Ducks oust Flames

Anaheim advances to play Colorado in the second round.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CALGARY, Alberta -- Teemu Selanne and Ruslan Salei scored, Ilya Bryzgalov stopped 22 shots and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks eliminated the defending Western Conference champion Calgary Flames with a 3-0 victory in Game 7 on Wednesday night.
The sixth-seeded Ducks made it a clean sweep in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs for the lower-seeded teams.
Anaheim will now face the seventh-seeded Colorado Avalanche in the second round with the first game Friday night in California.
Eighth-seeded Edmonton plays fifth-seeded San Jose in the other semifinal.
Selanne opened the scoring at 5:12 of the second, his wrist shot beating Calgary goalie Miikka Kiprusoff to the stick side. Salei put the Ducks ahead 2-0 with a big goal at 19:01.
"Not many people in the hockey world believe we could win this series," Selanne said
Jeff Friesen sealed added an empty-net goal late in the third for the Ducks.
Sabres
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Lindy Ruff didn't want the Buffalo Sabres spending too much time savoring their first-round playoff series victory.
"We told the guys we'd give them the morning to celebrate and then we'd get back to work by noon," the Buffalo coach said Wednesday, some 14 hours after the Sabres eliminated the Flyers in six games with a 7-1 win at Philadelphia.
True to his word, Ruff was putting his players through drills by 12:30 p.m. and, an hour later, he was busy telling everyone that Buffalo is the clear underdog entering its Eastern Conference semifinal against the top-seeded Ottawa Senators.
The best-of-seven series opens at Ottawa on Friday night.
"We're definitely the underdog going into this series with the year Ottawa had and the offense they piled up and their record against us," Ruff said. "We've got a challenge."
It didn't matter to Ruff that the Sabres eliminated the Flyers by outscoring them 10-1 the last two games.
Tied for wins
The coach also failed to note that Buffalo (52-24-6) matched Ottawa (52-21-9) in regular-season victories and finished just three points behind the Senators in the Northeast Division.
While Buffalo lost five of eight against Ottawa during the season, the Sabres did win the final two meetings -- including a 6-2 win at Ottawa on April 8.
Ruff's intentions to downplay the Sabres, however, were clear.
This group of relative no-names -- discounted for being too young and for not having been in the playoffs since 2001 -- has spent the entire season defying its doubters. Why change the formula now?
As veteran forward Mike Grier put it: "I don't think we really put much thought into what people on the outside are saying. In here, we're a pretty confident group."
Oh, and they're good, too.
Showing little difficulty beating a plodding, one-dimensional Flyers opponent, the Sabres are one of the few teams that can match the Senators' speed and depth.
The Sabres have a balanced four-line attack, as evidenced against Philadelphia in which 19 of Buffalo's 20 skaters scored at least one point and 11 had at least one goal.
That's a carry-over from the regular season in which 11 Sabres totaled 40 or more points. No other team -- not even Ottawa, which led the NHL with 314 goals -- could boast that many.
The Sabres have a solid, mobile defense. And they grew in confidence when rookie goalie Ryan Miller shook off jittery performances in Games 3 and 4 at Philadelphia to rebound by allowing one goal in his final two games, including a 3-0 shutout in Game 5 on Sunday.
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