Me at the Stanley Cup Finals: One-on-One with Larry Murphy, more!

There have been two teams, and two teams only, who have repeated as Stanley Cup champions between 1991 and 2008.

Larry Murphy has played for them both.

Murphy, the Hall of Fame defenseman, was on the Pittsburgh Penguins teams of 1991-92, and, of course, the Red Wings’ back-to-back champs of 1997-98.

I pointed that out to him today and he smiled sheepishly.

“Timing is everything!” he said, laughing.

Murphy, today, is enjoying his broadcasting life after toiling for nearly 20 years in the NHL.

Murphy works Red Wings games for Fox Sports Detroit, and also puts in time for the NHL Network on a national basis.

I nabbed him after the morning skate and asked him his impressions of Game One and the prospects for the rest of the series.

On the Pens in Game One this year as opposed to Game One in 2008: “I thought they were in the series early this time. They played a strong road game, but got a couple bad bounces and the puck ended up in their net. I think they’re realizing that when you play the Red Wings there’s such a small margin for error.”

On the Red Wings’ style of play in Game One, when I suggested that it looked like they played a “road game” in their own building: “That’s how they always play. So much of the Red Wings’ offense is based on playing good defense and the transition game. So it looks like they’re emphasizing defense. You won’t see players hanging out around the center red line, hoping for a turnover. That’s not acceptable here.”

On the Red Wings’ best offensive players also being their best defensive players: “Oh, no doubt! That’s what you want. If you have players who put up big numbers but then don’t do anything for you in your own zone, then it’s a wash. The Red Wings’ star players are always on the right side of the puck.”

On Evgeni Malkin, who Murphy said had to have a good start in this series: “I thought he played well. Last year he never got untracked. Obviously, he would have liked to score on the breakaway, but I thought he was into it. That said, he wasn’t the dominant player that we’ve seen in other rounds. But I think he got off to a pretty good start.”

On Sidney Crosby: “Obviously, he didn’t produce offensively the way he would have wanted, but I thought he was in the thick of things. Don’t forget–he’s going up against Henrik Zetterberg and that’s a tough matchup for any player. It wouldn’t surprise me if (Crosby) came out and got two or three points in Game Two.”

On the Penguins’ mind-set after Game One: “They have to make a series out of this. The longer it goes on, the more the pressure increases. But at least now they have the formula for winning. They just need to go out and do it. But there’s such a small margin for error when you play the Red Wings.”

On the importance of Game Two: “I think Game Two is always important because it’s the first game of a series where one team is facing adversity.”

 

I wrapped things up by observing that Murphy seems to really be enjoying himself as a broadcaster.

“Oh, it’s a lot of fun.

“One thing I learned is that it’s a lot easier being on the media side of things than being a player. Being a player, it was tough.

“Now I just say, ‘Come on, boys–it’s the easiest game in the world!’”

For other quotes after the Red Wings’ morning skate, go to www.twitter.com/thegregger63 and start scrolling!

JLA End Boards, Role Players Help Wings Capture Game One

The typical NHL shift is around 45 seconds in length.

Sounds easy, right?

Take a spin around the ice for less than a minute, then skate back to the bench for a few, to rest up so you can skate those 45 seconds all over again.

Piece of cake!

Wrong again, hockey socks breath!

Here’s an example of what I saw last night midway thru the third period of Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals at Joe Louis Arena.

The Red Wings’ Kirk Maltby, when he jumped onto the ice, had his helmet on and his breath inside him.

After those 45-odd seconds had elapsed, it took all that Maltby had to make it back to the Detroit bench.

His helmet was off, spinning around the ice like a curling rock, over in the far corner.

He could barely breathe.

And the JLA crowd ate it up. They roared their approval.

Maltby, plus youngsters Justin Abdelkader and Darren Helm, had just spent their 45-second turn making a nuisance of themselves in the Pittsburgh Penguins’ zone.

They created scoring opportunities. They played keep-away with the puck. They took some physical abuse in the process (read: Maltby’s missing bucket).

The Penguins’ defending zone was crawling with Maltby and his young linemates.

It was a grand effort, one that typified the Red Wings’ 3-1 win that nudged them ahead in this finals series, 1-0.

And it didn’t go unappreciated.

After the scintillating, gritty shift, as Maltby willed himself to the bench (he didn’t skate, per se, because skating involves moving the legs one in front of the other, and Maltby couldn’t, so he simply coasted), the partisan crowd got off their feet and gave the trio a rousing ovation.

After the game, I asked Maltby if that shift and the fans’ reaction to it reminded him of the heyday of the Grind Line, on which he played with Kris Draper and Darren McCarty so marvelously in the late-1990s, early-2000s. Won three championships, the Grind Liners did.

“You never like to live in the past, but yeah, this arena is awesome to play in,” Maltby said, appreciating the acknowledgement from the crowd for the hard work–not just on that shift but throughout all those Grind Line seasons.

“The fans are great (in Detroit),” Maltby went on. “They’re very hockey smart. They acknowledge all sorts of big plays, whether it’s a goal, or a hit, or a great save.”

On the way home from the game last night, I was trying to put into words how the Red Wings played, because it wasn’t a typical game for them. Mainly because they seemed to put defense first and offense second.

Then it occurred to me.

The Red Wings had won by playing the perfect road game in their own building.

Shifts like the one Maltby and The Kids had wasn’t the anomaly in Game One.

The Red Wings played it close to the vest, eschewing a lot of their famous puck possession for an emphasis on keeping Pittsburgh superstars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in check.

And, if we stumble upon a scoring chance, they seemed to say, then we’ll address that when the time comes.

Rare was the tic-tac-toe passing Detroit hockey fans have come to know and love. In its place for most of the night was grit and determination. And sticks in the way.

The Red Wings, maybe more so than in any other game this post-season, had their sticks in the passing lanes at seemingly all times.

The result was a severe limitation on the Pittsburgh transition game, which when it gets going can get a little Lakers Showtime on you, usually with Crosby and Malkin playing the parts of James Worthy and Magic Johnson. Or vice-versa.

There were no 2-on-1s for the Penguins. Not even, really, any 3-on-2s.

There was, for all intents and purposes, one odd-man rush–the clean cut breakaway that Malkin had early in the second period.

“Well, you try to get your stick on the puck and try to prevent those cross-ice passes, especially in our zone,” Maltby said when I brought up the Red Wings’ well-placed sticks.

“They have so much offense over there [in the Penguins' dressing room], with obviously Malkin and Crosby and they’re playing extremely well,” Maltby said. ”You can’t let them have any free passing lanes. Sometimes it hits your stick, sometimes it doesn’t, but you just have to make the play as difficult for them as possible.”

This was a grind-it-out win for the Red Wings. They were only 72 hours removed from clinching the Western Conference Finals. ESPN.com’s Pierre LeBrun bellyached that there wasn’t enough pretty here, and too much ugly to befit the skill level of the two teams’ rosters.

I can see LeBrun’s point, to a degree, but because there’s so much skill, you’re bound to see it emerge sooner or later. It just might  not be as wide open or prevalent as what was displayed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Game One’s first period victimized both goalies.

At 13:38, Red Wings defenseman Brad Stuart made a nifty play at the Pittsburgh blue line to stop a clearing attempt, then wristed the puck toward the Penguins net.

The live end boards at the Joe did the rest.

The puck was off the boards and back at Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury quicker than a Jose Canseco MMA fight.

The disc ricocheted off Fleury’s right pad and caromed behind him and over the goal line.

Stuart made no bones about it: sometimes it’s a designed play to shoot toward the net at JLA, instead of directly at it.

“Yeah, you do,” Stuart said with a sly grin when asked if the end boards are purposely used for ricochets. “We know how to play them here.”

Five minutes later, it was Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood’s turn to be red-faced.

Ozzie couldn’t gather in Malkin’s slap shot, and Ruslan Fedotenko made him pay.

As Osgood frantically tried to cover the puck with his trapper, Fedotenko poked it away, moved to his backhand, and neatly deposited the tying goal at 18:37.

The end boards picked up their second assist of the night late in the second period, a period that Maltby said was the Red Wings’ “nervous one, for whatever reason.”

But they survived it, killing off two power plays and dodging a bullet, in the form of Malkin’s breakaway.

Not only did they survive it, the Red Wings took the lead.

Brian Rafalski slammed a shot toward Fleury that went wide. Johan Franzen, the Playoff Scoring Mule, pounced on the lively ricochet and managed to tap the puck over Fleury and into the Pittsburgh net at 19:02.

The Penguins had outplayed the Red Wings in the middle frame, at times pretty soundly, yet still trailed 2-1.

2:46 into the third period, young Justin Abdelkader made a play normally befitting a veteran.

He took a shot near the face-off circle to the left of Fleury, and the rebound flew high into the air.

No one seemed to know where the puck was for a precious second or two.

That’s all Abdelkader needed. He never lost sight of it, and calmly knocked the disc down with his right glove, settling it, and slapping a shot over Fleury’s right shoulder.

“That goal kind of settled us down and enabled us to close the game out,” Maltby told me afterward.

So it’s one-nil, Detroit, and while I still believe this will be a long series, the Red Wings keep getting goals from the Abdelkaders and Darren Helms of the world. That makes them awfully difficult to beat.

And as for playing on back-to-back nights?

“Just get some rest, drink plenty of fluids, and get ready to go,” Stuart said when I asked him how the team would approach playing on Sunday. “It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

Maybe in the regular season, Stewie, but back-to-back games haven’t been played in the Stanley Cup Finals since 1955.

Oh, the Red Wings won the Cup that year.

You know how superstitious hockey people can be.

Me at the Stanley Cup Finals, Game One: End of 2nd Period Blog

The end boards at Joe Louis Arena are having a career night.

They’ve assisted on both Red Wings goals, and Detroit leads, 2-1, after 40 minutes of Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals.

In the first period, it was Brad Stuart’s seemingly harmless wrister off the end boards that turned deadly for the Pens after the puck bounced in off goalie Marc-Andre Fleury’s right leg.

In the second period–a period in which the Penguins probably deserved a better fate–Brian Rafalski slammed a slap shot wide of the net, the puck did its usual boogaloo off the boards at the Joe, and Johan Franzen tapped it past a sprawled Fleury at 19:02.

The Penguins played a much better period, out-shooting the Red Wings 13-11 and having the majority of the quality scoring chances.

One that comes to mind is Evgeni Malkin’s penalty shot-like breakaway early in the period, which Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood foiled with a quick glove.

The Red Wings know darn well how to play the boards at JLA, and they use that knowledge unabashedly in their favor.

The Penguins are certainly playing a much stronger Game One than they did in 2008’s Finals, but they find themselves having to play catch up, nonetheless.

Quick observations: the Red Wings are doing a good job getting in the way of Pittsburgh’s passing lanes, and goalie Chris Osgood has once again shrugged off a bad goal, which Ruslan Fedotenko’s was in the first stanza.

The Penguins seem to be a more physical, less finesse team than they were last year, which Osgood mentioned at Media Day on Friday.

Overall, it seems to be a fairly well-officiated game; the refs are “letting them play” for the most part.

Me at the Stanley Cup Finals, Game One: End of 1st Period Blog

So that’s what it might come down to, eh?

Boards as live as downtown Royal Oak on a Friday night. The puck pinballing off Marc-Andre Fleury into the Pittsburgh net.

If this was baseball, the official scorer would call the second goal E-G — an error on goalie Chris Osgood. Unable to gobble up a rebound, and a gift for Penguins forward Ruslan Fedotenko.

That’s what the first period ended up boiling down to, in Game One of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals.

Brad Stuart opened the scoring, not that he was trying.

Stuart stopped a clearing attempt at the Pittsburgh blue line, and slung the puck toward the net. It wasn’t even on net, but at Joe Louis Arena, that’s not always the plan.

For the boards at the Joe often springboard the puck back toward danger. Never was it more so than here.

The puck caromed back into the right pad of Fleury, who was splayed out in the goaltending butterfly position.

Fleury likely didn’t even know that the vulcanized rubber disc even touched him. Likely it was the roar of the JLA crowd that tipped him off.

By that time it was too late. The puck had rattled off Fleury and slipped behind him, just over the goal line.

At 13:38, it was 1-0 Detroit. Stuart got credited for the unassisted goal, but the line should read:

Stuart 2 (end boards) 13:38; 1-0 Detroit.

Next, it was Osgood’s turn to play the fool.

Ozzie couldn’t gather in Evgeni Malkin’s slap shot, and despite a frantic attempt to cover it with his trapper, the puck lay loose for Fedotenko, who neatly put it to his backhand and flipped it into the open net.

At 18:37, the game was tied at 1-1.

Observations: this is going to be a long, bitter, angry series.

The teams have already seemed to work up a hatred for each other, although maybe it’s a carryover from last year’s Finals matchup.

Regardless, the play was chippy, the after-whistle stuff was nasty, and that was before the period was 10 minutes old.

The Red Wings carried the play, mostly, but after watching two fluke goals being scored, it makes one wonder if outplaying your opponent will mean a hill of beans in this series.

No penalties were called, which I think I like.

There certainly could have been, though.

Detroit’s Marian Hossa was mugged in the Pens’ zone, but the cops, er, refs, were looking the other way, I guess.

SOG: Detroit 11, Pittsburgh 7.

Fluke goals: one apiece.

Me at the Stanley Cup Finals: Twittering, Blogging

Just a reminder that I will be Twittering LIVE tonight throughout Game One, from the press box at the Joe.

Also, come here for live blog posts in between periods.

Tomorrow, I’ll be at Red Wings practice in the morning and will Twitter and file blog posts as well.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thegregger63

Quiet Helm Lets Skating, Checking Do The Talking

“Memo to all you dads out there: you’d be thrilled if your little girl came home with a kid like Darren Helm in tow.”

 

As long as there’s been hockey, there’s been The Pest.

He’s the gnat circling your face. The army of ants invading your picnic.

The hockey pest is a whirling dervish of skating, checking, and supreme harassment.

They’ve had nicknames over the years—like hockey gangsters.

Bugsy. The Rat. The Little Ball of Hate. Terrible Ted.

What pack of NHL banditos would be complete without guys with monikers like that?

Yes, those are actual tags hung onto some of the game’s greatest disturbers.

Bryan Watson so infuriated the great Bobby Hull during a Red Wings-Blackhawks playoff series that Bobby himself called Watson “buggy”, which got turned into “Bugsy.”

Kenny Linseman seemed to be so close to his opponents as to be inside their jerseys. No doubt it was an exasperated victim of Linseman’s persistence who first called him The Rat.

Pat Verbeek possessed the typical physical trait of the NHL pest: he was short. Hockey players have often subscribed to the Napoleonic Complex. And Verbeek added just enough mean-spiritedness to his play to be dubbed The Little Ball of Hate.

Terrible Ted, of course, was Ted Lindsay. Enough said.

So how could a certified hockey pest be such a nice, quiet kid? How could he be so unassuming and shy that you think you’re talking to a high school freshman instead of a key player on the defending Stanley Cup champions?

Darren Helm and I spent some quiet moments together Friday during Media Day prior to the Stanley Cup Finals.

Of course, that’s easy to do, because Helm makes a clam with lockjaw seem talkative by comparison.

This is how deep the Red Wings are: on just about any other team in the league, the player who scored the game-winning goal, in overtime, to send his side to the Cup Finals would be mobbed by reporters on Media Day—the first opportunity to get 1-on-1 time with the hero.

Yet there Helm and I were, amidst all the frenzy, while the cameras and microphones and notepads surrounded, well, everyone else, it seemed.

“I’m more of a depth guy,” Helm said, as I strained to hear him. “I just try to chip in.”

And this is the guy who coach Mike Babcock called “The Energizer Bunny”?

Someone replace his batteries!

Naah.

Helm does his talking on the ice, and that’s where he gets all pest-like.

Blazing speed. Obnoxiously persistent checking, to the point where sometimes you swear the kid is working with two sticks. Or that the Red Wings are working with two Helms: one for each side of the rink. At the same time.

I asked him how he learned to skate so doggone fast.

He gave me one of his “Aw, shucks”, embarrassed grins before practically whispering, “Just hard work, I guess.”

I didn’t buy it. And I won’t, until I see a rabbit on a treadmill at the gym.

Or until I see a gym, period.

