The puck slid, slid, slid -- slow as molasses yet fast enough to make your heart race. It moved toward the goal line and really it was like a microcosm of this entire playoff run: you were pretty sure that it was going to get there, but there was still a hint of doubt. Then down came Marc-Andre Fleury's padded rump, and it provided the final nudge the puck needed to finally cross the goal line. And with it, the Red Wings could finally breathe, right?
Well, kinda.
That goal, which gave the Red Wings a 3-1 lead, wasn't immediately evident until the referee's right arm went chop, chop, chop, pointing vigorously to the back of the net, and even the Wings players on the ice seemed as surprised as someone who just found an old $20 bill in their pants pocket. They lifted their sticks and gathered into a group hug, perhaps still not certain how Henrik Zetterberg's marshmallow shot finagled its way through Fleury's pads, sweater, and legs and how an "innocent-looking play" -- that marvelous hockey term -- could end in such a happy manner. In fact, probably those of us watching at home knew before the Wings themselves did, how a 2-1 nail-biter turned into a 3-1 mini-exhale.
The replay was in slow-motion, but I think they could have run it in real time and there wouldn't have been any discernible difference in the vulcanized disc of rubber's speed. But as I watched the videotape roll, I kept thinking that that goal symbolized everything that has happened since the first week of April, when 16 teams started on a journey that each of them believed would end the way it ended last night, with their team captain lifting that 35-pound chalice. It symbolized the long, sometimes excruciating path that simply cannot be avoided if you want to call yourselves NHL champions. Inching, inching toward the finish line. All it needed was a nudge.
In a playoff run where Tomas Holmstrom's butt supposedly caused goaltender interference, waving off a critical marker in Dallas, it's only fair that the Red Wings get their Cup-winning tally because an opponent's posterior betrayed him. Butt, butt, nudge, nudge.
Of course, that wasn't the only drama, nor the only metaphor, nor the only symbolism. You could point to so many things: the 86-second 5-on-3 penalty kill in Game 4. The final, furious moments of Game 6, when the Pittsburgh Penguins scored to move within a goal -- again -- and the clock showed 1:27 remaining. 87 seconds. 87 -- same as Sidney "The Next Great One" Crosby's uniform number. Those 87 seconds finally clicked off, the clock finally showed that glorious trio of :00.0, and 87 was gone for the summer, too.
Gone too was Pens coach Michel Therrien, and I wish I knew where he kept his pacifier, bottle, and bankie, because he was, by far, the biggest crybaby coach of this post-season. But his bleatings worked to a degree, getting the officials to look harder at all that annoying obstruction that Therrien said was going on, and getting a few more calls along the way. Red Wings coach Mike Babcock didn't get sucked in, and wonderfully once referred to Therrien as "the other guy" when he allowed himself a degree of complaining. "I'm just trying what the other guy has been doing," Babcock said at one of the between-games pressers. Zing.
So it's over -- another two-month long playoff run in the books. Red Wings champions, as I predicted they'd be wayyyy back at the beginning of April. Granted, it didn't happen the way I suspected it would -- Chris Osgood in net; a brutal sweep of the once-mighty Colorado Avalanche; a scary 3-0 lead turning into 3-2 against Dallas; being 35 seconds away from the Cup in Detroit and letting it slip through the ice cracks. No, none of that was I clairvoyant enough to forecast. Nor would I have wanted to. Part of the fun of winning the Stanley Cup is that it's never the same every time. Each run is different. Someone said on the radio that you should treat all your teams' championships like your children: separate but equal in affection. Right on.
Now, about that baseball team of ours...
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Saunders Never Found True Love In Detroit
Flip Saunders never truly got entrenched in Detroit. He was the Pistons coach for three seasons, but two things about that: 1) GM Joe Dumars has a fetish for canning coaches after a couple years or so, and 2) you never got the feeling that Saunders was securing his place, about to defy the odds created by item #1 in this paragraph. He won a ton of games -- 176 of them in three years -- but couldn't push the Pistons past the NBA's Final Four.
"When you get to where we were," Dumars said yesterday at the press conference announcing Saunders' ziggy, "you never feel like you're not good enough to get to the Finals. Nobody gets to the conference finals and wonders if they're good enough to move on."
