We all know that magic usually begins with ABRACADABRA! ... and sometimes ends with POOF!
The art of prestidigitation is in the secret of the trick, the art of slight of hand and being in the mysterious world of now you see it, now you don't.
Some of the most watched athletes work the same kind of magic. The ones who can disappear for a second and then reappear somewhere else an instant later have the opportunity to put on a pretty good show.
Something like that shoot-it-over-the-net-and-then-get-it-on-the-other-side-of-the-net trick Hurricanes winger Cory Stillman pulled off with a quick backhander with just three seconds left in the second period of Game 2 to give Carolina a 3-0 lead en route to a 5-0 victory and commanding 2-0 lead in the Stanley Cup Final.
Well, maybe. But this is Cory Stillman not Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux. The 32-year-old winger is quick, he's talented, he's quick a quick release and is very dangerous on the rush. But he's also a skilled journeyman who is now playing on his third team in the last three seasons.
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
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"A planned play?" a surprised Stillman said. "No, I was actually trying to flip it into the net on the first shot, but it went over to the other side, and I got it back on my stick. I was hoping the first shot was going in, not the second."
Oilers coach Craig MacTavish said Stillman's goal was a back-breaker.
"We had a chance to get to the dressing room with only a two-goal deficit, which we have rallied to overcome at least twice already in the playoffs," MacTavish said. "But ..."
The frustration at giving up that goal kind of magically made the Oilers go PFFFFFT!
"Cory kind of flies under the radar," Hurricanes coach Peter Laviolette said. "He was one of the top scorers in the NHL two years ago and he was one of our top guys this year. But he seems to go unnoticed. Then, all of a sudden, there he is making another big play.
"To me, he's always contributed in the biggest games ... in the biggest ways."
And now, going into Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, here's Stillman with eight playoff goals and a 10-game point streak -- and he's second in NHL scoring in the playoffs with 21 points, just one behind teammate Eric Staal.
The magic Stillman has performed in the past, however, only made him go POOF ... from Calgary to St. Louis to Tampa Bay. But if you listen to Hurricanes General Manager Jim Rutherford, it appears Cory has finally found a home.
"I like being down here," he said. "You don't have to have snow to play. Your body feels good when it's warm outside ... and it's been fun trying to sell the game to these fans down here."
Stillman always has had the talent. He was a first-round draft choice, sixth overall, of the Calgary Flames in 1992, and spent a lot of years trying to find himself. He'd get his 16 to 27 goals, but there always seemed to be something missing -- a spark, the passion of a champion. His great skills always seemed to be left unfulfilled. Until 2002-03, when he was quick, sharp, dangerous and wound up with 24 goals and 67 points for St. Louis. But the Blues were in a cost-cutting mode -- and Stillman was traded to Tampa Bay for the bargain price of a second-round draft choice at the draft in June of 2003. All he did for the Lightning was increase his production to 25 goals and 80 points -- good for a seventh-place tie for the NHL scoring lead, just 14 points behind teammate Martin St. Louis -- and help Tampa Bay win the Stanley Cup.
And then was left unsigned to be a free agent after all that. Go figure.
"It's taken me longer to earn more respect," Stillman said. "Maybe people look down and see me as a part of the supporting cast. I don't know. To me, that goes hand in hand. I feel like I've been a better player the past three years and I think I'm making the guys around me better.
"I think I'm a more mature player now, a hungrier player. I understand more about the game ... and myself. The big thing is I've learned to relax and go out there and have fun on the ice. That's the key."
There wasn't a lot of arm-twisting when Hurricanes General Manager Jim Rutherford wanted to sign the free agent last August 2.
Rod Brind'Amour on Stillman:
"He just gets points, plain and simple. He's one of the better offensive players in the game, only he never seems to get enough credit. But the guys in this locker room know what he's done for us."
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"We've had a great deal of interest in him a number of times, but we were never able to acquire him," Rutherford said before the Final began. "We thought he'd be a great fit for any team ... and when we heard there were five or six other teams out there looking to sign him, we put in our bid -- and got him. It's our good fortune that he didn't fit into Tampa's salary structure and they let him go."
Strangely, that's not the way Stillman remembers it.
"I felt like I had no option," Stillman said. "I wanted to stay in Tampa, but I guess the Lightning thought I could be replaced easily. I was looking for a team ... but no one wanted me. Until Jim Rutherford called."
It was no secret that Stillman, after all the moving in the past couple years, was looking for a stable home for his family -- wife Mara and children Riley, Madison and Chase.
And now, Stiller has a chance to join Claude Lemieux as the only players in NHL history to win Stanley Cups in back-to-back seasons ... with a different team. Lemieux accomplished the feat with New Jersey in 1995 and won it again the next year with Colorado.
Stillman is kind of a darter, a shark. He's slowly circling one second and then boom he uses his quickness and skills to pop into an opening for another good scoring opportunity. He's also strong enough to produce in traffic.
"You always have to have an idea where he is," said Oilers defenseman Chris Pronger, who played in St. Louis in the two-plus seasons Stillman was there. "He'll sort of disappear and then reappear someplace you don't want to see a guy with those skills waiting for a scoring opportunity."
"He just gets points, plain and simple," said Hurricanes captain Rod Brind'Amour. "He's one of the better offensive players in the game, only he never seems to get enough credit. But the guys in this locker room know what he's done for us."
That would be getting 21 goals and 55 assists in the regular season, plus the 21 points he's had in the playoffs. That's just three points short of a 100-point season, something few players can brag about.
"I'd love nothing better than having another chance to hoist the Stanley Cup," Stillman said. "You play so long without winning one and now I have a chance to do it two straight seasons. Wow!"
Don't kid yourself, Stillman wants to share the Stanley Cup with his friends and family in Peterborough, Ontario, where he grew up. Back in 2004, when Cory received the Cup for one day, he didn't have a chance to show off Lord Stanley's fabled prize.
"We had a big flood in Peterborough," he said. "My family got to enjoy it. But it hardly left the house -- and I'd really love to share it with a lot more of my friends."
Actually, there's another pretty intriguing sidelight to Carolina signing Cory Stillman.
It happened early in the 2002-03 season, when the Hurricanes had high expectations that the franchise was on solid footing after going to the Stanley Cup finals before losing to the Detroit Red Wings in June of 2002.
"We were playing Tampa Bay and Cory Stillman scored from center ice, with (Carolina goalie) Kevin Weekes behind the net," Rutherford said before the Final this year. "We ended up having a horrible year. We were so bad that it allowed us to get the second pick in the draft and we picked Eric Staal."
Staal has joined Brind'Amour and now young goalie Cam Ward as the face of the Hurricanes franchise.
"I remember that goal," Stillman laughed. "I was coming out of the penalty box, took two or three steps and was going to rim it in deep. But I remember the guys on Tampa who had played with Weekes talking about how he sometimes cheats on the shoot-in and goes behind the net. When I went to shoot, I took a quick look and saw he was heading behind the net. So I held up and shot it right into the middle of the net. He tried to dive across to get it, but it went under his stick.
"Jim Rutherford has never talked to me about it ... but the guys have told me that made a difference in their season, it kind of took the steam out of them for that year. But, on the other hand, how often do you get a chance to get a player like Eric. Now that I'm here, it's kind of a weird coincidence, don't you think?"
Not weird. It's magic that the Hurricanes and Cory Stillman have found one another.
