Monday, June 02, 2008

No Scotty, No Stevie? No Problem

Tonight the Red Wings are poised to win the Stanley Cup. In the bottom line business of professional sports, you can't get much more plain than that. All the money spent, all the number crunching, all the scouting, all the flurry of phone calls on trade deadline day, all the days in training camp -- all of it is designed to be in a position where the team is today. Win a hockey game, on your home ice, and call yourself champions.

If it happens -- and it almost certainly will, and likely tonight -- it will be the first Stanley Cup hoisted by a Red Wings team since 1955 that didn't have Steve Yzerman in uniform or Scotty Bowman behind the bench. Both men are still a part of the Red Wings family, of course -- Yzerman as a V.P. and Bowman as a consultant -- but neither of them are making it happen on the ice.

It's Nick Lidstrom and Mike Babcock's team now. And so it will be the two of them, more than anyone else, who should get the credit for the return of the Red Wings to glory. Lidstrom probably won't win the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoffs MVP, but no matter. He's the captain, and his steady play is sometimes his own worst enemy when it comes right down to it. He's never a league MVP candidate despite his perennial winning of the Norris Trophy. And he is a dark horse candidate for the Smythe, behind Chris Osgood and Henrik Zetterberg. Lidstrom is taken for granted, that's why.

Babcock took over in 2005 and has churned out three straight 50+ win seasons, and the team has improved steadily in the post-season, from a first round exit in 2006 to the Final Four last season to champions in 2008. Yet he'll never win Coach of the Year. He, too, is taken for granted.

Bowman and Yzerman. The latter learned a lot from the former, but Scotty would tell you that it went both ways, too. No one knows for sure how serious Bowman was about trading Yzerman to the Ottawa Senators in the mid-1990s, but the scare helped convince the captain to become more of a two-way player. Yzerman entered the league as a scoring machine and left it as a Selke winner. Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk, the Red Wings' two most dynamic offensive players, are both Selke finalists this year. Zetterberg proved the validity of his candidacy in 86 heart-stopping seconds in the third period of Game 4 -- which will go down as the most famous penalty kill in franchise history as the Wings beat back a 3-on-5 against the Penguins.

Zetterberg and Datsyuk's Selke status is a descendant of the Bowman/Yzerman era. Bowman's Cup-winning teams in Detroit prided themselves on their defense, and so did Yzerman, eventually. And that spirit carried over when Babcock arrived, following two disappointing playoffs under Dave Lewis, another Bowman disciple. It's chic to be a defensively proficient scoring forward in Detroit. Do you ever see Sidney Crosby killing penalties?

Tonight, the Red Wings will probably add the 11th Cup to their franchise's collection. They will have done it without Yzerman and Bowman. But Nick Lidstrom isn't exactly new to all this, and Mike Babcock knows when to push and pull back with his veteran-laden roster. Those two -- captain and coach -- are merely putting into practice what this team has been all about during the past 13 years or so. It'll be four Cups in 11 seasons after this one is secured. Yes, there have been some head-shaking playoffs in between them; the latest of which was just two years ago. But just when you get a little annoyed by that, along comes another Cup to provide the best of salves.

Edmonton WHO? Dwayne WHO?

The Stanley Cup causes amnesia in the best way.

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