Red Wings Now Just Another Hockey Team

It was the summer of 1990, and Mike Ilitch made a phone call. Then he got into a car and made the executioner’s sojourn.

It was the same type of visit that Bill Davidson had once made to Dick Vitale’s house, some 10+ years earlier. Inside the Vitale residence, the Pistons owner rendered the ziggy to his coach, pulling the plug on Dickie before the coach and de facto GM could do any further damage to the Pistons brand.

In 1990, Ilitch phoned Jacques Demers and before long the Red Wings owner was at his coach’s house, to render an emotional ziggy.

Four summers prior, Ilitch, with GM Jimmy Devellano as his muscle, shanghaied Demers from the St. Louis Blues. The Blues were becoming a force, and no small credit was given to Demers, the coach, for the upswing. The Red Wings were coming off a dreadful 17-57-6 season, and had burned through two coaches (Harry Neale and Brad Park); the latter’s relationship with Devellano being described as “like oil and water”—by Devellano himself.

So Ilitch went after Demers, hard, and the Red Wings might have bent some tampering rules in their zeal. The Blues cried foul, but the Red Wings ended up with Demers in the summer of 1986.

Under Jacques Demers, the Red Wings went from laughing stock to the NHL’s version of the Final Four in each of Jacques’ first two seasons. Both times they were dumped out by the mighty Edmonton Oilers.

There was a step backward in 1989 (first round playoff exit), but Ilitch stuck with Demers—even though a disturbing incident involving Red Wings players acting out at an Edmonton bar called Goose Loonies in the 1988 playoffs still rubbed some nerves raw in the team’s hierarchy.

But there had been no playoffs for the Red Wings in the 1989-90 season. This was no step backward—this was a flat out fail. It was whispered that Demers was no longer connecting with his players. The dreaded tuning out.

So Ilitch made the phone call. And the journey, to Demers’ house. Inside, in what was described by both men as a wet-eyed meeting, Ilitch relieved Demers of his coaching job.

That was almost 23 years ago. The Red Wings haven’t missed the playoffs since.

Not only have they not missed the playoffs, the Red Wings have been strong Stanley Cup contenders for most of the past 21 seasons. Rarely did a spring go by where the hockey folks didn’t include the Red Wings on their short list of teams who could win it all.

In baseball, even the iconic New York Yankees haven’t gone the past 21 years as solid World Series contenders. No team in the NBA has been championship caliber every year since 1992. The San Francisco 49ers just snapped a 17-year Super Bowl appearance famine, and no NFL team has been “all that” for the past 21 years.

Yet here are the Red Wings, constantly finishing in the Top 10 of the league standings. Sometimes they’d win a Cup along the way—four times since 1997, in fact.

Not anymore.

We knew it wouldn’t be easy, with Nicklas Lidstrom taking his magic stick and his perfection and retiring to Sweden. We knew there’d be some struggling, with fellow defenseman Brad Stuart no longer around to add a steady physical presence.

We knew the front of the net would never be the same again, with the retirement of Tomas Holmstrom. We figured age might catch up with the players still around.

Sometimes it’s no fun to be right.

The Red Wings, after losing another at home on Friday to the Anaheim Ducks, are 7-5-2, but that’s just the NHL’s roundabout way of saying that the Wings are 7-7—seven wins, five regulation losses and two more losses in extra time (overtime and/or shootout).  

Too often scoring goals is like pulling teeth—which is ironic, because in hockey, teeth aren’t pulled so much as they are knocked out.

The power play is often that in name only. Time was that you’d give the Red Wings an extra skater and it was like giving the Grim Reaper an extra sickle. Now, you take a penalty against the Red Wings with barely any impunity.

Players have been dropping like flies, which hasn’t helped.

Even line changes have become an adventure. Coach Mike Babcock has been yelling at his assistants almost as much as his players.

Turnovers are becoming commonplace. No more are the pinpoint, lasered breakout passes from behind the blue line to a forward past mid-ice, in stride.

The Red Wings used to play a selfish brand of hockey—meaning that they never let the other team have the puck. They cycled and passed and it was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the basketball during “Sweet Georgia Brown.”

It’s become so hard for the Red Wings now.

No longer do teams step onto the Joe Louis Arena ice shaking in their skating boots. Gone is the intimidation factor at The Joe. The crowds are still sellouts but it’s a polite crowd nowadays—19,000+ who are sitting on their hands too often.

