Anyone could win it. Except the Bruins

Could this be the age of the underdog?

There are no teams walking away with the Stanley Cup just yet, no matter what their expectations were going in to the playoffs. The Anaheim Mighty Ducks are up 3-0 on the Detroit Red Wings. The Edmonton Oilers have a 2-1 lead on the Dallas Stars going into last night's game. And even the New York Islanders are only one game behind at 1-2 against the regular season champion Ottawa Senators.

The only underdog that isn't fighting like a champion is the homegrown one, the Boston Bruins. Down 3-0 to the playoff heavyweights New Jersey Devils, possibly knocked out by last night's game, they are sitting in some hot water right now. The Devils went out in the first round against the Carolina Hurricanes last year, and that memory of playoff failure has definitely had an effect on this team.

They are playing their defensive system well, especially former playoff MVP Scott Stevens, who is cramming up the middle, preventing half the Bruins shots from getting to the net. And once they do get to the net, it's Martin Brodeur, who has been playing like a man possessed.

He stops the breakaways. He stops the rebounds. He stops the deflections. Brodeur in game three was a sight to see, stealing goals away on several good attempts by Boston. Jeff Hackett, who replaced goalie Steve Shields in game three, did not quite meet that level of play. On two New Jersey breakaways, Hackett got completely beat. Luckily for Boston, one of those attempts hit the post, but the second one went right over his glove to get the second goal of the night.

The Devils were expected to walk away with this one, so it doesn't surprise too many.

What is shocking the hockey world is how the Ducks are playing. Jean-Sebastian Gigure has been an unstoppable force for them in net. His enormous size, along with some beautiful positioning, has allowed him to stop nearly everything while looking like he's going for a Sunday morning skate.

The games look incredibly lopsided, with the puck spending most of its time in the Anaheim zone, but that's the way their defensive system is designed to work. Keep the shots from the periphery, and then when Detroit makes mistakes, the Ducks are there to capitalize.

Of course, it helps when Curtis Joseph has let in a couple softies, notably the first goal of the game last night. A Stanley Cup goaltender can not do that in the playoffs because it only deflates the team and sets a poor tone for the rest of the game. If there's no faith in the goaltender, then the team is in trouble.

Joseph played a little better in the game Monday night, but was outmatched by Gigure across the ice. No matter what you think of the Red Wings, do you really think they're good enough to come back from a 3-0 deficit, something only the '42 Toronto Maple Leafs and the '75 Isles have ever been able to accomplish?

Despite being up 3-0, Anaheim would do well to remember last year's first round series between Detroit and the Vancouver Canucks. Vancouver won the first two in Detroit, then proceeded to lose four straight to the eventual Stanley Cup Champions. Anaheim will be less likely to have the type of defensive breakdowns that Vancouver did last year, but the danger of Detroit and its All-Star cast are ever-present.

The other series that has a good chance of going the way of the upset is Dallas-Edmonton. And the prime reason for that concern is the way Marty Turco played in net Sunday night. Going into the third period of game 3, Dallas was up 1-0. For a team that prides itself on defensive responsibility, the game did not end well. Turco was scored on three times in three minutes, to give Edmonton the win 3-2.

The loss is not the concern. The concern is that Turco, a playoff newbie after a record-breaking first season, fell apart. All three goals in the third period went five-hole, which has got to get in a goalie's head. By the end of the third, every Edmonton player was trying to get the puck through Turco's legs.

A champion caliber goalie does not breakdown like that. To be fair, Tommy Salo at the other end of the ice was lucky, lucky, lucky. But it doesn't matter if your goalie is going to give up three goals late in the game. What kind of confidence can your team have if they feel that no matter how well they play, their goalie is going to blow it in the final minutes?

A team that has to be feeling frustrated right now is the Minnesota Wild. After winning the first game, they have not been able to figure out Patrick Roy in games two and three. In game three, they would dominate the Colorado Avalanche for lengths of time. But Roy would save his team, and the Avs would come back immediately and score.

The idea that your best is not good enough does not create confidence in a young team like the Wild, who are in the middle of their first playoff series in franchise history.