SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Last year, when the Colorado Avalanche were trailing 3-2 in the finals and were within one loss of falling short of the Stanley Cup, a veteran defenseman stood up in the Continental Airlines visiting dressing room before Game 6.

Uh, fellas, he said, this might be my "last kick at the Stanley Cup."

(That phrasing later was passed along by a garrulous Finnish winger, Ville Nieminen, and like sportswriters who don't carry tape recorders or know shorthand, he might have not have gotten the words exactly right.)

The graybeard defenseman said he knew the Avalanche were a better team than those Devils and all they needed to do was play as if they believed it.

Over the next few months, the legend evolved to the point where the memories were of the Avalanche storming out of the dressing room, screaming, "Win One for the Gipper!", "Remember the Lusitania!", and, "Lafayette, We Are Here!" -- then dismantling the Devils from the opening faceoff. Actually, if Patrick Roy hadn't been impregnable in a first period in which the Avalanche were drastically outplayed, that night would have been the end of Ray Bourque's career.

Instead, after Roy (and Roy alone) kept the Avalanche in the game, the Avalanche got going soon enough to take the 4-0 victory over the Devils that prolonged the series and gave Colorado the opportunity to clinch the championship with a Game 7 win in Denver.

What the heck, it worked for the Avalanche, and Bourque hoisted the Cup, shaved off that gray beard within an hour of the end of the game, and announced his retirement two weeks later.

Nearly a year later, the Avalanche face another crisis. In a quirky series of surprisingly high-scoring, alternating momentum, and the highly predictable overreaction to single games (each team has been portrayed as gutty and heroic one game, then as spineless choke artists the next), it has come down to this: The Sharks can close out the defending champions tonight in the Compaq Center. And this time, there is no Ray Bourque around the deliver the speech.

Bourque's words themselves weren't all that important in New Jersey that night. Bourque's aura, involving ineffable leadership and the feeling that the Avalanche could have a part of fulfilling what later would seem to be a storybook ending, was more significant.

Because the San Jose-Colorado rivalry has destroyed the premise that home ice is an advantage, the Avalanche still have a bona fide shot to win the series. Roy still is capable of keeping his team in a crucial game, as he did in New Jersey under similar circumstances a year ago. He hasn't been the problem in this series as much as the Avalanche's sudden team-wide defensive deficiencies (that's a concept, not a position).

As was evidenced in Colorado's 4-1 Game 4 victory in San Jose last Wednesday, Joe Sakic, Rob Blake and Peter Forsberg still can redirect momentum 180 degrees. But a major difference in a craft of blade-thin margins of error between last year and this year is Bourque's absence. Sometimes you can have character and still have a void in charismatic leadership. Although Sakic's bland public profile always has been misleading because of his barbed sense of humor and ability to say things behind closed doors that aren't passed along, his "C" always has stood more for leadership by example than exhortation. Adam Foote is, and always has been, fiery when the times call for it. Blake has been with the Avalanche a little over a year and is familiar, but he's not really the "listen-up-guys" type of leader, either.

The Avalanche miss Bourque's on-ice contributions, including for the very basic reasons that Darius Kasparaitis -- essentially his replacement in the top two pairings -- isn't as good as Bourque was, and the Avalanche defense now isn't playing as well as it did when it had both Bourque and the steady Jon Klemm a year ago.

The Avalanche also miss Bourque's aura, especially at times such as these. Yet once you get beyond the Avalanche's "deficiencies" in this series, you get to the reality that this shouldn't be considered a major upset or any sort of fluke if the Sharks win the series. The Sharks don't quite have the star quality, especially now that Forsberg is back and not just playing well, but leading the NHL in playoff scoring.

The Sharks are deeper, both up front and defensively. As electric as Forsberg has been in his amazing return, and as good as Sakic and Blake were in that Game 4 in San Jose the other night, it also is apparent that San Jose's third line -- former Avalanche center Mike Ricci, between Scott Thornton and Niklas Sundstrom -- has been the difference-maker through the first five games. Even with Forsberg playing wing on the Chris Drury-centered line following the Swede's injury sabbatical, Sakic and/or Forsberg can be so devastating, they can tip a series. So going into the series, the thinking was that if San Jose's top two lines could at least offset the Sakic and Forsberg lines' production, that's where the Ricci line could come into play.

And it has.

When Ricci had a goal and assist in San Jose's 5-3 win Saturday, it meant he had two goals and four assists in the series, and it isn't a coincidence that he didn't have a point in the two Sharks' losses. Sundstrom got his first goal of the series Saturday and has three assists in the five games. Thornton has two goals and an assist in the five games against Colorado. When the Sharks' third line can be productive, and Ricci and Sundstrom also are successful as San Jose's top penalty-killing forwards, San Jose has greatly improved its chances of winning against the top-heavy Avalanche roster.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us," Ricci said after Game 5, treading carefully. "We know that to get this next win, it's going to have to be our best effort, however long it's going to take. These guys are great champions. They've been in this situation before, and there's no panic over there. We have to make sure we're on our game."

If the Sharks win Monday, they will move on to face Detroit. If they don't, they will come back to Denver for a Game 7, perhaps lamenting a lost opportunity -- as the Devils ended up doing last year. After Ray Bourque's speech.

Terry Frei of The Denver Post is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.