We knew it wasn’t going to be the same this season, but for a long time it was all conjecture, thanks to the labor lockout. The hockey season was always somewhere over there, past the horizon.

Then the labor strife was over and the NHL started playing games again, and all of Hockeytown’s fears are being realized.

The Red Wings are an ordinary team, no longer one of the league’s bullies. They win on some nights, lose on others. They are 7-7 and it befits them.

We knew it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk to the playoffs and that a long post-season run was anything but a given.

We knew all this, but it doesn’t make it any easier to see the Red Wings, certainly one of the best franchises in all of pro sports, morph into a pedestrian unit.

The 21-year playoff streak is in more jeopardy than a nerd’s lunch money on his walk to school.

The Red Wings win, the Red Wings lose. Comme ci, comme ça.

There hasn’t been so-so hockey played in Detroit since 1990.

How are you adapting?

Yzerman, Like Ilitch, Took the Path of Greater Resistance

The home of Michael Ilitch has become an historic landmark for high-profile departures.

It was almost 20 years ago---June, 1990---when Ilitch, the Red Wings owner, placed a phone call he dreaded making.

On the other end of the line, Jacques Demers was summoned to the Ilitch pad.

Shortly after Demers arrived, two grown men had a good cry.

Ilitch had bad news for Demers, who had then just completed his fourth season as Red Wings coach.

They call it the "ziggy" in Detroit. Our word for canning a coach. You can thank the old Lions coach, Joe Schmidt, for its creation.

Schmidt rendered a self-ziggy in January, 1973---the loser of a power struggle in the Lions' front office with GM Russ Thomas.

Inside Ilitch's home on that June day in 1990, the ziggy wasn't self-inflicted at all.

Ilitch, ever the gentleman and consummate professional, could have told Demers over the phone that he was being released. He could have delivered the news via his agent. He could have mailed a certified letter---no e-mail or text messaging in those days.

Ilitch would have none of that. He had made a very difficult decision about a man who he adored, and so he was going to break that news in person, mano-a-mano.

Jacques Demers said he'd never forget the courtesy Ilitch gave him, the day the owner fired him as Red Wings coach.

Ilitch had a relationship with Demers that never was replicated with any other Red Wings coach, before or since. Just four years prior to the 1990 meeting at his house, Ilitch and his lieutenants had bent the rules in order to poach Demers from the St. Louis Blues. They're still crying about it in St. Louie.

But in 1990, two years removed from Final Four status and after having missed the playoffs completely in 1989-90 (still the last time the Red Wings missed the post-season), Ilitch had come to the hardest decision---to that point---he ever made as Red Wings owner.

So he told Demers, in person, that the Red Wings were letting him go. Bryan Murray was pretty much already hired as Jacques' replacement.

Demers's respect for Ilitch, already off the charts, grew even greater in the wake of how Demers's cashiering was handled.

Twenty years after that teary meeting, another took place in the Ilitch home.

Steve Yzerman---Stevie Y, forever a Red Wing---was telling the owner, practically a father figure, that he was accepting the Tampa Bay Lightning's offer to be their new GM.

It's a safe bet that the eyes of Mike and Marian Ilitch and Yzerman were far from dry.

But Yzerman, who has learned so much from so many within the Red Wings organization, proved that he learned something from the old man owner.

Yzerman could have taken the less uncomfortable path to deliver his news, just as Ilitch could have, when he fired Jacques Demers.

Nothing doing.

Yzerman had made a big decision in his own right, and so it would have to be delivered in person---even more impressive considering all the ways people can be gotten ahold of in this digital age.

No e-mails. No texts. No hurried-through calls from a cell phone.

In person. Face-to-face. Man-to-man.

That's the only way Steve Yzerman would have it. Reports say that Ilitch wasn't the only one Yzerman met in person, saying goodbye.

Yzerman wasn't raised by Mike Ilitch or the Detroit Red Wings.

But this is where he became a man.

Even better.

Ford's Eulogy One For The PR Types

They eulogized Bill Davidson yesterday. The place was filled with a Who's Who of Detroit and national sports. As well it should have been.

There's no riddle when it comes to the legacy of Davidson, Mr. D, who passed away last Friday at age 86. There's no need for a spin master or a cadre of P.R. types to punch up his bio and his legacy.

It's all there: championships; the resuscitation of a moribund franchise; a star-studded player roll; an entertainment empire that reaches beyond sports.