Dumars used those words to deflect any heat he might face from firing a coach with a winning percentage of over .700 in Detroit. What Joe D was saying was that the Pistons didn't luck themselves into these last three Final Fours. Yet they couldn't take that next step, falling in six games three straight times -- kind of like Groundhog Day, only with a different groundhog each time. First, it was the Miami Heat, on their way to an NBA title behind the nearly flawless Dwyane Wade. Then it was the Cleveland Cavaliers, behind the nearly flawless LeBron James. Then it was the Boston Celtics, a team that went from 24 wins to 66, and a team that Dumars chided.
"They got some very good players, and didn't have to give up much to get them," Dumars said of the Celtics' acquisitions of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett over the summer. "It's not like they had to give up depth. I would have liked to have done that, too," he added with a wry grin.
So now Dumars may have just set a record for firing the most coaches with 50+ win seasons than any GM in history. He let Rick Carlisle go in 2003 after two 50-32 campaigns, it being hinted that Rick simply wasn't all that nice a guy to team employees, and wasn't all that nice to his bosses, either. Dumars replaced Carlisle quickly with the mercurial Larry Brown, who was shown the door after a title and two Finals appearances and two more 50+ win seasons, largely because owner Bill Davidson found Brown despicable toward the end, with the coach's wandering eye and career restlessness always taking center stage. Again Dumars acted quickly, and brought in Saunders, a coach with some success in Minnesota but none to speak of in the playoffs.
Ahh, the playoffs. That's where you can start tracing the fan base's distrust of Saunders -- and maybe even the players', too. I, for one, wasn't all that giddy about the Saunders hiring three summers ago, mainly because I looked at the standard being set in Detroit -- the team was coming off another Finals appearance -- and then I looked at the results Flip was getting in Minnesota (there were a lot of early exits with good teams) and I felt a little squeamish. But I also subscribed to the In Joe We Trust mentality, and figured that Saunders must have something for Dumars to commit four years of Davidson's dough into him.
Then the Pistons went out and started 35-5 in Flip's first season, and they looked damn near invincible. The second half was a bit more disjointed, and the team had to scramble to beat the Cavs in seven games in the Elite Eight before being melted by Wade's Heat.
From there, it was dicey, as far as overall belief and trust in Flip Saunders in Detroit. While I hate to give the sports talk radio jabbermouths too much credit, they and their often misguided callers seemed to unite under one common belief: the Pistons win in the regular season despite of Saunders, but will never get back to the Finals -- mainly because of Saunders.
Saunders was, by far, the least embraced coach in Detroit -- ranking below even the Lions' Rod Marinelli, who has largely been judged as more of an innocent bystander than anyone with losing blood on his hands. There wasn't any sort of true affection for him. We never knew much about him, for starters. We knew he had a kid who played at the University of Minnesota, his alma mater, and that he coached the T-Wolves all those years. And that he narrowly missed being a victim of that bridge collapse -- also in Minnesota. Maybe he was just too much Minnesota for our liking. Regardless, there wasn't any of the lovable gruffness and supposed genius that Tigers fans found so alluring about Jim Leyland. There wasn't the quiet calm and confidence exuded by Red Wings coach Mike Babcock that hockey fans find reassuring. There wasn't even the "Aw, shucks/pound the rock" affability projected by Marinelli. With Saunders, he was like the outsider who was just keeping a seat warm until Dumars decided to satisfy his fetish again. No real connection. No real affection. No real empathy about what would ultimately happen to him.
Fair? Probably not.
I think that Flip Saunders became the Pistons coach at a very difficult time in team history. And all his regular season success couldn't wash away the film that the disappointing playoff endings always left on the organization. He had to win another championship, Saunders did -- or at least make it to a Finals or two -- to continue to coach here. He was the victim of the expectations built first by Carlisle and then reached by Brown. And in the end, for whatever reason, Saunders simply didn't have enough moxie to achieve those lofty goals.
There was his relationship with Rasheed Wallace, for one. Sheed is a reminder that coach killers are still a long ways away from becoming extinct in the NBA. They're alive and well, and Sheed contributed, more than any other player, to the decision Dumars reached regarding Saunders's status. Ironically, Wallace himself may also be gone -- but not before having plunged a knife into Flip's back. You can't kill a coach killer, but you can get rid of him. Maybe Wallace will be some other team's headache.
