Stars have been through too much to be overconfident

6/6/99

By Guy Carbonneau
for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Four years ago in St. Louis, I had been traded to the Blues from the Montreal Canadiens, I had groin and knee injuries, and I wasn't fitting into the Blues' system under coach Mike Keenan.

And so as I prepared for the 1995-96 season, I really wondered if my career was over. I didn't fit in, I didn't like the coach, hockey wasn't fun anymore.

Then a few days before the season started, I was traded to the Stars. The first year here wasn't so easy, either, and I missed the playoffs for the first time in my career. But I could at least see a spark here. I could at least sense hockey was going to be fun again.

And now, the fun has returned.

I guess the point I'm making is that all of us have had to go through things to get to this point: self-doubt or injury or hard times. We've all faced our hockey demons, and we've all overcome them. And that's what makes this Stanley Cup Finals so sweet.

There might not be a tougher championship to win in all of sports. You have to go through four best-of-seven series, you have to endure physical and mental stress, you have to wear down another team in a kind of hockey that's so much more intense than the regular season. And because it's so hard to do that in the playoffs, because it's so hard to work your whole life just to make an NHL career for yourself, you have to appreciate it when it comes.

I've heard people say that we're going to be overconfident against the Buffalo Sabres. Anyone who has had to fight to get this far would never say that. How can we possibly be overconfident when we know how hard it was to get past Edmonton and St. Louis and Colorado. Never mind how many games it took; all of those series presented special challenges for our team. And we overcame those challenges.

And Buffalo has been through the same thing. They've proved in the East that they can endure the playoffs, that they can overcome six weeks of grueling hockey and injuries and fatigue. Anyone who says that either team is going to sweep either team doesn't know how much work it takes to get here.

Are we a confident team? Sure. We've been confident since the start of the season that we can prove to everyone we're the best team in the league. I've said since the beginning of the playoffs that you have to have that arrogance to be a winning athlete. You have to believe when you're on the ice that you can beat anyone in the world. And I believe we'll have that feeling tonight.

But overconfident? No.

We've all worked too hard to get to this point to let that get in the way. Every one of us has our own story: players who want to win it for the first time, players who think this might be their last chance, players who have dreamed of this one moment for their entire career. And just like we have those stories, so do the Sabres. Trying to say one team will be overconfident or one team will be tired or one team won't be emotionally ready is ridiculous.

This is the Stanley Cup Finals, and I can tell you that after 17 years in the league, they don't come around too often. When they do, I think everyone will be ready.

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