You don't have to be clubbed over the head to "get" why Davidson's legacy will land among the greatest of those in Detroit sports history.

I wonder what Bill Ford Sr. is thinking today.

It's ghoulish and morbid, but whenever one in a small clique passes, the other surviving members are looked at cross-eyed.

Ford is on the clock. So is Mike Ilitch -- in the legacy department. Unseemly, but true.

Ilitch is going to be 80 this summer, but by all accounts he seems to be in pretty good physical condition. Besides, he's a four-time Stanley Cup champ with the Red Wings, and a World Series participant with the Tigers. He's won enough to keep even the vermin-like fans among us from wishing his obituary to be printed.

But Ford? You don't want to know what they're wishing about his health. It's not very nice.

But that's what happens when you take a franchise and drive it into the muck, repeatedly, for 45 years.

Davidson, actually, was much like Ford -- in the beginning. He, too, emerged from a group of potential owners and bought out the syndicate so that he could run a team all by his lonesome. Davidson did it in 1974, ten years after Ford did it.

One of the folks who Ford bought out was Ralph Wilson, the longtime owner of the Buffalo Bills. Yeah, I know what you're thinking.

As I read of Davidson's funeral, and all of the A-list folks who attended and spoke on his behalf, it was hard not to think of what they might say about Ford, who turned 84 last Saturday, when it's his time.

What will the legacy be?

The sports broadcasting heads like to say, "If the playoffs started today..." as an excuse to talk, today, about things that are better talked about in the future -- like when they actually happen. So I'll borrow from that and say, "If Bill Ford's funeral was today..."

Morbid? Maybe. But it's a question worth asking: Just what WILL Ford's legacy be, should they lay him to rest before another pro football season is in the books?

Lemme see...

Well, I suppose they could speak of his integrity and his family's car company contributing greatly to the NFL's success in the 1960s and '70s, courtesy of advertising dollars. They could talk about how nice of a man he was. They could say that he wasn't a loud-mouthed buffoon, like so many of his contemporaries. They could talk about his loyalty to his employees and how he was, by what we've read and heard, simply wonderful to work for.

They will not, however, be able to say that he was a winner. Like Bill Davidson. Like Mike Ilitch. That part will have to be left out.

Ford's failure to field a championship-caliber football team won't, I maintain, determine the size of his funeral or the stature of folks who'll fly in for the event. He'll still draw the A-listers, mainly because of his longevity. The NFL will throw tons of bouquets at his memory. You really can't blame them; Ford has been, indeed, one of the league's classiest owners when it comes right down to it.

None of that nice guy, classy, loyal stuff means much to the hard-working, blue collar football fans in Detroit, however. And it's not like you can have one and not the other; we've seen how Davidson operated (and how Ilitch still does), and Mr. D was all those things that they'll say about Ford -- PLUS he was a winner. So it CAN be done.

It just wasn't done with the Lions, like it was done with the Pistons. Davidson took over a team that was in far worse shape than the Lions, in terms of fan support and tradition, bought out his partners, and went to work. He stumbled along the way (see Vitale, Dick) but then corrected himself in short order (see McCloskey, Jack). Davidson was bold, unwavering, and generous. Ford, sadly, has been only the last of those three.

I have no idea when the need will come to eulogize Bill Ford. I'm not one of those hoping for his demise. But time is running out to fashion a legacy of success that won't need to be camouflaged with flowery talk of how nice of a man he was.

All they had to do at Davidson's funeral was recite his resume. It'll take more than that to celebrate the Ford Ownership, when that time comes. A lot more.

Maturity As A Baseball Owner Came Slowly For Ilitch

It was a blustery November day in 1995, and we in the media were herded into the Tigers annex, on Michigan Avenue, east of the old ballpark – the site of the old Lions offices, when the football team played in Detroit the first time.

There we were to be introduced to the Tigers’ new general manager – the man who might do for them what Jimmy Devellano did for the Red Wings. The baseball owner had struck gold with the hiring of rink rat Jimmy D. from the thrice-Stanley Cupped New York Islanders – his first hire after buying the hockey club in the summer of 1982. Now, in his third year of baseball ownership, Michael Ilitch was finally going to put the right man in charge of the front office, after some brutal work by several predecessors.


Pizza was Ilitch's game, but baseball (and hockey) wouldn't come as easily

On our seats were photocopies of a press release, ruining the surprise of the identity of the man behind the curtain.