Dumars spoke -- and with some definite agitation -- of the final ten minutes of the Pistons' season, those final, ghoulish minutes against Boston in the fourth quarter of Game 6. The ten minutes that put Saunders in the coffin and lowered him six feet under the daisies. The ten minutes that saw the Pistons turn a 10-point lead and a raucous crowd and an imminent Game 7 into yet another ugly, gut-churning, cold ending to a season. The ten minutes that gave Wallace one more chance to show why he's one of the least clutch starters in the league, and why the Pistons didn't have the heart or the guts to beat back the Celtics, even on their home floor, their crowd behind them and their opponents about ready to gag.
The Pistons coughed up two hairballs in the Final Four: Game 3 and the final ten minutes of Game 6 -- both at the Palace. They were 58 minutes of basketball that are now the first domino of a summer of change in Auburn Hills. Flip is gone, just as we all suspected he might be. But this isn't a fire-the-coach, keep-the-players sort of thing. Not even close.
"I'm open for business," Dumars declared of his personnel plans. "No one is a sacred cow."
No; they're four fatted calves -- you know who I mean -- and at least one of them is about ready to be slaughtered.
"When you get to where we were," Dumars said yesterday at the press conference announcing Saunders' ziggy, "you never feel like you're not good enough to get to the Finals. Nobody gets to the conference finals and wonders if they're good enough to move on."
Dumars used those words to deflect any heat he might face from firing a coach with a winning percentage of over .700 in Detroit. What Joe D was saying was that the Pistons didn't luck themselves into these last three Final Fours. Yet they couldn't take that next step, falling in six games three straight times -- kind of like Groundhog Day, only with a different groundhog each time. First, it was the Miami Heat, on their way to an NBA title behind the nearly flawless Dwyane Wade. Then it was the Cleveland Cavaliers, behind the nearly flawless LeBron James. Then it was the Boston Celtics, a team that went from 24 wins to 66, and a team that Dumars chided.
"They got some very good players, and didn't have to give up much to get them," Dumars said of the Celtics' acquisitions of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett over the summer. "It's not like they had to give up depth. I would have liked to have done that, too," he added with a wry grin.
So now Dumars may have just set a record for firing the most coaches with 50+ win seasons than any GM in history. He let Rick Carlisle go in 2003 after two 50-32 campaigns, it being hinted that Rick simply wasn't all that nice a guy to team employees, and wasn't all that nice to his bosses, either. Dumars replaced Carlisle quickly with the mercurial Larry Brown, who was shown the door after a title and two Finals appearances and two more 50+ win seasons, largely because owner Bill Davidson found Brown despicable toward the end, with the coach's wandering eye and career restlessness always taking center stage. Again Dumars acted quickly, and brought in Saunders, a coach with some success in Minnesota but none to speak of in the playoffs.
Ahh, the playoffs. That's where you can start tracing the fan base's distrust of Saunders -- and maybe even the players', too. I, for one, wasn't all that giddy about the Saunders hiring three summers ago, mainly because I looked at the standard being set in Detroit -- the team was coming off another Finals appearance -- and then I looked at the results Flip was getting in Minnesota (there were a lot of early exits with good teams) and I felt a little squeamish. But I also subscribed to the In Joe We Trust mentality, and figured that Saunders must have something for Dumars to commit four years of Davidson's dough into him.
Then the Pistons went out and started 35-5 in Flip's first season, and they looked damn near invincible. The second half was a bit more disjointed, and the team had to scramble to beat the Cavs in seven games in the Elite Eight before being melted by Wade's Heat.
From there, it was dicey, as far as overall belief and trust in Flip Saunders in Detroit. While I hate to give the sports talk radio jabbermouths too much credit, they and their often misguided callers seemed to unite under one common belief: the Pistons win in the regular season despite of Saunders, but will never get back to the Finals -- mainly because of Saunders.
