"Calling Robert Lang! Robert Lang, will you show up today?! Are you even in the building, Robert Lang?!"
It was one Red Wings fan's plea, shouted on the way into JLA prior to Game 5 of the Calgary series. You couldn't help hearing it, if you were in the right place -- like in the general downtown vicinity.
OK, so maybe it wasn't that loud. But the message was. Simply put, Lang, the Red Wings' closest thing to Brendan Shanahan, had been a virtual no-show in the first four games of the first round series. And he would need to get it going, if the Wings were to continue to boast being able to throw four quality lines at their playoff opponents.
But this is how it goes sometimes in the postseason. There's always a guy who just can't get off the dime. He is a regular season contributor, but then he becomes the sort of player about whom the TV and radio announcers will say, in a playoff game, "We haven't said his name very often tonight." The courteous way of calling a guy a stiff.
Have you seen this man?
In that Game 5, Lang was mostly quiet once again. Coach Mike Babcock kept giving his power forward power play time, but Lang just couldn't do anything with it. He never really had a good scoring opportunity. The Wings won, though, 5-1, and so his silence was overlooked.
Lang finally got on the goal-scoring sheet in Game 6, when his wrist shot from the circle beat Miikka Kiprusoff cleanly late in the second period, tying the game 1-1. The Red Wings won in double overtime, ending the series. A few minutes prior to that game-tying goal, Lang had a half-open net staring at him during a power play, but was unable to lift the puck above the sprawling Kiprusoff. But at least he had gotten a scoring chance.
Lang, acquired on draft deadline day in 2004 from Washington, has actually been productive in the playoffs as a Red Wing -- in seasons in which the team has lost two out of the three playoff series in which it played.
But all that previous success will mean about as much as that apocryphal hill of beans if Lang doesn't get it together in time for Round Two against the deep, talented, dangerous San Jose Sharks.
When Lang was traded for, his presence was to have given the Red Wings another scoring power forward in the Shanahan mold -- big, hard to move off the puck, and with a deadeye shooter's touch. And Lang has been that -- at times. He just hasn't been as prolific at depositing pucks past enemy netminders as expected. This season, Lang had 19 goals and 33 assists in 81 games. If those numbers don't cause you to want to sling an octopus, you're not to blame -- or alone.
Robert Lang is one of the few players the Red Wings didn't get a whole lot out of in the series against Calgary. Maybe he wasn't very conspicuous by his absence -- despite that big-lunged fan outside JLA before Game 5 -- because the Wings took care of business. But he can't end up on the side of a milk carton against the Sharks.
"Robert Lang, will you be in the building??!!"
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