32-year-old Randy Smith, tanned and looking very un-Detroit but very California, stepped into view after a brief introduction as we read of his accomplishments, thanks to the rhetoric distributed by the front office lackeys.

The new general manager, his equally-tanned and also very-California young wife at his side, spoke of the challenges that lie ahead.

Smith was a baseball brat, the son of longtime major league executive Tal Smith. Too untalented to play the game, all Randy wanted to do was run a big league team someday, just like his dad.
He got his chance, becoming the youngest GM in baseball history with the San Diego Padres. Hence the tan in November.

One of Smith’s first tasks as Tigers GM was to hire a manager to replace Sparky Anderson, shoved into retirement by the Ilitch family after 17 years in Detroit.

Did it matter, it was asked, if the new manager had big league experience?

The questioner was me, asking it when the more crotchety writers ran out of tangible things to say, which didn’t take long.

Smith looked at me thru the bright TV lights, fiddling with some notes in front of him.

“I think,” he began, “that that would be a priority ... more than likely, yes.”

He didn’t sound too sure of himself.

Smith ended up hiring Buddy Bell, and the Tigers promptly lost 109 games in 1996, with some of the worst pitching in big league history. Bell had no previous big league managing experience. Must not have been much of a priority, after all.

Jimmy Devellano had some growing pains as Red Wings general manager. He rolled into town with his typically ill-fitting necktie and squeaky Canadian voice, proudly proclaiming that “As long as Jimmy Devellano is general manager of the Detroy-et Red Wings, we will NOT trade a draft choice.”

Jimmy D. made good on his word, but his attempts to bring the moribund Red Wings back from the dead with the signing of aging veterans and untested college free agents failed miserably. In his fourth season, the Red Wings won 17 games and gave up over 400 goals – an average of over five per game.

But Devellano got it right eventually, hiring Jacques Demers as coach and watching his first-ever draft choice blossom into team captain by age 21. The draft choice was a center named Steve Yzerman.

Randy Smith wasn’t the Tigers’ Jimmy Devellano after all. Not even close. One week into his seventh season in Detroit, Smith was fired by new president Dave Dombrowski, who assumed the GM duties. Smith, to this day, hasn’t come close to another big league executive position.

By the time Smith was canned, Ilitch was roundly viewed by the denizens around town as a hockey-first owner who didn’t put the time or the money into the Tigers. More dough – literally and figuratively, was going into Ilitch’s pizza empire and his hockey team than was making its way to Comerica Park.

After the Tigers lost a mind-boggling 119 games in 2003, Ilitch’s reputation as an incompetent when it came to baseball ownership was at its zenith. The Red Wings had won three Stanley Cups under his watch, yet the Tigers were a national embarrassment. How could this be? How could he get it so right in one sport, and so horribly wrong in another?

It wasn’t known at the time, but Ilitch had gotten it very right, indeed, with the baseball team when he hired Dombrowski from the Florida Marlins in 2001.

Last week, the Tigers pulled off an earth-shattering trade with those Marlins, acquiring multiple All-Stars Miguel Cabrera (3B) and Dontrelle Willis (LHP) for six prospects. The deal added about $20 million to the Tigers’ payroll, which could reach $130+ million in 2008. Two seasons ago the Tigers made the World Series with a team that’s perhaps 60-70% as strong as the one they will field next summer.

Funny, but nobody calls Mike Ilitch a hockey-only owner anymore.

Nobody wonders why he won’t spend in baseball. Nobody complains about his bad hires in the front office. Nobody questions his judgment in the game that he loves and played at the minor league level. Nobody wonders why he just won’t sell the team and cut his losses.

They used to wonder all those things, and not all that long ago.


Dombrowski, who turned out to be Ilitch's baseball Devellano

It took Ilitch about nine years to mature as a top-flight baseball owner, a little longer than the half-dozen years it took him to figure out what he was doing in the NHL. Yet the first Stanley Cup didn’t arrive until the 15th season of his ownership. He just completed his 15th full season with the Tigers.

Because of the trade this week with Florida, which follows trades for Jacque Jones and Edgar Renteria earlier this off-season, many feel the Tigers are the team to beat in ’08. Not just in their division. Not just in their league. But in all of baseball.

And Ilitch is now considered a premier owner – one who’ll do whatever it takes to win the whole enchilada.

The man was 70 years old when he found Dave Dombrowski and gave him control. Not too old to finally outgrow baseball puberty.