Joe's face-off stats are just a symptom of the virus he was... against inside defenses; to put otherly, he had elite hand-eye coordination, fight in a phone booth...

Forsbergness but less, basically Marleau with more heart, less legs

His absence put Dallas clearly out to many of us. I recall his teammates looking aghast, glum, almost defeated in the locker room after that game.

 

[MadLuke]

I wonder how well the Stars did with face-offs. In the late 1990's, Nieuwendyk was arguably the 2nd best player in the league on the draw.

50.6% FO, instead of a more expected 55% if he is there

Carbo-Nieuwendyk-Modano-Srukdland should put you around that 55% mark (like it did the year after of in the regular season in 1998 leading the league). Red Wings were a strong faceoff team as well too.

 

[ShelbyZ]

For whatever it's worth, in their final meeting of the regular season on 4/15/1998, Dallas beat Detroit 3-1 despite being outshot 44-16, with Nieuwendyk assisting on all 3 Dallas goals.

I think a healthy Nieuwendyk definitely gives Dallas a better chance, but the series is still pretty open:

-The Stars had the best PP in the regular season and Nieuwendyk was a big part of it. It had fallen so hard against Detroit that they ended up giving up more SH goals than they scored on the PP, including one from an odd man rush that included noted speedster Larry Murphy.

-Both teams top forwards were pretty well neutralized in the series, with Modano being held to one goal for Dallas and Fedorov, Yzerman and Shanahan (who had 0 pts the entire series...) combining for 2 the whole series. In addition, Pat Verbeek, who had 31 in the regular season, and had connected with Nieuwendyk for a decent chunk of the Stars Regular Season goals, was held to one in the series and only 3 in the playoffs. This made scoring depth pretty important, where I think Detroit still had an edge even against a Stars team with a healthy Nieuwendyk.

-It seemed like the Red Wings really started to hit their stride for that Cup run as that series started. At the end of the 2nd round, Bowman finally gave up on trying to figure out where Dmitri Mironov fit and settled with Rouse-Macoun and Eriksson-Fetisov as his 2nd and 3rd pairings for the rest of the playoffs. Up front, Holmstrom and Lapointe had really "emerged" with the net front antics against the Blues and carried that into the Dallas series. The Red Wings also got to a point in the Dallas series where, save for some guys playing banged up (especially Gilchrist and Shanahan), their line up got to full strength when Doug Brown returned and pushed Kocur to the pressbox.

I can't fully speak for the Stars perspective, but it almost seemed like they were going in the opposite direction. Obviously they lost Niewendyk long term, but IIRC, they had some other injuries with guys in and out of the line up lower in their forward ranks (Reid? Adams?). Then during the series, on D they lost Chambers for rest of the series during game 3, then lost Matvichuk in game 4, who missed game 5 and then played hurt in the deciding game 6. Unlike the Red Wings, the Stars didn't have the same quality depth to plug those holes.

-As has already been mentioned, Belfour wasn't his best in the series.

 

[LightningStorm]

In this thread, I mentioned 1996-2002 Detroit/Dallas as a great rivalry that never happened, amidst both of them having great rivalries with Colorado.

Another example is Detroit vs Dallas between 1995-2002. Dallas was the 3rd wheel of the Colorado/Detroit rivalry, and together the 3 dominated in this span. In addition to the heated Avs/Wings rivalry, there was also the 1999 and 2000 WCF where the Stars beat the Avs in 7 in both, which each at least close to their peaks. But the Stars and WIngs never had that. They only met in 1998 (Dallas wasn't elite in 1995, so I won't count that for the sake of this thread). For the Stars, Nieuwendyk (who won the Smythe the next season) was injured in the first game of the playoffs, and it was the season before they signed Hull, so they struggled to score that postseason, which was a big motivating factor in signing Hull. Without those two, this wasn't as good a Stars team as the one who beat the Avs the next 2 seasons and won the 1999 cup. Meanwhile, had the Wings not blown their 2-0 series lead to the Avs the following season, I think they lose to the Stars in the 1999 WCF. Not only because the Stars were better, but because the Wings were worn down from their B2B cup wins. If looking for a season where both were close to peak form aside from if Nieuwendyk was healthy in 1998, the next best postseason would probably be 2003, when they were the top 2 seeds in the West but both fell victim to Giguere's legendary postseason.

As mentioned, a healthy Nieuwendyk in 1998 would've been the best matchup for this potential rivalry. I think it would be a coin flip for who wins. I want to lean towards Dallas, but Belfour not having his best series makes me hesitant, especially since that was where Dallas had the biggest edge. And for the Stars scoring difficulties this postseason, obviously Nieuwendyk helps a lot, but they were still a year away from Hull. I do feel more confident in saying the Stars beat the Wings in the 1999 WCF had the Wings not blown the 2-0 series lead to the Avs, despite the fact that the Wings weren't as favorable a matchup for the Stars as the Avs were.

 

[GMR]

The 1998 Red Wings weren't losing that spring no matter what Chris Osgood did. They were winning that Cup for Vladdy.

As someone mentioned earlier, the Wings always did well against Belfour. It was Roy and the Avalanche we were more worried about.