For Lakers and Ducks, Winless in Their Second-Round Playoff Series, There Is Only One Thing to Say: UH-O!

By ROBYN NORWOOD

May 8, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The man the Mighty Ducks need to give their pregame speech tonight at the Pond will be tantalizingly close, but decidedly unwilling to help.

Dave Lewis will be just down the hall in the Detroit Red Wings’ dressing room.

Only two teams have come back to win a series after falling behind, three games to none, and Lewis, an associate coach for the Red Wings, played for one of them, the 1975 New York Islanders.

“Nobody thought we could do it,” said Lewis, 41, whose team came back to beat Pittsburgh in seven games--then nearly pulled off the same feat against Philadelphia in the next series, coming back from 0-3 again before losing in the seventh game to the eventual Stanley Cup champion.

“I remember Al Arbour told us, all we had to do was play one period at a time, one shift at a time,” said Lewis, who also played for the Kings, New Jersey and Detroit.

“Win your shift. Win the first period. Keep it simple and move from point to point, and you can get back in it.”

Before the Islander comeback, it had been 33 years since the feat was accomplished.

The 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs remain the only team in any sport to come back from 0-3 to win a championship series when they upset Detroit in the Stanley Cup finals.

That was 13 years before Duck Coach Ron Wilson was born, and he was fresh out of Providence College when the Islanders--a bunch of youngsters including Denis Potvin, Bryan Trottier and Billy Smith--upset Pittsburgh in the franchise’s first playoff appearance.

Five years later, the Islanders won the first of four consecutive Stanley Cups.

Duck star Paul Kariya? He wasn’t even walking in the summer of 1975.

“Nope, I haven’t heard anything about that team,” said Kariya, 22.

The Ducks are in desperate straits entering Game 4 of their Western Conference semifinal series. The best they can do at the moment is send the series back to Detroit for Game 5.

“You never say never, but it’s not the position you want to be in,” goalie Guy Hebert said. “It’s a little different than being down, 3-2, against Phoenix. Then, if you win, it gives you an opportunity to come home and win the series. Here, if we can win one and head back there, then there will be a lot of pressure on them to end it at home. You try to keep going.”

The aforementioned 1942 Stanley Cup finals were a classic. There were only seven teams in the league then, and no television broadcasts, only radio.

The cast of characters read like the list of the NHL’s storied trophies--Detroit’s coach was Jack Adams, Conn Smythe managed the Maple Leafs, and Frank Selke was Toronto’s business manager. Maple Leaf players Turk Broda, Syl Apps and Dave Schriner all eventually made the Hall of Fame.

“The Red Wings felt they could defeat the Leafs by taking advantage of their slow defense,” said James Duplacey, a hockey historian who works for NHL Publishing. “They were a veteran team, very good, but long in the tooth.”

Detroit won the first three, and Toronto Coach Hap Day tried something different in Game 4, putting three kids in the lineup in place of three veterans--including Gord Drillon, one of the league’s leading scorers.

Toronto won, 4-3, holding on after a rookie referee named Mel Harwood called two late penalties against Detroit.

Adams came over the boards and attacked the referee.

“He was suspended the rest of the playoffs,” Duplacey said. “Now, Detroit’s still up, 3-1, but without their coach. It deflated the Red Wings.”

Toronto won Game 5, 9-3, then shut out the Red Wings in Detroit before closing out the series with a 3-1 victory at Maple Leaf Gardens in front of 16,000 fans--then the largest crowd to see a hockey game in Canada.

Three decades later, the Islanders turned the tables on Pittsburgh.

“We were an underdog team, and we’d only existed three years at the time,” Lewis said. “We were a bunch of young guys who didn’t know any better.”

Pittsburgh scored 14 goals in the first three games, but the Islanders rallied in Game 4.

“It’s a cliche, but the hardest game for a team to win is the fourth one,” Lewis said.

The Islanders won Game 5 too, and Pittsburgh started feeling the heat.

Even then, the Islanders were only trying to extend the series, period by period, shift by shift.

They won Game 6, 4-1. Had they started to believe?

“Probably not until Game 7,” Lewis said.

Game 7 was as tight as could be, and the Islanders scored the only goal.

“It was a tremendous experience,” Lewis said. “I remember the next morning too, after we won. There wasn’t much sleep that night.”

The next series against Philadelphia followed the same script until the Flyers won Game 7.

“We thought we could win that one too,” Lewis said. “But Kate Smith was singing the national anthem, and we knew what effect that could have. We bought her two dozen roses and Eddie Westfall presented them to her, trying to counter somehow.”

Tonight, the Ducks try to counter in Game 4.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

TONIGHT’S GAME

MIGHTY DUCKS vs. RED WINGS

Red Wings lead series, 3-0

* Time: 7:30

* TV: Fox Sp. West 2

* Radio: KEZY-FM (95.9)

* HOW TO WATCH THE GAME

With Fox Sports West 2 making the game available, call your cable company to see which channel is carrying it--or just start flipping.

* HEBERT UPDATE

Injured goalie Guy Hebert will participate in the Ducks’ pregame workout, but Mikhail Shtalenkov is expected to start Game 4. C8