Red Wings Get Familiar Foe

A rivalry once considered the nastiest in hockey resumes Saturday when the Detroit Red Wings and Colorado Avalanche meet in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals.

Detroit and Colorado, the West’s top two teams in the regular season, will meet for the fifth time in the playoffs since 1996.

The Avalanche have won three of those series, including the last two, in 1999 and 2000. The Red Wings beat Colorado in three of the four games the teams played this season.

“Detroit will be a great challenge for us, and we are excited to play that series,” goalie Patrick Roy said after shutting out San Jose, 1-0, in Game 7 on Wednesday night, sending Colorado to the conference finals for the sixth time in seven years.

Detroit, the regular-season leader, advanced to the conference finals by dispatching St. Louis in five games.

“We just know that it’s probably the way it should be,” Detroit’s Brendan Shanahan said. “We were the top two teams in the Western Conference during the season, so it’s only fitting that we’re the last two standing.”

Detroit and Colorado have combined to win four of the last six Stanley Cups--the Red Wings in 1997 and 1998, and the Avalanche in 1996 and last year.

Add to that a rivalry that has resulted in blood, brawls and broken bones, and the elements of a fiercely contested series are present.

“Detroit has been in the back of our minds all the time, and you watch them and see how well they are playing,” Colorado defenseman Rob Blake said.

*

Dave Tippett doesn’t see the Dallas Stars as the team that sputtered to a 10th-place finish in the Western Conference and missed the playoffs last season.

The man who was hired to coach the Stars on Thursday sees them more like the team that made two trips to the Stanley Cup finals and won five division titles in the last six seasons.

“We have a great core of players here, players that have won before,” said Tippett, who signed a three-year deal. “And even though we are turning the page on an era that’s been excellent for the Dallas Stars, there’s no reason we can’t have that same success, if not more success. Our sole purpose this year is to win the Stanley Cup.”

Tippett, an assistant coach who stressed offense during his three years with the Kings, replaces defense-minded Ken Hitchcock.

Hitchcock was fired in January after players quit responding to his demanding style.

Hitchcock, who led Dallas to its only two Stanley Cup final appearances and the 1999 championship, was hired Tuesday to coach the Philadelphia Flyers.

In 11 seasons as a player, Tippett was a hard-working defensive forward with Hartford, Washington, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

As a coach, first with the Houston Aeros in the IHL and then with the Kings, Tippett has shown a tendency to give his players offensive freedom.

*

St. Louis Blues assistant coach Jimmy Roberts, who played and coached in the NHL for almost four decades, retired from hockey.

Roberts, 62, played for 15 seasons and had been an NHL head coach three times. He was the interim Blues coach for nine games in the 1996-97 season, after Mike Keenan’s departure and before the hiring of Joel Quenneville.

Roberts made his NHL debut in 1963 with the Montreal Canadiens, playing on two Stanley Cup teams before 1967, when he was the first player picked by the St. Louis Blues in the six-team expansion draft. He returned to Montreal in a 1971 trade and won the Stanley Cup three more times, in 1973, 1976 and 1977.