Helm is the 22-year-old Manitobian who propelled the Red Wings to where they are now—about to take on the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup Finals: The Sequel—thanks to his goal at 3:58 of overtime on Wednesday night in Game Five of the conference finals against Chicago.

Not that you would know it.

The reporters continued to ignore Helm as he told me about how his parents instilled a work ethic into him and that “anyone in this room” could have gotten that series-winning goal—present company excluded, of course—and that he plays “hard between whistles.”

The more I talked to him, the more I either wanted: a) him to be six years younger, or b) my daughter to be six years older.

Memo to all you dads out there: you’d be thrilled if your little girl came home with a kid like Darren Helm in tow.

The Red Wings, for all their success, have remained an even keeled, level-headed bunch. There’s not a prima donna in that dressing room. And there won’t be in the future, if the future is in the hands of players like Helm and Jonathan Ericsson and even Henrik Zetterberg, who’s not all that old yet himself.

I liked Helm from the get-go last year, when he functioned as a sort of X-factor for the Red Wings in the playoffs.

The speed, of course, stood out first. How could it not, when Helm makes everyone else on the ice look like inanimate objects?

Then there’s the dogged checking—fore and back—which is so thorough that you can practically hear the other team’s guys sigh in annoyance from the press box.

And don’t forget Helm’s uncanny ability to “chip in,” as he puts it, with the occasional big goal.

Why, he’s Kris Draper—only 16 years younger and with more of a scoring touch, at least so far.

Since we had so much time to chit-chat, I asked Helm to describe the series-winning goal against the Blackhawks.

“The play was pretty fast,” he said of the course of events, in which a Brett Lebda shot from the point ping-ponged off the end boards and ended up in the goal crease, behind goalie Cristobal Huet.

“The puck was just lying there. I poked it in.

“But it all happened pretty fast.”

Only Darren Helm could describe scoring a clutch goal as if he was a mugging victim, giving his statement to police.

But just because Helm is young and looks like he’s about to cut your grass for ten bucks, doesn’t mean that the kid isn’t mature.

To wit, about the big goal on Wednesday night: “That goal doesn’t mean anything now. We’re trying to win the Stanley Cup.”

Ahh, so THAT’S why everyone was leaving him alone.

Why bother talking to a kid who just scored a goal that doesn’t matter anymore?

Especially when you can barely hear what he’s saying.

No worries; Helm’s play is like fingernails on a chalkboard to his beleaguered opponents.

He’ll get his unflattering nickname, soon enough. Which means he’s doing his job quite well.

No More Mr. Nice Guy: Verlander Turns Mean And Wins Again

Being a nice guy is overrated.

A team’s ace pitcher doesn’t have to be a Dale Carnegie protege.

The exact opposite, in fact, is often what’s needed.

Bob Gibson had it.

“It” was the disposition of a hungry, caged lion.

Especially on the days that he was slated to pitch.

It was best to stay out of Gibson’s way on those days. Gibson was never really known as a congenial man–still isn’t, frankly–but he turned positively wretched when his turn in the rotation came up.

His teammates stayed far, far out of his way. Gibson, they said, walked around with a puss about as sour as under-ripe lemons. Then he went out and treated opposing hitters as if they went pee-pee in his Corn Flakes.

Jack Morris, one of the best money pitchers of his time–or anyone’s time, for that matter–also had “it.”

Morris was an angry man, especially when he played in Detroit. I ought to know. I followed Morris from the day he arrived from Evansville as a rookie in 1977, to the day he fled after the 1990 season as a free agent.

Morris was the Tigers’ Gibson: the unequivocal ace who was mad at the world–or at least at the Yankees, or the Orioles, or the Blue Jays.

There was plenty of hate in Morris to go around.

The writers weren’t safe. Neither were his teammates.

Morris reminded me of another high-strung Detroit athlete, Lions quarterback Bobby Layne.

Layne was known to kick his offensive linemen in the shins when they blew an assignment.

There was a line attributed to Layne, probably true.

It came as he entered the huddle prior to the game-winning drive in the 1953 NFL Championship Game.

“Alraght, fellas,” Layne drawled, “y’all block and ole Bobby’ll pass y’all raght to the champeenship.”

The Lions blocked. And Layne, true to his word, passed the Lions to the championship over the Cleveland Browns at (then) Briggs Stadium in Detroit.

Morris, when a Tigers player would boot a baseball, forcing “The Cat” to get four outs that inning, would glare at the offending teammate.

The teammate wouldn’t glare back. He knew better.

Morris’s will was never more on display than in Game Seven of the 1991 World Series.

He pitched 10 innings of shutout ball in the Metrodome, leading the Twins to victory over Atlanta.

Manager Tom Kelly didn’t dare remove Jack.

For my money, if I needed a baseball game won, I’d want Jack Morris on the mound.

The Tigers’ ace of today, Justin Verlander, is shucking the nice guy label, kind of.

“I’m not as nice anymore,” JV said recently, explaining his mood on the days he starts.

Verlander is on a roll right now, mowing down hitters and giving up runs begrudgingly and miserly.

He’s becoming angry on the mound now, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ve seen the Verlander of old on the days he was slated to throw, and he was anything but mean.

Quite the contrary.

Laughs. Smiles.

Loosey-goosey comes to mind.

Which was fine–then.

But after a miserable 2008, JV thought that walking on the dark side was worth a try.

Right now, his stuff is filthy and his mood is nasty.

It’s a combo that has worked for the Bob Gibsons and Jack Morrises of the world.

If you can’t beat ‘em…

Me at the Stanley Cup Finals: Red Wings Presser

Following are some highlights of the Detroit Red Wings presser, held downtown at the RenCen at 1:45.

Mike Babcock

On injuries: Everyone is ready to go. Pavel Datsyuk is a game-time decision.”

On the schedule: “Well, they don’t ask me, but it seems to me that the NHL could have used more time to hype the series.”

On NBC/Versus commercials for the league: “Sometimes I wonder if they know that we won last year!”

On being at the Finals: “I love seeing how excited the players are.”

On the Finals themselves: “One night you win and you feel like a million bucks; the next night you lose and you feel like you got your heart ripped out.”

On the schedule in the playoffs: “I could have gone bear hunting in the days between some of the games!”

On whether the Red Wings have an advantage in terms of experience: “I think that’s out the window because the Penguins were here last year.”

Nick Lidstrom, Marian Hossa

Hossa

On the Pens: “They’ll be hungrier than last year. And better prepared. Last year (when he was with Pittsburgh) we were at The Finals but we kind of were wondering what was going on. Before we knew it, we were down 2-0.”

On signing with Detroit: “It was a very tough decision but I made it and obviously it was between two teams and they’re the two best teams in hockey.”

On the prospects of playing Pittsburgh in the Finals as the playoffs went on: “I started to realize that we could play the Pens in the Finals as I watched their games. Will be very interesting for me (smiles).”

Lidstrom

On being injured: “It was very hard watching a playoff game.”

On what happened: “It happened during Game Three in Chicago.” (he wouldn’t say what the injury was)

On young guys like Darren Helm and Jonathan Ericsson: “The experience the guys got from last year’s playoffs was key to our success in this year’s playoffs.”

On the playoffs: “Even after 17 years, I still get butterflies playing in the playoffs. I still get nervous.”

On the Finals schedule: “You’re just excited to be here. I don’t think fatigue will be a factor.”

On Ericsson: “‘Johnnie’ doesn’t look nervous in the playoffs. He’s just getting better and better.”

Henrik Zetterberg, Chris Osgood

Zetterberg

On Hossa: “His skating ability and size are big forces. He’s been unbelievable.”

On Sidney Crosby: “He’s a great player. You have to be on your toes when he’s out there or else he’ll hurt you.”

Osgood

On what he’s learned about this year’s Red Wings: “That we can turn it on when we want to.”

On his season: “I wasn’t mentally ready for the season to start. I guarantee that I won’t have a regular season like that again.”

On experience: “We turned it on against Columbus. We didn’t panic against Anaheim. We ran out of gas at the end of Game Five against Chicago but we found a way to win.”

On Finals schedule: “It’s fun once the games start, and the crowd is loud. At this time of the year, you really don’t want to practice. You want to play games.”

On Helm and Ericsson: “I knew they were good. I didn’t know they were that good. They help inspire us older guys to keep up with them.”

On the Pens, 2009 version: “They aren’t trying to score pretty goals as much. Last year they played a lot on the perimeter. This year they’re going to the net and cycling more. And they have guys like [Bill] Guerin, who’ve won the Cup before.”

Me at The Finals: A brief rundown

For those interested, here’s a quick rundown of my schedule of events this weekend for the Stanley Cup Finals.

Friday, May 29

1:45: Press conference with Red Wings players made available to the media. Will Twitter as I go, and will post the best comments here.

Saturday, May 30

Will attend Game One. Will Twitter during the game and post live blog updates here between periods.

Will post any highlights from the postgame pressers here and on Twitter.

Sunday, May 31

10:30am: Will attend Red Wings practice and will get 1-on-1 interviews afterward. Will post highlights here.

I am NOT attending Game Two, but I will attend Game Five in Detroit, should it be necessary (likely it will be).

Join me all weekend!!

Osgood, Once Again, Is Playoff Gold; Red Wings In Cup Finals Again

“With the way Huet starred for the Blackhawks, if Osgood doesn’t turn in the performance that he did, we’re talking about Game Six. And the Pittsburgh Penguins would continue to fiddle.”

 

First, it was supposed to be the young whippersnapper, Steve Mason, of the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Mason, they said, even though he was just a rookie, was still enough of a hotshot that he could outplay the veteran across the ice from him. In the playoffs, no less.

Next, it was supposed to be another inexperienced young man, Jonas Hiller of the Anaheim Ducks. Hiller, despite zero minutes between the pipes in post-season NHL play, was still supposed to be a mighty enough Duck to elevate his team to the promised land.

Then, it was a wily veteran–Nikolai Khabibulin–who, for sure, had the chops to outplay the goalie 190 feet away. Khabibulin, after all, won a Stanley Cup in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Why not, right?

Yet Chris Osgood still stands. And much taller than his very generous 5-foot-10 media guide listing.

Osgood has outplayed them all–Mason, Hiller, Khabibulin, and even Nikolai’s replacement, Cristobal Huet–and has his Red Wings teammates right where they were last year at this time: in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Last night, in Game Five of the Western Conference Finals, Huet was fantabulous.

Osgood, in the end, was just a smidge better.

Hasn’t he always been, in the last two playoffs?

The Red Wings have won seven straight playoff series with Osgood tending net for them.

He may as well carve notches in his goalie’s stick, signifying the opposing goalies he’s slain.

In almost every instance, those goalies were supposed to be better than Chris Osgood.

The Red Wings, you see, are this good despite their goalie.

In the spirit of hockey: what a crock, eh?

First, a few words about Game Five– a 2-1 Red Wings victory in overtime.

This was hockey at its finest.

Terrific individual play.

Hard, clean hits.

Up-and-down action.

Very few penalties and power plays.

And magnificent, with a capital “M”, goaltending.

On both ends of the ice.

What can you say about Huet? The man bounced back like a super ball from a horrid performance in Game Four in Chicago.

He made 44 saves, and none was more jaw-dropping than the robbery he committed against the Red Wings’ playoff-scoring mule, Johan Franzen.

With about 20 seconds remaining in regulation, Franzen and Marian Hossa broke down the ice. The puck squirted to Franzen, who had his back to the net. Still, he managed a backhand shot, with Huet on his tummy, sprawled like he was going to make face-first snow angels.

Franzen lifted the puck a few inches off the ice. The net was gaping. A stunning end-of-game series victory seemed certain.

Nuh-uh.

Huet raised his right leg, like one of those horror movie monsters who isn’t quite dead yet, and it was just high enough to block Franzen’s money shot.

The Joe Louis Arena crowd buckled, socked in the gut.

Overtime.

But Osgood, as I said, was just a little bit better.
 


He made fewer saves than the other guy, but that’s what always happens.

When you talk about the netminding world of Chris Osgood, you talk in terms of quality, not quantity.

And the quality of saves in Game Five was very high indeed.

With the way Huet starred for the Blackhawks, if Osgood doesn’t turn in the performance that he did, we’re talking about Game Six. And the Pittsburgh Penguins would continue to fiddle.

There were close to 80 shots on goal last night, and only three goals scored–none of which were the fault of the goalies.

The netminders were TV sets, and the scores were technical difficulties.

The NHL should press last night’s game onto DVDs and mail them to every U.S. citizen.

Free sample!

“Look at this game, and if you still don’t think that hockey is for you, then fair enough. We tried.”

For if the American people don’t like what’s on that disc, then you’ll never win them over.

So now it’s on to the Cup Finals for the Red Wings. Again.

Against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Again.

Oh, and the Penguins’ goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury, is, they say, playing some terrific hockey.

They say he’s learned and matured from last year’s experience in the Finals, much like his team allegedly has.

Fleury, they’re already saying, has the goods to rob the Wings of a second consecutive Stanley Cup.

In other words, he, for sure, can outplay Chris Osgood, mano-a-mano.

Yeah, yeah.

Bring it on, kid.

Me at the Stanley Cup Finals!

For the second year in a row, I’ll be covering the Stanley Cup Finals games played in Detroit, should the Red Wings qualify.

Look for articles and insights from that perspective!

If You Missed Last Night’s Broadcast Of “The Knee Jerks”, No Worries (Just don’t let it happen again!)

Last night was Episode Four of the new, improved, Blog Talk Radio version of “The Knee Jerks.”

And oh, what an episode it was!

Big Al of The Wayne Fontes Experience and I were joined by Keith Shelton, the No. 1-ranked Red Wings writer on Bleacher Report.

We talked Red Wings-Blackhawks, and after we let Keith go, Al and I got into some Tigers discussion.

Plus, as usual, we played Word Association and named our respective Jerks of the Week.

When Al put Keith on the spot, asking him who would win a Red Wings-Penguins Stanley Cup Final, Shelton said:

“I pick the Red Wings in five or six games. Their defense is what sets them apart from every team in the NHL.”

You can visit here to listen to last night’s broadcast and our archived shows.

Lions, Stafford Best Served If The Kid Sits Out 2009

“You start him now, you turn him into David Carr — flat on his back 60, 70 times from sacking, and his confidence eroded.”

Charlie Batch is an ex-Lions quarterback, but not paying any alimony, despite his divorce.

In fact, Batch wears two Super Bowl rings, as a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Life as a Lions “ex” often ends up being pretty good, after all.

Batch was gutting it out, leaving it all on the field in Detroit, gamely trying to lead a talent-challenged team to prosperity, when Matt Millen bounded into town as the Lions’ new president.

Then, in the time it took Millen to utter a gauche comment, Charlie Batch knew his days were numbered as a Lion.

“We’re married to Charlie Batch,” Millen said, speaking of the Lions’ quarterbacking situation shortly after being introduced as team president in January 2001.

It wasn’t meant as a compliment.

Millen may as well have substituted the word married with “saddled.”

Batch, despite that clumsy description of the state of his career from Millen, nonetheless went out in 2001 and worked his tail off, as he always had as a Lion.

“We’re married to Charlie Batch.”

That sentence clung to Batch, and to the Lions, like a school of zebra mussels.

And neither Batch nor the Lions could wash off the stench.

So when Millen drafted QB Joey Harrington out of Oregon in 2002, it didn’t take a clairvoyant to figure out how the “marriage” between Batch and the Lions was going to turn out.

Irreconciable differences.

Harrington arrived in Lions Land, a smile on his face and with the reputation as an eternal optimist. He was a piano-playing quarterback in a guitar-playing town. A wine drinker among the shot-and-beer clientele.

Before long, Joey was starting, for a poor team with little pass protection and too few decent receivers.

Another match made in hell.

Harrington was routed out of town following the 2005 season after four turbulent seasons of marriage to the Lions.

In fact, Joey pretty much initiated divorce proceedings, when he failed to show up to Mike Martz’s quarterback school in March, ‘06.

Millen consented, and Harrington took his piano and left for Miami.

Jon Kitna was then wed after a whirlwind courtship.

Matt Millen had become the Mickey Rooney and Liz Taylor of quarterback marriages.

Let’s hope the Lions have learned a little from the Harrington failure.

There’s a low rumble starting that I’m afraid is only going to get louder and more and more difficult to ignore as time goes by this summer.

Matthew Stafford, the Lions’ bonus baby quarterback from Georgia, has his supporters, which is great.

But those supporters are taking their zeal too far.

