The run is done: Canes’ magical 2001-02 season ends with a loss to the Red Wings

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the News & Observer on June 14, 2002.

DETROIT — The celebration blared on outside on the ice, clearly audible in discrete roars as each of the Detroit Red Wings lifted the Stanley Cup for a trip around the ice.

At Erik Cole’s stall in the Carolina Hurricanes’ locker room, the noise came as he ripped the tape off his shinguards, his playoff beard only moments away from being shaved off and his 23-year-old voice breaking as he tried to speak.

Across the room, Ron Francis’ voice was clear as the 39-year-old said he wanted to come back next season for another run at the finals, another run at the Cup the Canes came within three wins of winning.

With a 3-1 victory Thursday, the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup everyone expected them to win, against the team no one expected to be in the finals.

“We got here believing we would win,” Carolina coach Paul Maurice said. “Not that we could win, or we might win, but that we would win. It’s something that develops in a group of men over the course of a season.

“But we knew down the stretch we were that good, so when you lose, you feel it.”

The Canes hung around as long as they could, winning the first game of the finals in overtime and serving notice that it wouldn’t be as easy as even the Wings might have thought.

And it wasn’t, even though the Wings won the next four -- closing out the Canes in five games and ending Carolina’s remarkable playoff run with authority.

Every game of the series was either tied or a one-goal game going into the third period, and Thursday was no different.

Down 2-0, Jeff O’Neill scored his eighth goal of the playoffs on a power play with 1:10 left in the second to give the Canes a chance going into the third.

But a chance was all they had. This comeback was not to be.

Dominik Hasek had to make only 16 saves to secure his first Stanley Cup. It was also the first Cup for Steve Duchesne and Luc Robitaille, two long-suffering veterans.

It was the ninth Cup for Scotty Bowman as a coach, and his last. He said after the game that at 68, he’s had enough.

And defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom became the first European to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.

“I think we should be there with some of the greatest teams,” Lidstrom said. “I think looking back at last summer when we got [Hasek] and signed [Brett] Hull and Freddy Olausson, we got some really talented players, and it was just a matter of getting everything working together.”

“The thing that’s most amazing,” Maurice said, “that kind of gets lost because of the names they have on the jerseys here, is how well they play as a team.”

By the time the Cup was handed to Detroit captain Steve Yzerman, the Canes were already getting dressed -- knowing they’d lost to a better team but were only a few breaks away from a historic upset.

So the Wings won the Cup. That outcome seemed as preordained in September as it did Thursday afternoon before Game 5.

But losing wasn’t easy once the Canes got there, especially considering the Canes stole Game 1 in Detroit.

There is no doubt that the Red Wings deserved to win it, and there is no doubt the Canes had chances of their own to win the Cup, as well.

Had they won Game 3 before Igor Larionov won it for Detroit in the third overtime, it might have been them clinching Thursday instead of Detroit.

“At the end of the day, the Red Wings are celebrating on the ice and we have to shave our playoff beards and move on,” said goalie Arturs Irbe, who rebounded from a benching early in the playoffs to play some of the best hockey of his career.

“We don’t feel like a success right now. It doesn’t feel like an accomplishment.”

It was clearly not to be. The team that got to the finals by doing all the little things right found itself up against a team that didn’t need to do the little things right because it did the big things so well.

The team that managed the most stunning comeback of the playoffs -- roaring back from three goals down in the third period to turn the tide against Montreal in Game 4 of the second round -- couldn’t take the first step on what would have been the first comeback from a 3-1 deficit since 1942.

The Canes scored only seven goals in the five games of the finals, not enough to beat a team as good as Detroit.

“You’re never satisfied when you don’t win,” Francis said, “but no one picked us to get here.”

There’s no shame in losing to the Wings, perhaps the best team assembled in an off-season since the dawn of big-dollar free agency -- or, at least, the first with the results to justify the dollars doled out during the summer.

The Wings won the Cup, yes. But the Canes won respect, along with the confidence that there’s no reason they can’t be here again in the next few years.

“We lost,” said defenseman Niclas Wallin, who scored two of Carolina’s overtime playoff goals, “but we didn’t lose.”

With that, he got up and went to shave off the dark-brown beard that he had been carefully cultivating for two months.

The noise on the ice continued to blare, the celebration in Detroit under way, as the Canes’ stunning season came to a quiet end.

This story was originally published October 7, 2021 at 8:11 PM.