Saunders was, by far, the least embraced coach in Detroit -- ranking below even the Lions' Rod Marinelli, who has largely been judged as more of an innocent bystander than anyone with losing blood on his hands. There wasn't any sort of true affection for him. We never knew much about him, for starters. We knew he had a kid who played at the University of Minnesota, his alma mater, and that he coached the T-Wolves all those years. And that he narrowly missed being a victim of that bridge collapse -- also in Minnesota. Maybe he was just too much Minnesota for our liking. Regardless, there wasn't any of the lovable gruffness and supposed genius that Tigers fans found so alluring about Jim Leyland. There wasn't the quiet calm and confidence exuded by Red Wings coach Mike Babcock that hockey fans find reassuring. There wasn't even the "Aw, shucks/pound the rock" affability projected by Marinelli. With Saunders, he was like the outsider who was just keeping a seat warm until Dumars decided to satisfy his fetish again. No real connection. No real affection. No real empathy about what would ultimately happen to him.
Fair? Probably not.
I think that Flip Saunders became the Pistons coach at a very difficult time in team history. And all his regular season success couldn't wash away the film that the disappointing playoff endings always left on the organization. He had to win another championship, Saunders did -- or at least make it to a Finals or two -- to continue to coach here. He was the victim of the expectations built first by Carlisle and then reached by Brown. And in the end, for whatever reason, Saunders simply didn't have enough moxie to achieve those lofty goals.
There was his relationship with Rasheed Wallace, for one. Sheed is a reminder that coach killers are still a long ways away from becoming extinct in the NBA. They're alive and well, and Sheed contributed, more than any other player, to the decision Dumars reached regarding Saunders's status. Ironically, Wallace himself may also be gone -- but not before having plunged a knife into Flip's back. You can't kill a coach killer, but you can get rid of him. Maybe Wallace will be some other team's headache.
Dumars spoke -- and with some definite agitation -- of the final ten minutes of the Pistons' season, those final, ghoulish minutes against Boston in the fourth quarter of Game 6. The ten minutes that put Saunders in the coffin and lowered him six feet under the daisies. The ten minutes that saw the Pistons turn a 10-point lead and a raucous crowd and an imminent Game 7 into yet another ugly, gut-churning, cold ending to a season. The ten minutes that gave Wallace one more chance to show why he's one of the least clutch starters in the league, and why the Pistons didn't have the heart or the guts to beat back the Celtics, even on their home floor, their crowd behind them and their opponents about ready to gag.
The Pistons coughed up two hairballs in the Final Four: Game 3 and the final ten minutes of Game 6 -- both at the Palace. They were 58 minutes of basketball that are now the first domino of a summer of change in Auburn Hills. Flip is gone, just as we all suspected he might be. But this isn't a fire-the-coach, keep-the-players sort of thing. Not even close.
"I'm open for business," Dumars declared of his personnel plans. "No one is a sacred cow."
No; they're four fatted calves -- you know who I mean -- and at least one of them is about ready to be slaughtered.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
BREAKING PISTONS NEWS
WDFN radio and the Pistons web site are reporting that head coach Flip Saunders will not return next season. An announcement is set for 2:00 p.m., according to the radio station.
Of course, I'll have more on this breaking story tomorrow, in this space.
Of course, I'll have more on this breaking story tomorrow, in this space.
Time Not On Red Wings' Side In 3-OT Thriller
This Stanley Cup Finals series has suddenly become slave to the clock. The numbers we deal with aren't so much shots on goal and power play and penalty kill percentages, but those that are tied directly to some sort of timing device.
In Game 4, the magic number was 86, or 1:26 -- however you choose to look at it. As in, 86 seconds of a 5-on-3 that the Red Wings killed in the third period, helping to seal their 2-1 win.
In Game 5, first it was :35, then 4:00, then :36, then 49:57. And none of those four figures were friendly to the Red Wings, who now must drag the weight of winning the Stanley Cup to Pittsburgh to play a Game 6 less than 48 hours after a triple-OT loss in Game 5, 4-3.
:35
That was how much time, officially, was left in the third period when Maxime Talbot poked a tantalizingly loose puck past Chris Osgood, tying the game at 3. Sitting upstairs in the JLA auxiliary press box, I could literally feel the rumble begin beneath me as the time wound down and the Stanley Cup would be made public. The roar grew in girth when the puck was bounced out to center ice in the vicinity of Henrik Zetterberg, who looked poised to slide it into a yawning, empty Penguins net. That was with about a minute to go. But the puck got chucked back into the Detroit zone. And even though Talbot's goal only took a split second to occur, watching it unfold from my vantage point -- almost directly in line with the goal line to Osgood's left -- it seemed to happen in slow motion. It was one of those moments when you could see what was going to happen but was powerless to stop it from doing so. You wanted to yell to Ozzie, "LOOK! To your left! He's going to start slapping at the puck near the goal post!" It was like watching a two-year-old who's about to spill his glass of milk, but observing it from across the room, never able to get there in time.