They want Stafford to be the starting quarterback when the Lions tee it up for real on September 13.

What is it they say about those who forget the past?

If the Lions have even the tiniest peas for brains, they should at least be smart enough to know that Stafford shouldn’t so much as warm up during any game this season.

He and his money should remain on the sidelines, from Week One thru Seventeen.

His jersey should be put on and removed week after week, never seeing a washing machine in between.

The Lions baseball cap should adorn his head at all times.

The clipboard should be firmly in hand.

Starting Stafford would be one of the biggest mistakes the Lions have ever made, and they’ve made some doozies.

Harrington wasn’t ready to start in 2002, and it may have ruined him forever. Certainly it set the Lions franchise back several years, when they were already decades in arrears.

Stafford needs to sit. And watch. And learn.

But most important, he needs to wait.

Not on himself. On his team — to get better.

Stafford would be working with, arguably, an even worse offensive line than the one that feebly blocked for Harrington in 2002.

You start him now, you turn him into David Carr — flat on his back 60, 70 times from sacking, and his confidence eroded.

Is that how you develop and nurture a franchise quarterback?

Of course, Harrington never had anyone nearly as good as Calvin Johnson catching his passes — when they were ever near enough to be caught.

That’s OK, let Stafford throw to Calvin all he wants — in practice. Just not during a real game.

The Stafford-to-Johnson pipeline might be the most exciting thing to happen to Detroit football since the jitterbug Barry Sanders dazzled us.

But it’s not ready to be unleashed this season. Not even close.

Stafford, by all accounts, has impressive football IQ and a seemingly good grasp of what being the No. 1 overall pick in the draft means.

That’s great. But you still don’t start him.

For one, the Lions have Daunte Culpepper, and that’s not chopped liver.

Culpepper has dropped weight, is working hard, and is embracing his role as leader. He’s still only 32 years old.

Remember David Krieg? Or Steve DeBerg? Guys who called signals competently at advanced ages?

Oh, you wanna talk active players?

Then what about Kurt Warner?

Culpepper may be several years away from retirement number two. There might be a lot of good football left in his tank.

So it’s not like the Lions have Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum listed first on the depth chart at quarterback.

But they will if they move Culpepper down a notch and replace him with the rich rookie.

This is no time for haste.

You’re coming off an 0-16 season. And you’d put a rookie in charge of those bums?

Stafford, if all goes to plan, could be the best thing to hit the Lions in over 50 years.

If you treat him right.

Everyone — Culpepper, the Lions, Stafford, coach Jim Schwartz — is best served if the kid spends 2009 on the bench waiting for even more reinforcements to arrive courtesy of the 2010 draft.

It gives Daunte a year to prove to the NFL that he’s still serviceable — in Detroit or elsewhere.

It gives the Lions a veteran QB to lead them through a new coach’s first year, coming on the heels of 0-16.

It gives Stafford a year to learn and saves him from a sack fest.

It gives Schwartz a smoother year of transition than if Stafford were the starter.

By my count, that’s a win/win/win/win situation — twice the usual amount.

And a much better chance of a long, healthy marriage between quarterback and team.

Resist the urge, Schwartzie!

“The Knee Jerks” Are LIVE Tonight!! (This time I mean it!)

Hey, all you sports night owls!

Join Big Al of The Wayne Fontes Experience, and yours truly for another LIVE episode of “The Knee Jerks” on Blog Talk Radio.

No, really.

Last night we had major technical issues with BTR, and after ten minutes of on-the-air, off-the-air, we called it a night and deleted the debacle from the server.

It happens at 11:00 p.m. ET, and Al and I will be joined, in “Take two!” fashion, by Bleacher Report’s premier Red Wings writer, Keith Shelton, to talk Wings-Blackhawks.

Hope to have you tune in tonight!

Remember, if you miss the live broadcast — an expanded, 90-minute version, by the way — then you can always download the show at your convenience!

We’ll also hit on the Tigers, Lions, and do our usual, wildly popular regulars: Word Association and Jerk of the Week.

Don’t miss it!

Young Blackhawks Schooled By Red Wings; It Should Help Them In The Future

“Playing the Red Wings is like standing at one of those arcade games–the kind with the mallet and the rodent heads popping up.”

 

One day, sometime in the not-too-distant future, when Jonathan Toews and company are skating the Stanley Cup around some rink, somewhere, the Chicago Blackhawks will point to Sunday’s game against the Detroit Red Wings–Game Four of the 2009 Western Conference Finals.

That, they’ll say, is when we learned.

That’s when the cream rose to the top. The oil separated from the vinegar.

The Red Wings are a high performance spaceship, and they jettisoned the young Blackhawks like a lunar module on Sunday. All the better to be lighter and have more giddy-up when they face, likely, the Pittsburgh Penguins in a Stanley Cup Finals rematch.

If the Blackhawks have any hockey IQ at all, they’ll point to Sunday and realize that Game Four was when champions behaved like champions and young challengers wilted under the bright lights of series-making like three-day old lettuce.

It was tough to watch, really–the Blackhawks unraveling.

Their goalie played at a level reserved for pond hockey, which seemed to deflate the ‘Hawks.

There are two things that happen in hockey that make you cringe: giving up a goal in the final minute of a period, and giving up a goal in the opening minutes of a period.

The Blackhawks did both yesterday.

Then they lost their composure, and whacked and hacked the Red Wings, took penalties after the whistle, and even put themselves down two men in one fell swoop.

Sunday’s game could be the Blackhawks’ defining moment, if they play it right.

The videotape of the game should be preserved in a capsule, sealed, and placed in a climate-controlled vault.

It should be brought out in playoffs of the future, to remind the maturing ‘Hawks how champions go about their business and how trash-talking punks go about theirs.

Rookie Kris Versteeg yapped more than a junkyard dog Sunday, and spent most of his ice time skating from the penalty box to the bench.

If you think you’re going to throw these Red Wings off their game with your mouth and false bravado, then the hockey IQ in Chicago isn’t at the level needed to be Cup champs.

Been there, done that. That’s what the Red Wings bring to any playoff match.

Versteeg wasn’t even born when Wings defenseman Chris Chelios broke into the league. He was still putting frogs in his pocket and pulling girls’ hair when the Red Wings–several of which are still playing for the team–won their first of four Stanley Cups since 1997.

You think the Red Wings are going to be thrown off their game by young Kris Versteeg?

And it wasn’t just Versteeg.

For whatever reason, coach Joel Quenneville’s team lost it on Sunday. The goal that may have been the final straw was Marian Hossa’s second, which came just 12 seconds after Toews brought the Blackhawks to within 3-1.

Oh, and that’s the third hockey thing that makes you cringe: giving up a goal so soon after you score one of your own.

The Red Wings would have none of the Blackhawks’ baiting–verbal or physical.

They fought back, as they usually do, with their skill. And their depth.

No Nicklas Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk, or Kris Draper?

Oh, didn’t they play?

Huh. I couldn’t tell.

Playing the Red Wings is like standing at one of those arcade games–the kind with the mallet and the rodent heads popping up.

Smack! Kill the Franzen head.

Pop! Here comes the Hossa head.

Smack! Kill the Hossa head.

Pop! Up comes the Zetterberg head.

Again, the Blackhawks are a fine young team. The Red Wings will have their hands completely full with these guys in years to come. Just as long as the proper personnel moves are made–the ones to complement the dazzling pieces already in place.

GM Dale Tallon is under the gun now. It’ll be his moves that will determine this team’s fate.

Like with the goaltending, for example.

Going into Game Five, there are issues in the Chicago net, which is the last place you want to discover issues while you’re in a playoff series.

It’s like finding hair in your food.

Cristobal Huet replaced the ailing Nikolai Khabibulin for Game Four–much the same way, I would imagine, that William Hung would replace the Dave Matthews Band.

Huet was awful. Terrible. A sieve. Anti-morale.

He waved at Franzen’s goal late in the first period, the one that gave the Red Wings a 2-0 lead.

He looked feeble on Hossa’s second goal, the backbreaker that came 12 seconds after Toews’ goal.

So there’s Huet and the ailing Khabibulin, and fuzzy-faced Corey Crawford, who wears No. 50 and since when did any goalie of any repute do that?

Those are your choices if you’re Quenneville, facing an elimination game in Detroit on Wednesday.

Another cringe-inducer.

Monday Morning Manager

My weekly take on the Tigers, also known simply and affectionately as “MMM.”

Week of 5/18-5/24: 4-2

This week: 5/25-27: at KC; 5/28-31: at Bal

Goat of the Week

Not too many goats on a team that ripped off seven straight wins, which the Tigers did until stumbling over the weekend against the Rockies, of all teams.

But righthanded starter Armando Galarraga is MMM’s first-ever two-time Goat, and on back-to-back weeks, no less.

A-Gal improved slightly in his last start on Saturday, but he’s still the weak link in a rotation that now includes Dontrelle Willis, who was feared to be the mother of all weak links.

My hunch?

Galarraga becomes a long relief man when Jeremy Bonderman returns to the rotation, which is perhaps two weeks away.

It’s a game of production in the big leagues. No jobs are given away out of charity.

Galarraga was a bright spot last year on a team with few of them.

But he’s not producing in ‘09, and that means his spot in the rotation is up for grabs.

Hero of the Week

Let’s hear it for Willis, by the way.

Another strong start on Sunday, although in a losing effort.

I watched some of the game Sunday, and Dontrelle appeared to show no ill effects from his time spent on the disabled list due to anxiety disorder.

He one-hit the red-hot Texas Rangers into the seventh inning, then followed that up with a strong performance against the Rockies.

For what he’s coming back from, Willis deserves to be last week’s MMM Hero.

Quick scouting reports: Royals, Orioles

If slugfests are your thing, you might not want to tune in to the Tigers-Royals series this week.

Pitching abounds on both teams.

But if you like that kind of thing, have we got a series for you!

Justin Verlander vs. Gil Meche on Monday.

Edwin Jackson vs. Zack Greinke on Tuesday.

Rookie Rick Porcello vs. Kyle Davies on Wednesday.

Oh, and the Royals are the closest threat to the Tigers’ first-place status in the division.

Enjoy.

As for the Orioles, they can hit but can’t pitch. A statement that fits more teams than not anymore.

Young Adam Jones is getting all Eddie Murray-ish: a .359 average; 10 HR; 32 RBI.

And he’s just 23.

Jones hit just nine homers all season in 2008.

He’s not on the juice, is he?

Seriously, it’s Jones and two usual suspects — Nick Markakis and Aubrey Huff — who are inflicting the most damage. The three of them have combined to drive in 106 runs already.

Trouble is, the O’s haven’t gotten much from anyone else in the lineup.

The ERAs of the Baltimore starters should come with an NC-17 rating.

They range from the low fours to the eights. Mostly they’re in the fives–well into the fives.

The Orioles win by outslugging their opponents.

Correction: they win by having Jones, Huff, and Markakis outslugging their opponents.

Which is why they’re below .500.

Three men do not a lineup make.

Under the microscope

Let’s put Brandon Lyon there.

The free agent reliever is quickly getting Neifi Perez-like derision from the Tigers faithful. But to compare position-to-position, Lyon is a poor man’s Todd Jones — a pitcher who’s not overpowering and who relies on location and balls being hit to where the fielders are positioned.

Lyon is surrendering homers and extra base hits with alarming frequency, and doesn’t seem to be fooling too many hitters right now.

He’s booed when he enters the game at Comerica Park.

It’ll be interesting to see if Lyon, who lost the closer’s role in spring training to Fernando Rodney, will be run out of town. He doesn’t have strong ties to and roots in Detroit, like Jonesy had.

That’s all for this week’s MMM. Join me every Monday!

Lions’ Schwartz Smart To Add Former Big Cheeses Cunningham, Linehan To Staff

“Not too many head coaches in the NFL right now can look to their right and to their left and see two more common denominators, professionally.”

When Gunther Cunningham first started coaching football players, Jim Schwartz was waddling around in diapers.

Now they both have a mess to clean up.

They have to be among the human diapers that will keep Ford Field’s turf from turning brown.

Scott Linehan doesn’t play Methuselah to Schwartz’s Baby New Year, like Cunningham does, but he’s been where Schwartz is currently.

Cunningham’s been there, too.

Schwartz, the man handed the keys to Bill Ford’s football Edsel in January, wasn’t shy to bring to his staff two men who’ve also been head coaches in the NFL.

The three of them—head coach Schwartz, defensive coordinator Cunningham, and offensive coordinator Linehan—form a triangle that best not be of the lovers’ variety.

It’s a sign of confidence and football acumen that Schwartz, after eight years as the Tennessee Titans’ defensive coordinator, has appointed two former head coaches to helm arguably the two most important positions on any football coaching staff.

Cunningham has probably forgotten more football than most Lions coaches in the past have ever known.

Not that that’s terribly difficult to accomplish.

But Cunningham’s like Schwartz in one distinct fashion: he’s a defensive guy—the coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs from 2004-2008 (and, prior to that, also from 1995-98). He’s coordinated defenses in Los Angeles (with the Raiders), and in college.

He’s coached linebackers. He’s coached the line.

And he was the big cheese, too.

Cunningham was tending to the Chiefs’ defense, as usual, when the call came.

You’re the head coach now.

Good luck to you.

It was 1999.

And he went 16-16 in two seasons as K.C.’s head man before returning to the relative safety of being an assistant coach.

There’s a certain coziness to coordinator positions. You can be in charge without really being in charge.

Of course, it can work the other way, too.

Charlie Knox used to coach the offense for the Detroit Lions, in the early-1970s, under Joe Schmidt.

In Charlie’s day, there were no “coordinators”.

Not in Cunningham’s early days, either.

Knox, years after becoming a head coach himself, once offered his viewpoint of employing offensive and defensive coordinators.

“I’ve seen it where you have a defensive coordinator, who’s the head coach in charge of the defense, and an offensive coordinator, who’s the head coach in charge of the offense, and you’re left with a head coach who’s in charge of nothing!”

I’m sure he has.

Linehan doesn’t look old enough to have been the head coach of his kid’s pee-wee team, but he’s got some coaching chops.

He’s known for his offenses. More specifically, Scott Linehan is now known, around Detroit, for his past dalliances with current Lions quarterback Daunte Culpepper.

Linehan coordinated the Minnesota Vikings offense from 2002-04, the last year of which was Culpepper’s career year in the NFL.

That success in tandem wasn’t lost on Schwartz, at all, when he tabbed Linehan, fresh off getting the ziggy by the St. Louis Rams as their head coach, to run his offense in Detroit.

Naturally, the talk is that Linehan and Culpepper are about to make sweet music again together, with the Lions.

And rookie QB Matthew Stafford will lead the Lions to glory, simply because he attended the same high school in Texas as Bobby Layne.

If only it was that easy. If only current success was merely a nod to the past away.

Cunningham (top) and Linehan have both been big cheeses elsewhere

The Lions have indeed had, as Charlie Knox once opined, head coaches who were in charge of nothing.

Showmen. Snake oil salesmen. Clueless boobs. Stubborn old men.

The Lions have had them all.

If you think an old codger like Bobby Ross, or an egomaniac like Steve Mariucci, would have two former NFL head coaches on their staff, at the ready for upper management should things go sideways, then you’re probably still leaving milk and cookies out on the coffee table on Christmas Eve.

Schwartz is new wave. He’s secure, as a new guy stepping into the goo of 0-16.

He knows he has some honeymoon time, and so why not spend it with two dudes who know what it’s like to be the boss?

Not too many head coaches in the NFL right now can look to their right and to their left and see two more common denominators, professionally.

Schwartz has his work cut out for him, much in the same way as Michelangelo did when they gave him some paint and a brush and stuck him in the ceiling of that chapel in the 16^th century.

Thank goodness, Schwartz isn’t going with the blind-leading-the-blind routine.

Matt Millen tried that, as a first-year GM when he hired a first-year head coach.

But here comes Schwartz, flush with success from his time in Tennessee, and he goes and hires two former head coaches as his coordinators.

It may not mean automatic success, but it sure seems smart.

I have no idea how many games the Lions will win in 2009. It seems foolhardy to think that they can manage even four victories, with their rugged schedule and being one year removed from a winless season.

It might be that they win two or three and consider the season a success, in a twisted, Lions kind of way.

But I do know one thing.

Jim Schwartz has already shown, with two hires, more football sense and vision than his 21^st century predecessors displayed, combined.

Besides, how can you not love a coach of American football named Gunther?

The Fix Was In: NHL Ensures A Game Five, At Least

Go ahead and accuse me of homerism–and I don’t mean a man crush on Tomas Holmstrom.

Ignore the following as bleatings from a partisan.

Shake your head and say that my grapes are as sour as Dick Cheney’s puss.

I don’t care.

The Red Wings lost a hockey game in Chicago Friday night, and can you blame them?

They were playing five-on-seven all night.

It wasn’t enough that the two referees got their jollies by watching the Red Wings play just about the entire first period shorthanded.

They also seemed to forget that hockey is a contact sport.

Niklas Kronwall just about killed Marty Havlat last night. But it was perfectly legal.

Legal to everyone, apparently, except for Gary Bettman’s minions wearing the zebra stripes and orange arm bands.

Havlat looked dead, literally, when the Versus cameras cut to show his seemingly lifeless face, with the eyes rolled back into his head.

It was Concrete Charlie Bednarik, hockey style.

Bednarik was the Philadelphia Eagle who hit Frank Gifford of the Giants so hard in 1960 that a few of the Giffer’s teammates thought ole Chuck killed handsome Frank.

No joke.

Kyle Rote of the Giants, who was on the field, mere feet away from the violent collision, said in recalling the hit later, “I thought Frank was dead. I really did. Chuck hit him that hard.”

I think I know how Rote felt.

Havlat was laid out. Pancaked. Destroyed. Killed, almost.

Legally.

The Kronwall hit–and the Versus guys plus the Canucks on Hockey Night In Canada admitted as much–was completely within the rules. Kronwall never left his feet. Didn’t go for Havlat’s head.

Yet not only was Kronwall whistled for a penalty, they threw the book at him. Tossed him into the locker room and threw away the key.

A five minute major, plus a game misconduct.

The shame of it was that it didn’t appear to be called a penalty initially. But then the refs held a kangaroo court trial and convicted Kronwall, right there on the ice.

Then the Red Wings, already down 2-0, busted their tails to kill off the unjust major.

Only to be called for a phantom penalty immediately thereafter.

By the time the Red Wings enjoyed a man advantage, they were trailing 3-0 and all seemed lost.

Bettman’s minions in stripes and arm bands seemed to be successful in ensuring that this series go at least five games, if not longer.

But the Red Wings, showing the heart of champions, rallied.

They scored three goals late in the second period in the same amount of time, it seemed, that you can watch that ShamWow! commercial.

Bettman’s minions must have been getting nervous.

The fix was in for Game Three. If you’re going to defend it, then tell it to the judge. I’ll see you in court.

To show you my fairness, I’ll inform you that I didn’t think the Red Wings would win Game Three. It’s a tough one to get, when you’re the favorite going into the underdog’s building with a 2-0 series lead.

I just didn’t think the outcome had been determined during the team’s bus ride from the hotel to the rink.

Bettman’s minions gave every call to the Blackhawks, especially in the first period. It was laughable, almost, how unjust things were on the United Center ice surface.

A Red Wings player would get held, mugged, or otherwise impeded, and there’d be no call.

Conversely, if you so much as looked at Patrick Kane or Jonathan Toews cross-eyed, you were whistled, if you wore the blood red and white of Detroit.

Highway robbery. Series shaving. A fix. Take your pick.

If I was a member of the Blackhawks, I wouldn’t show off that victory too much, because it’s stolen goods.

They did it all to the Red Wings last night except kidnap their wives and girlfriends.

Speaking of which, don’t allow the ladies into the rink on Sunday. Just in case.

All that, and the Red Wings still could have won Game Three.

It would have been worth it to see the looks of defeat on the faces of the Blackhawks.

And on the crooked mugs of Gary Bettman’s minions in stripes and arm bands.

Foul!

Mark Howe’s Playoffs Spent Spying, Legally

Mark Howe was no stranger to May hockey as a player.

Today, Howe is very familiar with it as well, but instead of lacing up skates he’s filing reports. Instead of making the breakout pass from his own zone, he’s racing to catch the next plane at the airport.

If it wasn’t for those darned Edmonton Oilers and New Jersey Devils, there’d be two Howes with their names engraved on the Stanley Cup, as players.

Howe, the most talented hockey player among Gordie’s kids, went to the Stanley Cup Finals three times, in skates. This year, he hopes to make it five times in Armani.

Mark came up empty as a player–losing twice with the Philadelphia Flyers to the Oilers (1985, 1987) and once to the New Jersey Devils, as a member of the Red Wings (1995).

Nowadays, Mark Howe is the Director of Pro Scouting for the Red Wings. Which means, especially at this time of the year, his job is to coordinate scouting of possible Red Wings opponents.

Fancy words for, he has to criss-cross the country, watching hockey games.

While the Red Wings were dispatching the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round, Howe and his staff, which includes former Red Wing Pat Verbeek, were spreading themselves out, not knowing exactly who Detroit would face in Round Two.

As the Anaheim Ducks emerged as a possible opponent, thanks to jumping out to a 3-1 series lead over San Jose, Howe focused on the Ducks. He ended up attending all six of the Ducks’ playoff games in California.

While the Wings played the Ducks, Howe took in the Blackhawks-Canucks series.

Now he’s checking out the Hurricanes and the Penguins. And filing reports.

Legalized spying. That’s what scouting is, basically.

But there comes a time, if your team advances far enough, when there’s no more scouting to be done. Just watching and hoping.

During last year’s Cup Finals, I trudged down to the Red Wings’ dressing room after Game One. With no more scouting to be done, Howe and Verbeek had joined coach Mike Babcock and his staff in the coaches’ room, adjacent to the lockerroom.

Babcock, despite a shutout win, was still wound up.

“They’re gonna give them a bunch of power plays, you can bet on it!” the coach barked as Howe and company looked on. A few choice words tumbled out of Babcock’s mouth as well.

During the game, I kept an eye on the Red Wings’ suite, filled with hockey intelligence.

Gordie Howe, no less. Scotty Bowman, no less. Kenny Holland, no less. Jimmy Devellano, no less. Steve Yzerman, no less.

And Mark Howe. No less.

They sat, scrunched together, in suits and ties, their work done, but not their worrying.

The stuffed shirts, as I called them, could only look on. Like expectant fathers.

Howe and Yzerman, of course, could relate to what was going on below them, on the Joe Louis Arena ice surface.

I was pulling so hard for the Red Wings to win the Cup in ‘95, which was 40 years exactly since their last one.

I knew it was Mark Howe’s last season as a player. What a way for him to go out, I thought–to win the Cup, 40 years after his dad last won it for the Red Wings. And just a couple weeks after his 40th birthday.

Mark was born just weeks after dad Gordie’s Wings won the ‘55 Cup.

Game One was played that year, appropriately, on Father’s Day weekend.

But the Devils would have none of sentiment and nostalgia.

They swept the Red Wings, using a suffocating trap.

Mark retired, Cup-less.

Mark Howe in the 1995 Finals

But then he went to work in the Red Wings’ scouting department, and his name got engraved on the Cup, after all.

Four times, in fact.

It’s not the same, of course. It never is the same. Ask any former player. There’s nothing like winning the Cup, in uniform, in skates, and parading the chalice around the rink.

Your name can be engraved, but if it wasn’t because of toil, tears, and sweat on the ice, it’s just not the same.

Not that it doesn’t mean something, of course.

The Red Wings signed Mark Howe in the summer of 1992. Finally, at age 37, he was coming home to play NHL hockey in Detroit.

He had played junior hockey in town, as a member of the Junior Red Wings, but when it came time to turn pro, Mark was not Red Wings property.

The Houston Aeros, of the World Hockey Association, owned Mark and brother Marty’s rights.

Then old man Gordie joined them, in 1973.

Mark and the clan could have come back several years later, after mom Colleen (who passed away earlier this year) tried to broker a deal that would bring the Howes back to Detroit after their exile to the WHA.

The Norris family, who owned the team at the time, would have none of it. For whatever reason.

It’s almost over now for Mark Howe–the miles in the sky, the reporting, the advanced work needed to prepare Babcock and his staff for the next opponent.

If the Red Wings escape the Blackhawks in the conference finals, Howe will end up back in the team management suite for the Finals, another stuffed shirt.

The work done. The worrying, not so much.

Willis’s Performance Terrific, But It’s Just One

“I’m cautiously optimistic about Willis’s performance last night. It should do him a world of good. But he’s not out of the woods yet. Not even close.”

 

Dontrelle Willis isn’t back. Let’s get that straight right out of the box.

The demons aren’t gone. Some of the dragons still lie in wait.

Willis’s career is a house of cards, still.

So when you exhale after every hopeful outing, turn your head and blow in the opposite direction, just in case.

Last night, at Comerica Park, Willis won himself a baseball game.

Brilliantly.

His first win in the big leagues since 2007.

A masterpiece. Not just for him. For anyone.

Willis, infamously placed on the disabled list with anxiety disorder at the end of spring training, made his second start of the season against the Texas Rangers, they of the seven-game winning streak and the multitude of .300+ hitters with so much raw power.

And Dontrelle handled them. Easily.

Seventeen Rangers in a row, Willis retired at one point.

It was not too long ago when we feared that Willis wouldn’t be able to hit the Atlantic Ocean with his pitches.

Last night?

Six and one-third innings. One hit. One. And just two walks.

One-hundred pitches thrown, and more than 60 percent were for strikes.

Oh, it’s cause for celebration, alright. Cause for optimism.

No question.

But this is still a work in progress.

Remember Todd Van Poppel?

Van Poppel was the much-ballyohooed rookie draft choice of the Oakland A’s back in 1990.

He never came close to living up to the expectations.

Van Poppel became, for a time, a Tiger.

By the time he arrived in Detroit, Van Poppel was washed up. At age 24.

But he had one moment of glory as a Tiger: a complete-game, five-hit shutout against the Royals at Tiger Stadium. It was August 30, 1996.

Despite the shutout, Van Poppel’s ERA as a Tiger was an unsightly 11.39 in 36.1 innings.

Point being, I remember folks sprouting hope after Van Poppel’s shutout of the Royals.

Maybe he’s back, they said. Maybe he’s the pitcher everyone thought he could be.

Then Todd went out and surrendered 30 earned runs over his next five starts, which spanned just 12.1 innings total.

I’m cautiously optimistic about Willis’s performance last night. It should do him a world of good.

But he’s not out of the woods yet. Not even close.

This is a game of performance, big league baseball is. Consistent performance.

What is it they say about blind squirrels? Or a broken clock?

This is, as I’ve written and said on Blog Talk Radio, going to be done in stages, Dontrelle Willis’s comeback.

Stage One: get through that first start and survive it without blowing up.

Status: Accomplished.

Stage Two: build on that and learn how to pitch again, working the plate and gaining more and more command.

Status: In progress.

It’s not fence-sitting to say, “Check back with me in September about Dontrelle Willis.”

It’s smart.

Is the D-Train back on the tracks?

See three sentences ago.

Blackhawks’ Imperfection Gets Them Again

“Here’s Barry Melrose on ESPN.com after Game Two: ‘If you make a mistake against Chicago, you can overcome it. If you make a mistake against Detroit, it’s in your net.’”

 

It was a line uttered by one of baseball’s boys in blue from “back in the day”, as they say.

To be an umpire, the line went, “You have to be perfect on your first day on the job then keep getting better.”

That philosophy of the impossible might be appropriate for opponents of the Detroit Red Wings.

You have to be perfect in Game One, then keep getting better.

Because just one teeny tiny misplay, one little moment of indiscretion, and that’s all it can take for the puck to end up in your own net when playing the Stanley Cup champs.

Last night the goat was Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Brian Campbell.

In overtime at Joe Louis Arena (where the ‘Hawks had the Wings right where they should have wanted them; more on that later), Campbell had himself a split second of carelessness with the puck, and moments later, three Red Wings skated in on goalie Nikolai Khabibulin with but one Blackhawk skater back as a deterrent.

Just like that, the puck hit the twine behind Khabibulin, and the game was over.

Game, Detroit.

Series advantage, Detroit — two games to love.

Campbell is a fine defenseman. He’s been a terrific free agent acquisition for the Blackhawks. In fact, he was one blue liner that the Red Wings themselves had interest in, before he was traded by Buffalo to San Jose at the trade deadline in 2008.

But Campbell short-armed a pass in the attacking zone, slipped to the ice, and Red Wings Jiri Hudler, Valtteri Filppula and Mikael Samuelsson were away–with the puck.

Those three coming down the ice on a 3-on-1 are harder to stop than it is to correctly spell all their names without peeking.

After Game One, I wrote that walls are easier scaled than plowed through.

Shoot up high, I implored the Red Wings. That’s the weakness of Khabibulin, nicknamed The Bulin Wall.

But Hudler, Filppula and Samuelsson executed the breakout to perfection, and in doing so they came armed with demolition balls, each of them.

The Bulin Wall crumbled, not that it had a chance.

Samuelsson rifled the puck home after the brilliant display of tic-tac-toe passing.

In Game One, the puck was inexplicably left at the Detroit blue line and pounced on by Dan Cleary, who motored down the left wing and wristed a shot over Khabibulin’s left shoulder.

In Game Two, Cleary took advantage of another moment of Blackhawk indiscretion, and beat Khabibulin between the legs on a penalty shot-like breakaway.

Here’s Barry Melrose on ESPN.com after Game Two: “If you make a mistake against Chicago, you can overcome it. If you make a mistake against Detroit, it’s in your net.”

No disrespect intended to the Blackhawks. One day they’ll be skating the Cup around the ice, and in the not too distant future.

You can count on it.

But they have displayed already, after just two games in these Western finals, why they’re not ready to be champions.

Too many unforced errors. At the worst possible of times.

Now, why did I say that the Blackhawks had the Red Wings where they should have wanted them? Meaning, in overtime. At Joe Louis Arena.

The Red Wings, as I’ve noted here before, are lousy in overtime at home in the playoffs.

Just flat out lousy.

They lose far more than they win in situations such as last night’s.

If Game One was the ‘Hawks’ chance to steal a game in Detroit, because it came just a couple days after the Red Wings’ rugged seven-game set with the Anaheim Ducks, then Game Two presented a rare second chance to break the Wings’ serve.

Overtime, in Detroit? In the playoffs?

You could practically envision a grizzled dude with a cowboy hat on in the Old West, rattling a metal triangle, yelling about the game to the Blackhawks, “Come and get it!”

But the soup wasn’t on for the Blackhawks. Instead, the Red Wings feasted. For a change.

Of course, one of the biggest OT wins the Red Wings have had at home occurred in 1995 against Chicago, when Slava Kozlov thrust his team into the Finals in double overtime at JLA.

So we’re two games into the Final Four in the West, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record (remember records?), it still looks like a five-gamer to me.

The Blackhawks didn’t start out this series perfect, which is the level at which they must play to win even one game against Detroit.

The way things are going, before they can manage that, the Red Wings will be in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Two, three games hence, I reckon.

The Knee Jerks: Highlights From Last Night’s Broadcast!

Last night was the second LIVE episode of “The Knee Jerks” on Blog Talk Radio, my weekly broadcast with Big Al of The Wayne Fontes Experience.

In case you missed it, here are some highlights culled from last night’s episode:

On Tigers manager Jim Leyland and his contract situation:

Eno: He says he’s had two good years and one bad one. No, Jim, you’ve had three bad second halves in a row, is what you had!

Big Al: When he went public with [his contract situation] last fall, he couldn’t have mis-read that situation any more than he did. He was in NO position to ask for a contract extension.

On the Tigers’ rotation once Jeremy Bonderman returns from surgery in a couple weeks:

Eno: I think Armando Galarraga ought to be worried. I think he’s on the bubble.

Big Al: (on Dontrelle Willis) I’m not convinced that he can get big league hitters out.

On Red Wings-Blackhawks:

Eno: (on Marian Hossa/Pavel Datsyuk’s goal-scoring slumps) You can’t have EVERYONE going ALL the time. Or else you’d win every game 9-2!

Big Al: If Johan Franzen is a playoff God, then Dan Cleary is playoff Jesus!

On Chris Osgood:

Eno: I wish all the Osgood haters would shove it. When the stakes are high, he plays his best. Period.

Big Al: You can make a case that Chris Osgood is a Hall of Fame goalie.

To download the broadcast, click HERE!!