4:00
May God strike me down, but as soon as Jiri Hudler was whistled for a four-minute high-sticking penalty, I looked at my watch and muttered to myself and my sleeping wife some 15 miles away, "Well, honey, looks like I'll be leaving the arena soon." Because as much as I adore the Red Wings' penalty killers, I knew there'd be no damn way they'd erase 240 seconds of power play time, fatigued in a third OT. I didn't even see the penalty. There was an icing, and I looked up at one of the monitors in the press area, and the camera is on Pens coach Michel Therrien, and he's holding up four fingers. Then the boos started to cascade, and I see Hudler skating to the penalty box, perhaps the loneliest man in the world at that point. Then the look to my cell phone for the time, trying to gauge when my car would be hitting the freeway. There was never any hope, and I'm almost ashamed to admit that. But I doubt I was alone.
:36
That's all it took for my fears to be confirmed. Again, it was slow motion: watching Petr Sykora receive that pass near the left face-off circle, wide open, eons to fire up his lethal wrist shot -- well, it wasn't a very good feeling. I could see traffic in front of Osgood, in the corner of my eye, and I did what I've been doing at hockey games for decades: I simply looked toward the red goal light for confirmation of what I believed was about to occur. And it flashed a bright, ugly red.
49:57
The amount of overtime put in by the Red Wings and Pens. More numbers to make you cringe: the Red Wings had 58 shots on goal, the Pens 32. So you know, that works out to be about 31 for every 60 minutes for Detroit, and less than 19 for Pittsburgh. Typical.
OK, so how did we get here? How did a game get broken down so conveniently into bite-sized increments of time?
The Red Wings came out nervous to start the game. Either that, or someone told them that their families were all being held hostage and would be harmed if any Red Wings player showed any sense of urgency. The Penguins stormed out of the gate and cobbled together a 2-0 lead before the Red Wings finally realized that, you know what, the Stanley Cup isn't just going to be given to us; we have to actually do more than flash our Red Wings crest and hope the Penguins scurry away, like cockroaches when the lights get turned on.
But the boys in red mounted a terrific comeback, and when they took that 3-2 lead and played very well with it, you were still a little scared, but also confident that the sands in the hourglass would eventually run out and so would the Penguins' season. Yet time never moves so slow, clocks never tick backward with such molasses-like speed, as when the other team's net is empty and the puck is being furiously directed toward your goal. I used to think 60 seconds were an eternity only during infomercials. But that ain't nothing compared to an assault on your goalkeeper while trying to hold on to a lead by a thread.
Overtime play was mostly the Red Wings delivering punch after punch, and let's give a shout out to Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who was outstanding. I mean, really. He was the reason there's a Game 6 tomorrow night.
But OT was also when the Red Wings had to kill off three penalties, the Pens one. The first two Detroit penalties, for goaltender interference, were suspect. Zetterberg's was maybe 50/50, but the one on Dan Cleary, whose momentum caused him to gently bump Fleury as he crashed the net during a one-man rush, was despicable. Yes, the Red Wings escaped those calls, but the penalties forced the team to expend extra energy and effort that wears on you as a player in such a grueling game.
So there'll be a Game 6. The Cup gets put back into storage, and will also make the trip to the Steel City. And still only one team can win it. But now we're just one Penguins home win away from not only bringing the Cup back to Detroit, but making it accessible to both teams. Scary, eh?
In Game 4, the magic number was 86, or 1:26 -- however you choose to look at it. As in, 86 seconds of a 5-on-3 that the Red Wings killed in the third period, helping to seal their 2-1 win.
In Game 5, first it was :35, then 4:00, then :36, then 49:57. And none of those four figures were friendly to the Red Wings, who now must drag the weight of winning the Stanley Cup to Pittsburgh to play a Game 6 less than 48 hours after a triple-OT loss in Game 5, 4-3.