Red Wings Realize: Walls Are Best Gone OVER, Not Through

“Despite the third period tie, I saw nothing that changes my mind about this series.”

Game One, they say, is the one that the visiting team can sneak into the home building and grab, especially if the hosts are all tuckered out after a long, grueling series.

The Chicago Blackhawks tried some of that sneaking-into-the-house thing Sunday, but they tripped a motion detector, lights and sirens went off, and the Red Wings came storming down the stairs to see what was the matter.

Then they beat back the intruders with their hockey sticks, finished off a 5-2 victory, and went back upstairs to get some more sleep.

No more sneaky-sneaky.

“They’re a really good team,” goalie Chris Osgood said afterward, and he wasn’t trying to convince himself. As usual, Ozzie was schooling the media. “They have four good lines and good defensemen. The only difference [between them and the Anaheim Ducks] is that they’re a little younger.”

Ah, but that is quite a difference–one that will eventually be the ‘Hawks’ undoing.

It was evident during the first two Red Wings goals.

Both were the results of turnovers.

Dan Cleary swiped the puck at his own blue line and finished with a perfectly-placed wrister upstairs. Then Johan Franzen stole the puck behind the Chicago net and wrapped it around and into the net, using his reach, which is longer than Shaun Rogers’ grocery list.

Memo to the Red Wings, by the way.

When shooting against Chicago goalie Nikolai Khabibulin, go high. Very high.

Every wall has its top, including the Bulin Wall.

The Red Wings scored three times by elevating the puck over Khabibulin’s shoulders, including a nifty redirect by Dan Cleary to make the score 4-2.

Early impressions of the young, playoff-inexperienced Blackhawks: they’re young. And playoff-inexperienced.

But they have speed, and their legs looked relatively fresh. But the Red Wings are a very efficient team. Maybe it’s because of the advanced age of some of their compatriots. Regardless, the Red Wings don’t expend a lot of energy needlessly.

They are individually, as one of the NBC announcers said Sunday, very smart without the puck when their teammates possess it, which is very often. And those smart players without the puck are extremely patient with it.

It was never more evident than during Mikael Samuelsson’s goal that broke a 2-2 tie.

Brett Lebda snapped a shot from the point that was blocked. It bounced to Samuelsson, who, despite the game situation and the multitude of players surrounding him, held on to it and bided his time.

Samuelsson showed more patience, on the ice in the third period of Game 1 of the conference finals during a tie game, than I show waiting at the fast food drive-thru.

When he deemed the time right, Sammy snapped a shot.

Oh, and it was high, by the way. Over the Bulin Wall.

Goal. 3-2, Detroit.

Once again, Osgood was sharp when he had to be, except just before the game’s first goal, when he was caught with his hockey pants down trying to play the puck. He didn’t see Adam Burish, and the puck was slipped between his legs and into the net.

But as usual, Ozzie shoved that to the back burner and forgot about it. He does that very well, especially after goals where he was clearly the goat.

Despite the third period tie, I saw nothing that changes my mind about this series.

It will not be anywhere near as taxing as the Ducks’ seven-game boogaloo.

The Red Wings will wear these Blackhawks down much sooner than they did the Ducks, which isn’t hard to do because it took six games, a couple of overtimes, and 57 minutes to shrug off Anaheim.

But you know what I mean.

This still has “five game series” written all over the Bulin Wall, in bright red spray paint.

Monday Morning Manager

My weekly take on the Tigers, also known simply and affectionately as “MMM.”

Week of 5/11-5/17: 3-3

This week: 5/19-21: TEX; 5/22-24: COL

Goat of the Week

Last year, I suspected that right-handed starter Armando Galarraga had pitched over his head. I doubt I was alone.

The Tigers picked Galarraga off from the Texas Rangers’ trash heap last spring training, and his rags-to-riches story was terrific, but I was leery.

Do it one more time, Armando, I thought. Or something close, to make me feel that this wasn’t one of those one-hit wonder deals.

Sadly, Galarraga has now pitched himself onto MMM’s weekly Goat list.

Galarraga soiled the mound once again on Sunday, his fourth straight poor outing. That the Tigers picked him up and won the game anyway doesn’t change his MMM status.

In his prior start, Galarraga had big time trouble in the first inning, but survived it.

Yesterday, he didn’t even do that.

Dishonorable mention goes to the bullpen, which blew multiple leads in Minnesota during a three-game sweep at the hands of the Twins.

Hero of the Week

I’m going to cop out and lay the MMM Hero tag on the entire Tigers offense.

They scored 34 runs in sweeping the A’s over the weekend, including digging out of a six-run hole on Sunday. In Minnesota, they scored enough runs to win at least one, maybe two games.

I love Ramon Santiago. Always have.

All he does is hit, and drive the ball into the gaps. Sometimes, he drives it over the fence.

He clubbed a three-run homer Sunday, completing the team’s comeback.

But we’ll probably never know what this backup infielder can do if given 500 ABs. Santiago being a full-time player just doesn’t seem to be in the cards in Detroit.

On the other hand, what a treat it is to have a bench player like Santiago, whose glove is sweet, and who can deliver a key hit when you need it, too.

Quick scouting reports: Rangers, Rockies

Interleague play debuts this weekend, but the Tigers won’t have to deal with the thin air and pinball-like ballpark in Denver. The Rockies come to town, and in they’re in a familiar spot–their 2007 Cinderella season notwithstanding: with a losing record and bad pitching.

An exception is lefty starter Jorge De La Rosa, who’s 0-3 despite a 3.16 ERA in seven starts. But the Tigers are likely to miss De La Rosa, because his next start is slated to be just before the Rockies hit town.

Two other pitchers on the Rockies’ roster are of interest to Tigers fans.

Reliever Jason Grilli, ex-Tiger, has a 2.57 ERA in 14 innings.

The Rockies’ closer is Huston Street, and the last time we saw Huston (it seems), he was surrendering that walk-off home run to Magglio Ordonez that won the 2006 pennant for the Tigers.

Offensively, the Rockies are led by outfielder Brad Hawpe, who has an amazing 32 RBI in 109 AB. Plus, he’s hitting .358 with an OPS (on base pct. plus slugging) of 1.067.

Before the Rockies, the Tigers must deal with the Texas Rangers. And these aren’t the Rangers that the Tigers swept in Detroit during opening week.

They’ve won seven in a row and lead the West by 4-1/2 games.

Talk about offense!

The Rangers have three players in double digits in homers (Ian Kinsler, Hank Blalock, and Chris Davis). And Davis is only 23 years old.

Kinsler’s having an MVP-type year, and 3B Michael Young is back to his old tricks, hitting at a .351 clip.

Starter Kevin Millwood was cruising along in his start in Detroit last month, then manager Ron Washington inexplicably pulled him from the game after six innings. The Tigers then roughed up the Rangers’ bullpen and won the game.

Millwood is 4-3 with a 2.93 ERA and the Tigers will see him again this week.

The Rangers have been another team whose offense is typically brighter than their pitching. But this year, Millwood is joined by Vicente Padilla and Matt Harrison to form a decent top three in the rotation.

Under the microscope

We must go back to Galarraga.

Jeremy Bonderman is getting closer and closer to returning to the team after nearly one year removed from his last big league start due to surgery.

The question begs: which pitcher will lose his spot in the rotation when Bondy returns?

It just might be Galarraga.

If Willis hangs in there and doesn’t go sideways, I’m sure the Tigers would like to keep him starting, since he’s the Tigers’ only lefty in the rotation.

Now you can see why Armando is under the scope at MMM this week.

Galarraga’s spot comes up next on Saturday against Colorado.

We’ll see if he’s on the mound when it happens.

That’s all for this week’s MMM. Join me every Monday!

Blackhawks’ Cup-less Streak Pretty Much Par In Chicago

“One day, in the not-too-distant future, Chicago hockey fans won’t have their skin crawl or their blood curdle whenever someone mentions the year 1961.”

They don’t win Stanley Cups in Chicago. Not lately, at least—if your definition of “lately” can be broadened to include most of the past five decades.

In Chicago, the Stanley Cup is something everyone else wins. The only time it passes through town is if Chris Chelios brings it home with him as a member of the Red Wings, to show off.

Bobby Hull led the last Blackhawks team to the Cup, and when he did, Bobby had hair—real hair. Son Brett, who’s into his fourth year of retirement, wasn’t even born yet.

But don’t get too cocky, Red Wings fans. Don’t get too smug in your little Hockeytown.

You’ve been there. You’ve been over 40 years into a Cup-less drought, so wipe those smirks off your faces.

The number 61 has some magic to it, in the world of sports.

61, as in the number of home runs Roger Maris hit, breaking Babe Ruth’s single season record. Done in 1961.

John F. Kennedy was three months into his presidency when the Blackhawks last won hockey’s Holy Grail—in ’61.

It wasn’t all that long ago when the year 1955 had a ghoulish, infamous meaning for Red Wings fans. And players.

1955—the last Stanley Cup won in Detroit. By Gordie Howe and company.

A young Gordie Howe, no less.

Howe was 69 years old when the Red Wings finally broke through in 1997, some 42 years after Gordie, Ted Lindsay, Terry Sawchuk, Johnny Wilson, and the gang skated the Cup into the dressing room.

There was no pomp and circumstance in those days, for winning the Stanley Cup.

“They brought a table out to center ice, put the Cup on it, and [NHL President] Clarence Campbell would hand it to the captain,” Lindsay told me a few years ago. “Then you skated it into the dressing room, and Mr. Adams expected you to do it again the next year.”

That would be Jack Adams, the chubby, bulbous-nosed tyrant who ran the Red Wings, first as coach, then as general manager.

Eventually, Adams would trade Lindsay, as punishment for daring to try to organize a players union.

That Red Wings Cup in 1955 gave birth to a tradition, thanks to captain Teddy Lindsay.

“I just thought that the fans deserved a look at the Cup before we took it into the dressing room,” Lindsay explained to me. “So, on a whim more or less, I took it and started to skate around the ice with it, showing it to the fans.

“I did it before Mr. Adams, or anyone else, could stop me,” Lindsay added with that famous scarred, crooked grin of his.

So the next time you see a team captain parade the Stanley Cup around the rink, held high over his head, you can thank Ted Lindsay.

Bobby Hull no doubt took a turn around the ice with the Cup in 1961.

Fewer and fewer people are remaining alive who can remember it.

In professional, team sports, 48 years without a championship is both incomprehensible and unacceptable. And demoralizing.

When the Red Wings were being dumped out of the 1996 conference finals in Colorado, the fans in Denver taunted the visitors from Detroit. It didn’t take much.

All they had to do was hold up poster board with the year “1955” painted onto it, blood red. And several of them did.

It was all that needed to be said.

1955!

The ’97 team put an end to all that nonsense, and in doing so, one Original Six team became the NHL’s longest-running slapstick act.

The Chicago Blackhawks, coming to a hockey rink near you!

Five of the Original Six brethren have Stanley Cups won since 1961.

Detroit. Montreal. Boston. Toronto. Even the stinking New York Rangers, who went 54 years (1940-94) between Cups.

The Blackhawks are the cheese that stands alone. A big, rotting gob of Limburger.

The Red Wings are everything the Blackhawks, and every other NHL franchise for that matter, would like to be.

This season, the Blackhawks, led by young, spectacular talent like Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, gave the Red Wings a run for their money for Central Division supremacy—for about half a season.

Still, it was half a season longer than the Blackhawks can usually manage.

So it will be Detroit-Chicago for the right to play in the Cup Finals.

Motor vs. Windy. Depression vs. Recession. Coney dogs vs. Deep dish pizza.

Feast vs. Famine.

Chicago sports, once you get past Michael Jordan, isn’t exactly awash with success.

The White Sox stumbled upon a World Series title in 2005, the team’s first in over 80 years.

The Cubs? 101 years and counting.

Makes the Blackhawks’ 1961 Stanley Cup look like a dynasty.

The Bears? No championships since 1985—the last one before that, in 1963.

And that’s pretty much it.

But not for much longer.

This year’s Blackhawks, with Kane and Toews and company, have the makings of a Cup-winning outfit.

Someday, soon.

But not today.

The Red Wings had the Blackhawks nipping at their heels around the holidays. Looming was a home-and-home set—December 30 and New Year’s Day. First in Detroit, then in Chicago. For the Winter Classic at Wrigley Field.

The Red Wings enjoy little challenges like that during the regular season. Keeps them interested.

In Detroit, the Red Wings hogtied the ‘Hawks, 4-0. Two days later, playing outside in the snow at Wrigley, the Red Wings beat them again, 6-4.

The Blackhawks weren’t really heard from again, when it came to who might win the division.

It’ll be more of the same in the conference finals. The Red Wings, scared to death by the Anaheim Ducks, are duly awakened after their first round lullaby with the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Much will be made of this matchup, because of its Original Six roots. The league office likely needs drool cups.

But it will be much ado about nothing.

The Blackhawks aren’t ready yet to topple the Red Wings. Their time isn’t here, yet.

But it’s coming.

One day, in the not-too-distant future, Chicago hockey fans won’t have their skin crawl or their blood curdle whenever someone mentions the year 1961.

When Bobby Hull had hair.

Wings Get Past Ducks In Ugliest Of Ways (But It’s The Playoffs, Remember?)

“History will show, me thinks, that this series will go down as one of the very best and most thrilling that the Red Wings have ever participated in.”

 

Thomas Edison ought to be proud.

It was Edison, the inventor, who famously opined, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

Ole Tom would have loved the Red Wings’ series-winning goal Thursday night at Joe Louis Arena.

It was a typical playoff tally. Devoid of artistry, full of ugly.

Dan Cleary’s goal with exactly three minutes left in the third period wouldn’t make the highlight reel of a beer league team’s end-of-the-year video.

But it was beautiful to the Red Wings, who now move on to face the Chicago Blackhawks in a Western Conference Finals series that can’t possibly be any more taxing than what the Wings and Anaheim Ducks just went through.

The series-winning goal, though, might have been drawn up on a playoff chalkboard.

Flick the puck to the net. Charge net. Bull your way in and keep jamming your stick where you think the puck might be. Repeat until red light goes on.

“It was the biggest goal of my career,” Cleary said afterward.

So far.

The Red Wings are now rid of these Ducks, who seemed to made up of one line and two defensemen. Yet those five players managed to take the defending champions to the brink of disaster.

Oh, and a goalie. The Ducks did have that. And a good one.

Speaking of goalies, where are all the Chris Osgood bashers this morning?

Anyone? Anyone?

Osgood won the game for the Red Wings. That’s all. Won the series for them, too, in the process.

Ozzie, yet again, came up big when the stakes were the highest.

Early in the game, he charged from the net, stacked his pads, and committed hockey robbery on Jim Wisniewski, who slammed his stick against the glass as a result, when he thought he’d be raising said stick in triumph for giving the Ducks that precious 1-0 playoff game lead.

Later in the period, Osgood validated the work of his three defenders during a 5-on-3 disadvantage and made sure all their hard work didn’t go for naught. He made two or three terrific saves while the Ducks had 70 seconds of a two-man advantage.

None of the blame for the three goals that the Ducks scored could be laid at Osgood’s skates.

He did what is required from a Red Wings goalie: just make the saves when we need them to be made, OK?

That’s what Grant Fuhr did, by the way, playing for those turbo-charged Oilers teams in Edmonton, back in the day.

Ole Grant would surrender four, even five goals, but if the Oilers needed one stopped, Fuhr stopped it.

To the tune of three Stanley Cups.

Which is how many Ozzie has won, by the way–two as a starter.

History will show, me thinks, that this series will go down as one of the very best and most thrilling that the Red Wings have ever participated in.

That the Ducks were able to push the Red Wings to the 57th minute of Game Seven is a testament to their outrageously productive line of Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, and Bobby Ryan.

Those three, I swear, played 45 minutes last night. Maybe more.

If they ever left the ice, it was while I was blinking.

Yet the Red Wings are supposed to wear such teams down, with their depth and their grind-it-out style of play, right?

Well, they did. It just took them six games, some overtimes, and 57 minutes of the seventh game to do it, that’s all.

Right!

But, they did it.

So now it’s on to the Final Four, for the third straight year and eighth time in 14 years.

Ahh, so THAT’S why they call it Hockeytown, a nickname that I, as a Detroiter, have long had a problem with.

What must they say in Montreal, with their 20-plus Stanley Cups?

Detroit’s borrowing the self-proclaimed title. But that’s OK.

All is forgiven today.

It’s hard to imagine the much younger, much more playoff-inexperienced Blackhawks giving the Red Wings anywhere near as difficult of a series as the Ducks did.

I may not be allowed back into the Windy City for saying this, but I don’t see this anticipated Original Six foray going any longer than five games.

So sue me.

That said, the Red Wings better be ready to go on Sunday. Maybe a series like this tussle with Anaheim will be of benefit to the Red Wings going forward.

They needed a test after their four-game laugher with Columbus.

There was hardly anything to laugh about during this ordeal with the Ducks.

The overtime loss, yet another at home, in Game Two.

A quick whistle to rob them of a tying goal at the end of Game Three.

A stinker of a Game Six, when the Wings skated in muck all night.

Not funny at all.

But they’re gone now, these pesky Ducks. Maybe the best No. 8 seed to show up for the playoffs in quite some time. Maybe ever.

The Wings playing the Blackhawks after the Ducks is backwards.

It’s like the Rolling Stones opening for a garage band.

Told you I wouldn’t be allowed into Chicago.

The Knee Jerks: Our Swan Song re: The Text Version

Hey!! It’s the FINAL webisode of “The Knee Jerks”, my weekly IM chat with Big Al of The Wayne Fontes Experience.

Why is it the final one?

Why, because we’re taking our act to Blog Talk Radio, that’s why!

We’ve already had two broadcasts, and we intend to continue–every Monday night at 11 p.m. ET LIVE. Of course, all shows are available for download at your convenience, too.

Join us every Monday night!

For our last webisode, it’s a slimmed down version.

We preview tonight’s Game Seven at JLA, discuss the Tigers and a certain “physical” umpire, and the usual suspects show up: Word Association and Jerk of the Week.

Enjoy, and remember:
Listen to The Knee Jerks on Blog Talk Radio

**********************************

Eno: Well, folks, welcome to the swan song of “The Knee Jerks: WTF? With Eno & Al.” I’m Eno, aka Mr. Journalist, and he’s Big Al, aka Mr. Big Shot/Mr. Blogger. Al, it’s the swan song because of our WILDLY successful decision to move this chat to Blog Talk Radio every Monday night at 11 p.m. ET LIVE.

Big Al: WILDLY? Really? Cool! But yes, sadly this will be the final text chat as we jump in, headfirst, into pod casting. What feedback we’ve been getting on the pod cast is positive, so the time is right, and we’re lacking the time, to do both. We’re going to try and keep the chat swan song short and sweet.

Eno: And with that, let’s start with the only place TO start—tonight’s Game Seven at Joe Louis Arena. I don’t know about you, but those weren’t the series-closing Red Wings we all know and love in Game Six. They were just sluggish enough to open the door for the Ducks. Very un-Red Wings-like. Cause for concern, or were they simply due for a clunker in that situation?

Big Al: Concerned? Some. But let’s not forget the Ducks are a very good team, not your usual No. 8 seed. I’m not surprised they held serve at home. I do think the Wings will do the same on their home ice at The Joe. There’s too much at stake for them to go into a two period-long funk. I’m hoping the Ducks’ thuggishness at the end of Game Six (and yes, despite what they are saying in Anaheim, it was all Ducks causing the end of game mayhem, the penalty minutes bear it out: Anaheim 36 to Detroit’s 10) fires up the Red Wings. Especially Pavel Datsyuk, who was on the receiving end of a Scott Neidermayer cheap shot elbow. (Uh, what does it take for the NHL’s Colin Campbell to give out suspensions anymore? Someone have to die? Even then, it would only be a one-gamer…) Red Wings will come out flying tonight.

Eno: I agree. I predicted 6-2, Detroit. Back to Datsyuk. He missed that golden opportunity in the waning seconds of Game Six to tie the game. No telling what kind of point-scoring outburst that goal would have unleashed. Can the Wings win much more without more Datsyuk production?

Big Al: No. Even if Datsyuk doesn’t score, he needs to produce points, in setting up Henrik Zetterberg and Tomas Holmstrom. [Pavel]’s an MVP candidate. MVP candidates need to be your best players, and Datsyuk hasn’t been in this series. (The best overall Wing has been the scoring machine named Johan Franzen) The thing with Datsyuk is when he’s slumping, rather than continuing to shoot, he gets overly fancy with the puck, passing up good shot opportunities in attempting to get great opportunities, often ending up with no opportunity. He needs to be effective tonight, and not get caught up in all the extra-curriculars. It’s fun to watch Datsyuk drop the gloves, but that’s not what the Wings want or need from him.

Eno: True that. Game Sevens, as you know, are highly unpredictable. Who could have foreseen the Red Wings’ 7-0 demolition of Colorado in 2002? You just never know. But something in my bones tells me the Red Wings will bust loose and end the Ducks’ quacking for good.

Big Al: Moving on, what’s your take on the brouhaha in Wednesday night’s Tigers-Twins game? Jim Leyland went NUCLEAR on home plate umpire Paul Schriber for pushing Magglio Ordonez toward the Tigers’ dugout after Maggs gently disputed a called third strike. Leyland was on top of Schriber mere seconds after he touched Ordonez, and let loose with both barrels. Personally, I think the ump crossed a long known line. It’s an automatic suspension if a player touches an ump; you have to believe the umps should have to toe the same line, right?

Eno: Oh my goodness, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! Good for Leyland for protecting his player. He went nuclear justifiably! Maggs wasn’t even arguing very strenuously, or for very long. What Schriber was thinking, I don’t know. He damn well better be disciplined. This isn’t a high school game. At first I thought the ump simply placed his hand on Maggs’ back as if to say, “That’s OK”, but then I noticed that there was an attempt to push Maggs toward the dugout. I have NEVER seen that in my 40 years of watching big league baseball. Never.

Big Al: Same here, I was flabbergasted. If there isn’t some sort of suspension for Schriber, I believe the all-powerful Player Association will have something to say….and it won’t be good. But kudos to Leyland. His actions are totally defensible. As for the game, I’d rather not talk about it. Though for everyone wondering why Brandon Lyon was sent out for a third inning (his night ending on Tiger killer Joe Crede’s game-winning grand slam), Nate Robertson was placed on the 15 day DL Thursday morning with a back strain.

Eno: Hmmm….well, I gotta cut Lyon some slack. He threw about 70 pitches, which is wayyy more than he’s used to. I loved the balk call in the top of the inning, though. Curtis Granderson clearly induced it. I’m amazed at how umps spot balks, no matter how subtle. OK, anything else before we move on to WordAss?

Big Al: For what it’s worth, that ugly Baggiedome, where the Twins play, can’t be imploded soon enough. The game played there is not really baseball, and should be called the Hubert H. Humphrey Horrordome! That place has nothing but bad, bad, bad memories for Tigers fans. GOOD RIDDANCE.

Big Al: Now I’m ready for WORDASS…

WORD ASSOCIATION

Eno: OK, let’s start with this one….the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Big Al: The NHL’s Golden Children. You know they are hoping their Chosen One, Sidney Crosby, gets back to the Stanley Cup finals. He’s a Don Cherry approved Canadian boy, you know. Gary Bettman is just dying to push the Penguins. Unlike the Euro-dominated Red Wings. Screw it, don’t get me going on the FUBAR’ed NHL. It’s not worth it.

Eno: Next, back to Magglio Ordonez.

Big Al: He’s no longer worth $18 million, which is what he’ll be paid if the Tigers continue to play him full time. But even if they keep him under the salary-guaranteeing at bat threshold (which is around 450 ABs), allowing the Tigers to buy out his deal, there’s no one in the pipeline to replace him. The Tigers have to ride it out with Ordonez.

Eno: Two more: I say the Lions will play a meaningful Thanksgiving Day game in 2009 and you say….

Big Al: If you are watching a meaningful Lions game on Thanksgiving, it’s because your turkey was stuffed with hallucinatory drugs.

Eno: OK!! Finally, I ask you who comes out of the Eastern Conference in the Stanley Cup playoffs and you say…..

Big Al: The Penguins, as Bettman has deemed so. It shall be written, it shall be done…’

Big Al: Ready for a few, Eno-sabi?

Eno: Go for it!

Big Al: The Tigers’ highly paid, anxiety ridden starting pitcher, whose start last night was the beginning of his final chance of sticking long term with the Tigers, Dontrelle Willis.

Eno: He made it through that first start and it wasn’t a disaster. It’s like a recovering alcoholic: one start at a time, brother.

Big Al: Baby steps for the D-Train. Next, the suspended for PEDs Dodger, Manny Ramirez.

Eno: There’s a REALLY good joke in there somewhere, but I’ll be darned if I’ve found it yet!

Big Al: Just Manny being Manny, I guess. Nothing he does surprises me, though like any slugger who thrived earlier in this decade, his entire career is now under suspicion. One more before we get to our final (in print) Jerk of the Week, the Twins’ Joe Crede.

Eno: Not only does this Tiger killer stay in the AL after leaving the White Sox, he stays in the freaking division!! I can’t wait for his retirement.

Big Al: You and me both, Eno. I’m sick of Crede beating the Tigers. Ready to name your JotW?

JERK OF THE WEEK

Eno: My, my….let’s see….I think I’ll go with Paul Schriber, the aforementioned umpire. Heck, how about Jerk of the Baseball Season? I can’t wait to see what happens in the aftermath. The video evidence is damning. I saw him mouth to Leyland, “I didn’t push him.” Bull—-

Big Al: Well said. My JotW is the NHL’s Director of Hockey Operations, and the point man for on-ice incidents, Colin Campbell. The man is an IDIOT. Maybe insane as well. Has there ever been a league with a more inconsistent policy in regard to on-field/court/ice actions than the NHL? Neidermayer’s flying elbow to the side of Datsyuk’s head was a reprehensible, suspendable move. The NHL’s (re: Campbell’s) response? There was no response. It’s not just the Wings who have a beef, it’s every team in the league! I have no idea where the line in the ice is set in regard to in-game violence anymore, and neither do the players. Someone is going to get killed. Seriously.

Eno: Yeah, you just can’t figure the NHL out anymore—in every area. OK, my friend, thus ends our seven-month-plus run doing “The Knee Jerks” chat. Now it’s all on the radio show to take it from here!

Big Al: Indeed. We’ll be on Blog Talk Radio every Monday night at 11 PM, bringing the Jerkosity! Jerkitude? Jerkism?

Eno: All of the above!! So remember to tune in every Monday night LIVE if you’d like to call in and talk to us, or you can always download the broadcast at your convenience. Every Tuesday we’ll post highlights from the broadcast, to give you a taste of what you missed! Thanks so much for all these IM chats, Big Al! Looking forward to talking with you Monday night.

Big Al: See you then, Sir Eno. Book-em, Dano! Murder one…Uh…I mean, Aloha!

Eno: Ciao, Italy!!

Dontrelle Willis Begins Exorcising His Demons Tonight

“You’re excused if you hold your breath tonight while watching the game on the tube. It’s OK to wring your hands and even say a little prayer.”

 

Tonight a young man will step onto the mound at the Metrodome in Minneapolis and it’ll be amazing if he doesn’t sink into the dirt from the weight on his shoulders.

Dontrelle Willis isn’t just starting a baseball game tonight.

He’s trying to exorcise demons.

Willis hasn’t won a big league game since 2007. But it’s not just that he hasn’t won.

It’s how he hasn’t won.

To say simply that Willis has gone winless in nearly two years is to say that the Titanic didn’t reach its destination, and leaving it at that.

Willis’s career is at stake. Right now. It starts tonight, in Minnesota.

It’ll soon be known whether Willis has recovered sufficiently from his anxiety disorder and is on the road to being Dontrelle Willis again, or is another of baseball’s cautionary tales.

Every pitch that misses the strike zone, every batter who trots to first base after taking ball four, will come attached with excess baggage.

It’s hard to pitch when your life depends on it.

And Willis’s baseball life depends on it.

Last year, his first in Detroit, Willis lost it. Completely.

His numbers were gruesome (24 IP, 35 walks, 9.38 ERA, 0-2 record). And it was all between the ears.

Steve Blass Syndrome, named after the beleaguered and practically tragic figure Blass, who infamously lost it in 1973 with the Pirates, just two years removed from being a World Series hero.

Willis had it, many folks said. Or something eerily similar to it.

I recall a lefty stopper named Kevin Saucier. He owned Detroit in 1981, nicknamed “Hot Sauce.” He was the bullpen version of Mark “The Bird” Fidrych: after every game saved, Hot Sauce would leap around the field, pounding his glove, embracing his teammates as they ran off the field.

Then, in 1982, Saucier retired. In the middle of the season.

“I’m afraid I’m going to kill someone out there,” Hot Sauce said, fearing he was losing control–both on the mound and in his head.

The Tigers have played it straight with Willis. They’ve nurtured him, supported him, taken him through all the proper channels for someone in his situation.

He just completed a minor league rehab assignment and threw the ball fairly well, by all accounts.

Now, it’s to the point where further minor league starts are deemed unnecessary.

Dontrelle Willis can only slay his dragons, can only exorcise the demons, by proving that he can throw strikes and retire hitters from a big league mound.

With all due respect to the AAA hitters he’s been facing while performing for the Toledo Mud Hens.

This might be one of the most anticipated starts by a Tigers pitcher since Fidrych’s much-ballyhooed return from his knee injury in May 1977.

You’re excused if you hold your breath tonight while watching the game on the tube. It’s OK to wring your hands and even say a little prayer.

This isn’t about the Tigers beating the Twins tonight. Screw that.

This is about whether a 27-year-old pitcher will continue to be a pitcher, or should be looking into life after baseball.

And Twins fans, by the way, ought to be pulling for Willis, too. Shame on them if they put winning this game ahead of his mental well-being.

For the record, Willis says he’s ready. Says whatever was messing with his head is all gone.

He’s all better now. So he says.

If he can get out of the fifth inning with minimal damage, then the Tigers and everyone who calls themselves a fan of the team ought to be ecstatic with that.

If he gets lit up, walks a ton of batters and is driven to the showers before the third inning, it’s not good. Not good at all.

Dontrelle Willis’s mental comeback isn’t necessarily riding on this one start in Minnesota tonight.

It’ll just feel like it.

For us, and for him.

God bless him.

Red Wings In Seventh Hell By Their Own Making

“It was as if coach Mike Babcock rousted them from their beds in the middle of a dead sleep and ordered them to suit up and hit the ice in 30 minutes.”

And for their next trick, the Detroit Red Wings shall thrill you by winning their conference semi-finals series against the Anaheim Ducks with one Pavel Datsyuk tied behind their backs!

With one deadeye shot, with one well-placed snapper, the Red Wings’ slippery superstar would have jammed a sweat sock into the mouths of all those asking, “What’s wrong with Pavel Datsyuk?”

It was in the waning seconds–less than three of them remained–of the third period, and the Ducks inexplicably coughed the puck up.

Marian Hossa found himself with it, and nudged a pass over to Datsyuk, planted between the circles, perhaps 15, 20 feet from the net.

A game-tying goal, right there, in that situation, for that guy, might have been the lynchpin to not only win the game and the series, but maybe the whole darn Stanley Cup.

Who knows what kind of a point-scoring tear by Datsyuk would have been unleashed had he found the twine with just a couple ticks of the clock left, sending Game Six into overtime.

Who knows?

Instead, we’ll read more about Pavel, and the words associated with his name will be like this.

Snakebitten.

Can’t get off the schneide.

Where is he?

No puck luck.

Actually, you could use those words to describe the Red Wings and their ultimately futile effort last night, squaring their series with the still-quacking Ducks at three games apiece.

But the Red Wings were snakebitten, couldn’t get off the schneide, non-existent, and had no puck luck because they didn’t play well enough to right all those wrongs.

This was not your typical Red Wings game in a closeout situation.

You kept waiting for them to flick that switch and grab control, quieting an already nervous crowd and goading the volatile Ducks into bad penalties which would simply lead to more damage on the scoreboard.

Anyone who’s followed the Red Wings over the past 11 years, since the 1997 Stanley Cup, knows that when the team sniffs the end of a series, especially on the road, then it’s pretty much olly-olly oxen free.

The end usually comes for the underdog home team with definity. By the final buzzer, the Red Wings are surrounding their goalie in triumph, while the game but outclassed opponents are wheezing from having their playoff hockey life choked out of them.