:35
That was how much time, officially, was left in the third period when Maxime Talbot poked a tantalizingly loose puck past Chris Osgood, tying the game at 3. Sitting upstairs in the JLA auxiliary press box, I could literally feel the rumble begin beneath me as the time wound down and the Stanley Cup would be made public. The roar grew in girth when the puck was bounced out to center ice in the vicinity of Henrik Zetterberg, who looked poised to slide it into a yawning, empty Penguins net. That was with about a minute to go. But the puck got chucked back into the Detroit zone. And even though Talbot's goal only took a split second to occur, watching it unfold from my vantage point -- almost directly in line with the goal line to Osgood's left -- it seemed to happen in slow motion. It was one of those moments when you could see what was going to happen but was powerless to stop it from doing so. You wanted to yell to Ozzie, "LOOK! To your left! He's going to start slapping at the puck near the goal post!" It was like watching a two-year-old who's about to spill his glass of milk, but observing it from across the room, never able to get there in time.
4:00
May God strike me down, but as soon as Jiri Hudler was whistled for a four-minute high-sticking penalty, I looked at my watch and muttered to myself and my sleeping wife some 15 miles away, "Well, honey, looks like I'll be leaving the arena soon." Because as much as I adore the Red Wings' penalty killers, I knew there'd be no damn way they'd erase 240 seconds of power play time, fatigued in a third OT. I didn't even see the penalty. There was an icing, and I looked up at one of the monitors in the press area, and the camera is on Pens coach Michel Therrien, and he's holding up four fingers. Then the boos started to cascade, and I see Hudler skating to the penalty box, perhaps the loneliest man in the world at that point. Then the look to my cell phone for the time, trying to gauge when my car would be hitting the freeway. There was never any hope, and I'm almost ashamed to admit that. But I doubt I was alone.
:36
That's all it took for my fears to be confirmed. Again, it was slow motion: watching Petr Sykora receive that pass near the left face-off circle, wide open, eons to fire up his lethal wrist shot -- well, it wasn't a very good feeling. I could see traffic in front of Osgood, in the corner of my eye, and I did what I've been doing at hockey games for decades: I simply looked toward the red goal light for confirmation of what I believed was about to occur. And it flashed a bright, ugly red.
49:57
The amount of overtime put in by the Red Wings and Pens. More numbers to make you cringe: the Red Wings had 58 shots on goal, the Pens 32. So you know, that works out to be about 31 for every 60 minutes for Detroit, and less than 19 for Pittsburgh. Typical.
OK, so how did we get here? How did a game get broken down so conveniently into bite-sized increments of time?
The Red Wings came out nervous to start the game. Either that, or someone told them that their families were all being held hostage and would be harmed if any Red Wings player showed any sense of urgency. The Penguins stormed out of the gate and cobbled together a 2-0 lead before the Red Wings finally realized that, you know what, the Stanley Cup isn't just going to be given to us; we have to actually do more than flash our Red Wings crest and hope the Penguins scurry away, like cockroaches when the lights get turned on.
But the boys in red mounted a terrific comeback, and when they took that 3-2 lead and played very well with it, you were still a little scared, but also confident that the sands in the hourglass would eventually run out and so would the Penguins' season. Yet time never moves so slow, clocks never tick backward with such molasses-like speed, as when the other team's net is empty and the puck is being furiously directed toward your goal. I used to think 60 seconds were an eternity only during infomercials. But that ain't nothing compared to an assault on your goalkeeper while trying to hold on to a lead by a thread.
Overtime play was mostly the Red Wings delivering punch after punch, and let's give a shout out to Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who was outstanding. I mean, really. He was the reason there's a Game 6 tomorrow night.
But OT was also when the Red Wings had to kill off three penalties, the Pens one. The first two Detroit penalties, for goaltender interference, were suspect. Zetterberg's was maybe 50/50, but the one on Dan Cleary, whose momentum caused him to gently bump Fleury as he crashed the net during a one-man rush, was despicable. Yes, the Red Wings escaped those calls, but the penalties forced the team to expend extra energy and effort that wears on you as a player in such a grueling game.
So there'll be a Game 6. The Cup gets put back into storage, and will also make the trip to the Steel City. And still only one team can win it. But now we're just one Penguins home win away from not only bringing the Cup back to Detroit, but making it accessible to both teams. Scary, eh?
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.
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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