Not last night. Not even close.

The Ducks didn’t do much offensively themselves, but turns out they didn’t need to, for the Red Wings played just enough below their capabilities to shoot themselves in the skates.

It was as if coach Mike Babcock rousted them from their beds in the middle of a dead sleep and ordered them to suit up and hit the ice in 30 minutes.

Still, it was a “one-shot game”, as they say, after Johan Franzen the Playoff Scoring Mule netted another, his 21st in his last 26 playoff games, with a couple minutes and some change left.

The crowd at the Honda Center got nervous again.

But the Red Wings, even with the goalie pulled and six skaters, still didn’t really get enough of those “oh my goodness”-type scoring chances in the closing 90 seconds.

Except the one at they very end, off the turnover. The one that, had Datsyuk buried it, might have been the one we’d be talking about all summer as the Stanley Cup got passed from one Red Wing to another in their respective hometowns.

“Remember when Datsyuk ended that scoring slump with that uber-clutch goal in Anaheim in Game Six? The one that led to the series clincher in OT?”

Which would be followed by how the Red Wings used that goal, as they’ve used so many other big goals in the past, to storm their way past the Blackhawks and through whatever paper champion the Eastern Conference has to offer.

If only.

That’s OK; it says here that the Red Wings win Game Seven, and it may even be bordering on the laugher variety.

There’s no way, no how, that the Ducks go into Detroit on Thursday and come out with a Game Seven win. No way.

You’re going to beat this veteran, battle-tested Stanley Cup champion in its own building in a Game Seven?

Please.

The Red Wings have done this to themselves, though. That they have to suit up for a seventh game instead of planning on how to beat the Blackhawks in the conference finals is all their own doing.

The Red Wings, shockingly, didn’t totally show up for Game Six. Quite out of character.

So now we have to hear more about Datsyuk, and where IS he, anyway?

The Wings took a 3-2 series lead sans No. 2 defenseman and lovely Nick Lidstrom assistant Brian Rafalski.

Can they win it with Datsyuk tied behind their backs?

Voila!!

Yes.

The Knee Jerks On The Air! Show #2

Show #2 is in the books.

“The Knee Jerks: WTF? With Eno & Al” — the new online radio version, is available for download.

Every Monday night at 11 p.m. ET LIVE, I talk sports with Big Al of The Wayne Fontes Experience.

In case you missed it last night, here are some highlights:

On Chuck Daly:

Big Al: “Chuck Daly, in a way, ruined the NBA…he caused rules changes.”

Eno: “Daly had all the credentials to be a Pistons coach in 1983, which were none!”

Eno: “He was the first NBA coach who really put it out there that this is a player’s league.”

Big Al: “He wasn’t a great Xs and Os guy, like Larry Brown, but he could manage people.”

Eno: “I remember when Chuck replaced Bill Laimbeer in the 1990 Finals with William Bedford for a few minutes in Game Three. I thought, ‘Wow, what a message.’”

Big Al: “His death hit me hard.”

On the Red Wings-Ducks:

Big Al: “If the Red Wings keep this up, the Ducks don’t have a chance.”

Eno: “Brian Rafalski hasn’t played a minute in this series, and Kris Draper hasn’t played a minute in the playoffs, yet here they are, on the verge of going back to the conference finals.”

Big Al: (on the recall of Darren McCarty) “I don’t think he deserves to be on a playoff roster.”

Eno: (on McCarty) “The Wings don’t want anything weird to happen, and if Darren’s in there, maybe something weird won’t happen.”

On the Tigers:

Eno: (on Dontrelle Willis’s return) “We don’t know how that’s going to go. It could either go sideways again or be a great story.”

Big Al: (on roster moves) “I think Nate Robertson might be in trouble. He never pitches. He’s a $7-plus million mop-up man.”

To make it even easier, here’s last night’s broadcast. (Windows Media Player will open and start playing the show)

The Knee Jerks: LIVE Tonight On Blog Talk Radio!!

Programming note: “The Knee Jerks”, my weekly radio broadcast (soon to be a former blog chat) with Big Al of The Wayne Fontes Experience, will go LIVE at 11 p.m. ET tonight.

Click here for more details, including download info and how to call in live.

Hope to have you along!

Third (At Least) Choice Daly Proved To Be The Right One, After All

“So this was the guy who was going to lead the Pistons to championship glory?, we asked in 1983.”

 

 

Chuck Daly wasn’t even sloppy seconds. He was thirds–whatever the unflattering prefix to that is.

He may even have been, frankly, fourths or lower.

They say that sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make.

I submit that, likewise, sometimes the best hires are the ones you don’t make.

Daly, who passed away Saturday from cancer at age 78, wasn’t necessarily on the Pistons’ radar back in 1983.

GM Jack McCloskey had just fired Scotty Robertson, a ziggy that many of us thought was terribly unfair. Scotty had taken the remnants of Dickie Vitale’s 16-66 disaster and, within two years, coached it to a very respectable 39-43.

But the team wasn’t playing defense the way McCloskey preferred.

So Jack fired Robertson and went in search of a new coach.

The coaching search when it came to the Pistons in those days was always fraught with danger. And laughs.

This was a team that, after all, had once made a 24-year-old a player/coach, and who tabbed its radio announcer to be the new GM. A team that burned through coaches like a teenager and his allowance.

But Jack fired Robertson, and in his mind it was for the good of the team’s future. The Pistons had two young stars–Isiah Thomas and Kelly Tripucka–and they needed the right man to mold them and to use the supporting players McCloskey would provide to play their roles to the “t”.

Two men, at least, turned McCloskey down when approached to coach the Pistons.

Dr. Jack Ramsay, with a wealth of experience under his belt, politely declined McCloskey’s overture.

Next, McCloskey turned to old co-worker Jack McKinney, former Lakers and Pacers coach.

McKinney said no, as well.

Three Jacks in the mix, and still the Pistons were playing with a losing hand.

There was another coach, rumored. Through the grapevine it was reported that he, too, turned the Pistons job down.

Enter Chuck Daly, former Ivy Leaguer and NBA assistant, then beleaguered interim head coach and part-time radio analyst.

Actually, Daly’s background seemed to fit perfectly into the Pistons’ twisted jigsaw puzzle of former coaches. He was unknown, with a college background somewhere. He had been a radio guy. His NBA coaching record with Cleveland was 9-32.

Perfect!!

So this was the guy who was going to lead the Pistons to championship glory?, we asked in 1983.

Well, yeah–after several others told the Pistons no.

It’s very ironic that in the same week, two previously unknown, unwanted men connected to the Pistons were in the news.

First there was former player Dave Bing, elected to be the new mayor of Detroit. Bing, in 1966, was unwanted from Syracuse by a fan base hoping for U-M star Cazzie Russell. But the Pistons lost a coin flip and were “stuck” with Bing.

Then Daly, who passed away on Saturday. I can assure you, there weren’t a lot of season ticket sales generated by his hiring. Let’s just put it that way.

Now Bing is mayor and Daly has a banner hanging from the Palace.

Lovely.

Chuck Daly wasn’t happy unless he was worried about something. They didn’t call him the Prince of Pessimism for nothing.

But nobody worried better, and happier, on the Pistons’ sidelines than Daly.

Maybe nobody ever in the NBA, now that I think about it.

Red Wings Forced To Play An Unnecessary Game Six

“The Ducks are asking Hiller to win the series. The Red Wings are only asking Osgood to stay interested.”

 

Remind me how this was ever a series, again?

How did we get to this point–the Red Wings only up 3-2 in this semi-finals romp with the Anaheim Ducks?

Why is this not over with by now?

Yet there the series sits, the Red Wings forced to trudge all the away across the damn country, to put the Ducks out of their misery when it should all have been taken care of by now.

The Red Wings keep assailing the Ducks from every which way, wearing out the Anaheim side of the ice so much that they might as well Zamboni it every five minutes or so.

At least that way the Ducks could catch their breath.

It’s not just the very conspicuous discrepancy in shots on goal, either. That’s just the tip of the iceberg–no pun intended.

The Red Wings seem to only let the Ducks have the puck when they’re tired of playing with it, which isn’t very often. No wonder the Ducks can’t get shots on net; they’re too tired to do anything with the puck once they’re lucky enough to find themselves in possession of it.

Yes, the Ducks had some marvelous scoring chances in Sunday’s Game Five, which had the proper final score of 4-1–even though it didn’t get proper until the waning minutes.

Yes, Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood had to occasionally flip the mask down, grab his stick, put on his catching mitt and make a save Sunday. And some good ones.

But the other goalie, Anaheim’s Jonas Hiller, is so keeping his teammates from being run out of the building that they ought to kiss his skates for being within 2-1 with four minutes to play on Sunday.

The Ducks are asking Hiller to win the series. The Red Wings are only asking Osgood to stay interested.

I wrote after Game Four’s shellacking, in which Hiller was rescued from further bombarding by coach Randy Carlyle, that it was now time for the Ducks to play some hockey and stop putting all their Duck eggs in the Hiller basket.

Yet they played, as defenseman Jim Wisniewski said, like it was “Game 38″–of the regular season.

It’s hard to tell if the Red Wings are just this good (they are) or if the Ducks called in all their markers against the San Jose Sharks in Round One (they did). So I guess it’s both.

Not a good combo for Anaheim.

The series forges ahead, into southern California. For a Game Six that probably shouldn’t be necessary, thanks to some whistle hijinks at the end of Game Three. A game the Red Wings likely would have won in overtime.

This is a 4-1 series masquerading poorly as a 3-2 one.

But those are the NHL playoffs for you.

Monday Morning Manager

My weekly take on the Tigers.

Week of 5/4-5/10: 4-2

This week: 5/12-14: at Min; 5/15-17: OAK

Goat of the Week

I hate to do it to catcher Gerald Laird, but I’m going to place the MMM Goat Tag on him for last week. Actually, with him in a 1-for-32 slump, he could be two weeks’ worth of Goat.

But the reason I hate to do it to Mr. Laird is that he’s still backstopping well and calling good games. It’s just that he’s been a disaster at the plate. Then again, my being pleased at his acquisition had everything to do with defense and little to do with offense. Plus, no one expected him to remain in the rarified air of .300+, as he was in the opening few weeks.

That said, someone has to be Goat of the Week at MMM, and for last week it’s Gerlad Laird.

Sorry, Gerry.

Hero of the Week

If you’re a Tigers pitcher, especially a starter, then you’re likely a Hero of the Week for last week.

My, how the Tigers pitched, especially in Cleveland over the weekend.

Justin Verlander repeated his Hero performance from last week’s MMM by twirling a gem on Friday night. Edwin Jackson followed with more mastery on Saturday. And rookie, 20-year-old fuzz-faced Rick Porcello was solid as a rock on Sunday.

Armando Galarraga had a bad first inning in Chicago on Thursday, but recovered. It’s just hard to make any headway when the other guy is flirting with a perfect game, as Mark Buehrle was.

The bullpen was good, too–despite a couple rocky ninth innings from Fernando Rodney.

But the official Heroes are the Tigers starters.

Quick scouting reports: Twins, A’s

The Tigers’ sweep in Cleveland was their first since 2006, and there weren’t too many before that, believe me. Now the Tigers go into Minnesota with that damned Metrodome, which I’ve frequently railed against.

It’s no use trying to figure out what will happen in that atrocious stadium this week.

But if the Tigers keep pitching (their team ERA is in the top three in the A.L.) then good things should happen.

As for the Twins, catcher Joe Mauer is still on a tear, batting .485 since returning from injury. Justin Morneau is at .322 with eight home runs. But the Twinkies are 15-18, and as usual, it revolves around pitching.

The starters’ ERAs are in the fives and sixes. The bullpen has been volatile. Only closer Joe Nathan (five saves, 1.64 ERA) has been consistently good.

The Oakland A’s are scuffling along even worser.

Yeah, I said worser. Deal with it.

The A’s are 11-18, and have lost seven of their last ten.

In Oakland, the troubles are on the mound and at the plate.

Only one Athletic is batting over .300: catcher Kurt Suzuki.

Pitching-wise, after Dallas Braden (2.79 ERA) and 21-year-old rookie Trevor Cahill (3.82 ERA), the rotation drops off dramatically. Of course, with the limp noodles the A’s are swinging in the batter’s box, you’d need five Cy Young Award winners to keep up.

Under the microscope

We put Carlos Guillen under the one-eyed monster at MMM last week, and he went on the DL, as expected.

So the focus now turns to Magglio Ordonez, who last week was dropped to sixth in the batting order by manager Jim Leyland. The power has waned, and the batting average is mediocre. He had two hits Sunday, so we’ll see.

But the production Maggs has given the Tigers in the cleanup spot has been virtually nil.

The Tigers are 17-13, but the big guns still have to be the big guns.

That’s all for this week’s MMM. Join me every Monday!

Only Their Mothers Could Love These Guys

(Author’s note: in honor of Mother’s Day, here are five athletes—and one bonus guy—who played in Detroit and who, for one reason or another, would never have won a popularity contest—unless the only voter was mom)


One was nicknamed, appropriately, “Bad News”. Another was a convicted felon. One of them, they called “Terrible.”

Thank God for mothers.

For without mom, I don’t think the following list of former professional athletes who once played in Detroit would have had anyone to show them any love.

The criteria for this bastion of ignominy is varied. Either they were hated by their opponents, or their coaches, or the fans, or even their own teammates. Some of these guys managed to anger all of the above.

Except mom, it’s presumed.

It’s hoped.

Denny McLain, Detroit Tigers (1963-70). McLain is the last pitcher to win thirty games, and also the last one to spend time in the federal pen as a convicted felon.

Denny’s travails are too numerous to get into when there are so many other people to talk about here, but here’s a quick summary.

Suspended for carrying a loaded handgun. Left teammate Mickey Lolich and his wife at the 1969 All-Star Game, despite promising to fly them back in his plane. Dumped a bucket of water on a sportswriter. Hoodwinked some teammates into investing into a failed paint company.

(Deep breath before continuing)

Openly broke team rules so he could jet around the country and play the organ. Long suspected of having his foot stomped on by a mobster in 1967 due to some gambling debts.

(Another deep breath)

Whined and pouted his way through a season in Washington under Ted Williams. Out of baseball by age 28. Convicted of racketeering. Spent time in federal prison. Released. Convicted of embezzling pension funds from a Michigan packing plant. Spent more time in prison. Released.

(One more….)

In and out of TV and radio as a talk show host. In and out of 7-11 as a store clerk.

But always in the news, for one reason or another.

Like the song said, “There’s never been any like Denny McLain.”

Thank God.

Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, Detroit Pistons (1976-78). When the American Basketball Association folded, four remaining teams merged into the NBA. The ABA’s orphaned players were then drafted into the NBA.

The Pistons had a chance at a young, powerful center named Moses Malone.

So naturally, they picked a talented but troubled forward from the St. Louis Spirits named Marvin Barnes, despite his nickname from college: “Bad News”.

Marvin belted a teammate with a tire iron in college. He skirted team rules, both as a collegian and as a pro.

He reported late to his first training camp with the Pistons. He pouted about coming off the bench. He was caught at Metro Airport with a gun in his luggage. He would arrive late to games, if he arrived at all.

All that, and he had the nerve to ask that his nickname be changed to simply, “News.”

OK, Marvin.

And don’t they say that no news is good news?

“Terrible” Ted Lindsay, Detroit Red Wings (1944-57; 1964-65). The nickname says it all.

But if you look at Teddy today, and thank goodness he’s still with us, it’s hard not be taken by how slight of build he is. A runt, by today’s standards.

Frankly, Teddy wasn’t much more than a runt by yesterday’s standards, either.

Listed at all of 5-foot-8, Teddy was one of the most hated players of his day.

He taught Gordie Howe, no less, how to handle himself on the ice. Teddy gave Mr. Hockey pointers, including being aware of who is on the ice with you—something that served Gordie well when he famously beat the tar out of tough guy Louie Fontinato of the Rangers.

Teddy received death threats before a playoff game in Toronto, and after scoring the game-winning goal, he skated around the ice and used his stick to pretend to spray the Maple Leaf Gardens crowd with machine gun fire.

Teddy started the tradition of skating the Stanley Cup around the ice after winning it. I once asked him how and why.

“Back in those days, all they did was put the Cup on a little table on the ice. You posed for pictures and that was it,” he explained.

“So I decided that I’d give the fans a chance to see it. I took it and before anyone could stop me, I skated it around the ice with me. I wasn’t trying to start a tradition. It was just something I decided to do at the spur of the moment.”

Shucks, Teddy wasn’t so Terrible after all.

Joe Don Looney, Detroit Lions (1965). This time, the surname says it all.

Looney was a first-round draft pick of the New York Giants in 1964 after a stellar, if not strange, career at Oklahoma.

The hijinks began on campus.

Looney first enrolled at Texas in 1960, but flunked out. He then entered Texas Christian. They kicked him out. So he tried Cameron Junior College for a bit. Finally, he ended up at Oklahoma.
But Looney was kicked off the team after just three games in 1963 by coach Bud Wilkinson after Looney punched a graduate assistant.

Still, the Giants drafted Looney 12th overall.

Just a few weeks into training camp, the Giants were so fed up with Looney’s behavior that they traded him to Baltimore. The Colts had him for a year before dealing him to Detroit.

Lions coach Harry Gilmer once asked Looney to run into the huddle with a play for the quarterback.

“Coach, if you want a message sent, call Western Union,” Looney told Gilmer in a story that is absolutely not apocryphal, though it seems so, for as many times as it’s been re-told.

Looney was out of pro football by age 26.

After football, Looney converted to Hinduism and joined the Siddha Yoga movement led by Swami Muktananda. It was alleged that Looney was one of Muktananda’s “enforcers” who intimidated people into obeying him.

Joe Don Looney died on September 24, 1988 in Texas when he ran his motorcycle off the road and crashed into a fence. He was 45.

It was later determined that Looney never hit the brakes.

That should have been his epitaph.

Bill Laimbeer, Detroit Pistons (1982-93). The Pistons of the late-1980s, early-1990s were “The Bad Boys” and Laimbeer was to them what Leo Gorcey was to The Bowery Boys. On second thought, maybe Bill was more like their Al Capone. Or Charlie Manson.

It’s quite possible that there was never an NBA player more despised by opponents than Bill Laimbeer.

He flopped to the floor, drawing whistles. He whined and scowled. He fouled dirty. He smirked. He loved it when the opposing crowds would boo and jeer him.

Once, in Chicago, the team mascot drew roaring approval when he pummeled Laimbeer in effigy.

Laimbeer never committed a foul in his life, according to him. Except the ones where he tried to dismember the other guy.

Bill Laimbeer was a big, lunky white guy who could shoot from the outside, which only proved to torment the opposition even more. He couldn’t jump over a puddle, yet he averaged double digits in rebounds year after year.

Oh, and what do Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Bob Lanier, and Robert Parish all have in common?

Each of them punched Bill Laimbeer in the face during an NBA game.

Don’t bother asking them about regrets.

Ned Harkness, Detroit Red Wings (1970-73). OK, so Ned wasn’t a player, but he might have been the most-hated front office executive in Detroit sports history not named Matt Millen. Russ Thomas of the Lions is up there, too.

Ned was hired to coach the team in 1970, fresh out of college, where he led Cornell to the 1970 NCAA title.

But the players soon revolted, going so far as to submit a petition to GM Sid Abel, stating they wouldn’t play for Ned anymore.

But Ned kept his job, and it was Abel who left, quitting after he wasn’t allowed to fire Harkness.

So Ned was promoted to GM, and then the fun really began.

Ned traded players like bubblegum cards, always getting rooked in the process. He fired coach Johnny Wilson, despite Wilson leading the team to its first winning record in three years. Ned replaced Wilson with minor league coach Ted Garvin, who won two of his first eleven games before getting canned himself.

Ned even bungled that.

He wanted Alex Delvecchio to retire and coach, and Alex agreed. But Ned did it on a game day, and Alex didn’t file retirement papers on time. The NHL wouldn’t allow a still-active player to coach, so Ned begged Garvin to coach that night’s game despite having already fired him. Garvin did, but vamoosed late in the third period, disappearing into the Detroit night. Injured player Tim Ecclestone coached the last few minutes of the game.

That kind of thing is why Ned’s time in Detroit will forever be known as “Darkness with Harkness.”

And it lands him on this list of ignominy.

Shortly after becoming coach, Harkness showed up at the home of defenseman Gary Bergman. Not long after arriving, Ned began rearranging Bergie’s living room furniture to explain his theories and Xs and Os.

“Right then,” Bergman said in recalling the story years later, “I knew we were in trouble.”

Happy Mother’s Day!

Colavito’s Arm Rivaled His Power At The Plate

“But opposing base runners ran at their own risk against the Tigers in those days, with Kaline and Colavito patrolling the outfield corners.”

 

The question came to me, quite out of the blue, but it made me smile nonetheless.

One of my colleagues at Bleacher Report had read one of my nostalgic Tigers pieces–the kind I’m so wont to do, as you know–and we started a back-and-forth chat about great players of the past, including non-Tigers.

Then, this.

“Who had the better arm? Clemente or Colavito?,” he asked.

Ahh yes. Thanks for asking!

It’s pretty much commonly known that Roberto Clemente had one of the finest arms ever in baseball history. A virtual cannon in right field.

I can still see the one throw, from the 1971 World Series.

Clemente turning and throwing, in one motion, and delivering a laser to third base, from deep in the right field corner. The ball never was more than five feet off the ground.

OK, so we know about Clemente, but where did Rocky Colavito’s invocation come from?

Colavito, a Tiger from 1960-63, gave the team two howitzers in the outfield.

Don’t forget about Al Kaline!

Kaline, in my opinion, was just a notch below Clemente in the arm department. Maybe half a notch, on second thought.

Kaline’s throwing was based largely on his impeccable form. No one mastered the art of the catch-and-throw like Kaline.

If a runner dared to try to score from third base on a flyball to right field against Kaline, it was far from a sure thing, no matter how deep the ball was hit.

Kaline’s footwork as he waited for the ball to arrive in his mitt was where his accuracy and strength originated. He’d circle gently, gauging the ball’s trajectory, then position himself perfectly so that he could make the catch and the throw in one motion.

No one did that better than Al Kaline. Not even Clemente.

Ah, but what of Colavito?

Colavito could bring it from the outfield–right or left

Rock is normally known in baseball for being the home run champ who was traded for a batting champ. The Tigers and the Indians swung that deal, on the eve of the 1960 season: Colavito for Harvey Kuenn.

But Colavito was more than just a power hitter. His arm was so good that the Tigers moved Kaline to center field and put Rock in right in 1960.

But then the idea was hatched to switch Rock to left field and return Kaline to right, starting in 1961. They pretty much played that way from ‘61-’63.

If Colavito’s arm was one of the best in right field–and it was–then it was terribly over-qualified for left field.

But opposing base runners ran at their own risk against the Tigers in those days, with Kaline and Colavito patrolling the outfield corners.

Rock was traded by Detroit to the Kansas City A’s, then became somewhat of a journeyman as his power mysteriously waned. A New York kid, Rock finished with the Yankees in ‘68.

With the Tigers, Rock slammed 139 homers in four seasons.

He also recorded 61 outfield assists in those four years, and 123 for his career. By comparison, Kaline had 170 outfield assists, and Clemente an amazing 266.

So how did I answer the question, asking about the arms of Clemente and Colavito?

Clemente, of course–but Rock was no slouch. Not at all.

Hossa, Franzen Red Wings’ Sledgehammers Against The Hiller Wall

I wonder if Red Wings coach Mike Babcock is a student of American history, specifically the 1980s.

After watching Anaheim Ducks goalie Jonas Hiller channel J.S. Giguere ‘03 thru the first three games of the Western Conference semi-finals against his team, Babcock might have done some channeling of his own.

Maybe Babcock made like President Ronald Reagan in addressing a certain player.

“Mr. Hossa, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!”

And so Marian did, much quicker than it took to knock down the Berlin version.

Hossa’s two goals, both wrist shots and both semi-stoppable, proved that Hiller is, indeed human and not a wall, after all. And it also got the much-ballyhooed summer free agent signee off the schneide in the series.

Of course, Hossa actually got off said schneide in the final minute of Game Three, but we all know what happened there.

There’s nothing nicer to see in a playoff series than the skating off the ice of the once impenetrable netminder of your opponent, white flag in tow following a barrage of goals.

Once you prove a goalie’s mortality, things often get much easier. For the impenetrable netminder is sometimes the last bullet in the chamber for the outshot, out-talented underdog. The last hook on which they can hang their hocket helmets.

Bullet spent. Hook broken, lying on the floor.

The Ducks are now going to officially have to start playing hockey. Going to have to start getting more offensively than what the Ryan Getzlaff/Corey Perry line has been providing.

No more rope-a-dope.

Because the Ducks’ rope finally snapped last night.

Of the five goals that Hiller surrendered, at least two of them were borderline soft. He looked shaky on other shots.

It was about damn time.

Meanwhile, Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood probably would like to have had Perry’s second goal back, a wrister that beat him stick side to tie the game 2-2.

All this isn’t to say that Hiller can’t bounce back and have a terrific rest of the series.

But the Red Wings are a veteran bunch, and they were probably less intimidated by Hiller’s antics in Games One thru Three than most teams would have been. So last night’s scoring outburst likely didn’t surprise them all that much. They know that when they play their game, they’ll eventually score goals.

So even if Hiller does bounce back, the Red Wings will keep doing their thing, which usually pays off in the end.

With Hossa’s two goals in Game Four, pretty much all of the Red Wings’ big guns have made their presence known in one round or the other this spring. You can nitpick and say that Pavel Datsyuk hasn’t really turned it on yet, but it’s like a sterling batting lineup in baseball.

You don’t always need one thru nine in the order to be hot all at the same time. Only the poor teams need that.

The good teams know that if a couple guys scuffle, there’ll be others to pick up the slack.

Home ice advantage, for what it’s worth, is now back in the Red Wings’ possession in this series.

But it doesn’t matter, really, where the games are played. It’s a game of confidence and belief in what you’re doing. And sometimes a little change.

Babcock juggled some lines in the first period, placing Hossa with Johan Franzen. Those two accounted for four goals after the change. So this morning Babs is a genius. For now.

Hiller is penetrable. For now.

Advantage Detroit. For now.

Chapter Five will be revealed on Sunday.

Maybe Hiller’s not the killer, after all.

The Knee Jerks: HURRY!! Just Two More Weeks To Savor! Hello, Radio!!

This is your second-to-last chance to catch “The Knee Jerks” in this space!!

We’re taking the show to Blog Talk Radio, and in fact we’ve already done so. Episode One is ready for downloading. You can listen to us every Monday night, usually at 11:00 P.M. Eastern time. But more on that in the actual chat below.

In this week’s chat with Big Al of The Wayne Fontes Experience, we discuss the Robbery in Anaheim; the youngster Rick Porcello and the rest of his Tigers teammates; the Lions getting a new Foote; and the usual suspects–Word Association and Jerk of the Week–make appearances.

So without further ado……

******************************

Eno: Welcome to Thursday, and the next-to-last text version of “The Knee Jerks: WTF? With Eno & Al.” I’m Eno, aka Mr. Journalist, and he’s Big Al, aka Mr. Big Shot. Well Al, it’s a happy and sad time. We announce the end of our text chats (next week will be the final one) on Thursdays, but we’re happy and excited to announce why they’re ending. Care to do the honors, sir?

Big Al: We’re ending the text chats because I’m marrying Yoko Ono, and breaking up the band.

Eno: You bastard!

Big Al: Seriously, we made a joint decision to move our meeting of the minds to Blog Talk Radio on a weekly basis. We enjoy doing these chats, but they take a MASSIVE amount of time to do, in actual IM time—editing, formatting for our respective blogs, and for you to read them. Moving the Knee Jerks to Blog Talk Radio frees us up to do more writing, and to further explore podcasting. We both dig the broadcast medium, and would like to see where it goes. Plus, it would feel like we’re rehashing the same stuff if we do both a BTR podcast and a text chat.

Eno: For sure. The link to Monday’s debut show is here. Every episode is archived automatically, so if you can’t join us live, you can download and listen at your leisure. Of course, if you DO join us live, you can call in and talk to us, just like “real” radio. Our next show is scheduled for Monday, May 11 at 11pm ET, and will likely be every Monday unless there’s a Red Wings playoff conflict or something.

Big Al: Exactly. We do realize our first attempt was a little rough around the edges. My desktop decided to not recognize the mic on my headset, which caused me to use Skype via my laptop instead, which led to the “in a tin can sound” from me. And I had no idea my chair made so much f’n noise! It had never been a problem in the past when I’ve done other podcasts and radio bits, but I promise it won’t happen again. Eno, on the other hand, is a polished pro. So at least we have that going for us, which is nice… We expect to improve every broadcast.

Eno: Aww, you’re too kind. Can I take this time to plug GregEno.com?

Big Al: Please do. The floor is yours.

Eno: Well, I’m taking my blogging and my writing services to the next level. http://www.gregeno.com/ is launched, and even though it’s not totally polished yet, I do want to encourage people to mosey on over there and check me out.

Big Al: Consider it announced! At least you can finally ditch your previous URL, which was a mouthful!

Eno: LOL…exactly. Although, my blogs won’t be moving. The dot com will provide links to them, however. So….what’s on your mind, as if I need to ask?

Big Al: Well….since you asked!

Eno: The suspense is killing me!

Big Al: The entirety of SE MI is PISSED today, thanks to the ineptitude of the NHL’s referees. THAT WAS A MARIAN HOSSA GOAL! A ref (Brad Watson) who was out of position INTENDS to blow the whistle, claiming he lost sight of the puck, even though the puck was IN PLAIN SIGHT, lying in the crease, visible to everyone…save for Watson, obviously. Only in a Mickey Mouse league like the NHL would there be a rule saying you can wave off a goal because you INTENDED to blow the damn whistle. Then you have the NHL’s explanation, blaming THE DUCKS’ BLACK UNIFORMS. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I get pissed just thinking about it. I hate hockey.

Eno: Well, as I wrote at OOB, the issue wasn’t whether Watson lost sight of the puck. I can see by the replay how that might have been possible. My beef is with the rapidness with which he went for the whistle. There was no pile of bodies in the crease. In that case, a “quick” whistle is preferred. He either panicked or wanted a quick whistle, regardless. I bet he gets a dressing down from his bosses, if it hasn’t happened already.

Big Al: It’s not enough. And NHL fans in other cities wonder why many Wings followers believe there is an anti-Red Wings bias in the NHL. From being an Eastern time zone team playing in the Western Conference, having a playoff travel schedule from HELL, the league using the Wings to prop up the attendance of teams in areas where hockey is considered a third world sport, while the Wings get NOTHING in return (How about a Winter Classic in Michigan, Bettman?), to the salary cap, which was implemented because the Red Wings spent a ton of money and did so smartly (unlike the Rangers), to crap like last night, it does make me wonder. It really does. Still, there is no defending Watson’s quick whistle. None. Black uniforms my ass!

Eno: It was, indeed, a shame. The goal absolutely should have counted, and of course it’s not a reviewable play. Well, despite that, I think the Red Wings still win this series, don’t you, Mr. Pissed Off Big Shot?

Big Al: I’m beginning to wonder about that as well. The Ducks goalie, Jonas Hiller, is standing on his head, stoning the Wings. The Wings are wildly outshooting the Ducks, yet not scoring. The Ducks seem to be getting all the breaks and bounces. The Wings are getting off to slow starts, condemning them to playing from behind. They desperately miss Brian Rafalski, as Chris Chelios was, at times, looking all of his 47 years. This series is going seven games. The Wings should win, the Wings are the more talented team, but the Ducks aren’t a typical No. 8 seed. You could legitimately say, going into Game Four, that this series is a toss up.

Eno: No, it won’t be easy. At all. But the Red Wings win it. OK, let’s talk about something happier. Youngster Rick Porcello fired seven shutout innings at the Twins Tuesday night. Not a bad bounce back after that Yankees debacle, eh?

Big Al: Porcello needed it to save, for the time being at least, his spot in the rotation. It’s between him and Zach Miner for the fifth spot once Jeremy Bonderman returns. But last night did show the Porcello we hope to see every start: a dominant pitcher. But dominance is too much to expect of a 20-year-old, so I’d temper my expectation for this season. But it was a nice win, showing the Tigers’ tendency to bounce back from tough losses. We also saw the Tigers bring up Jeff Larish and Clete Thomas, move Magglio Ordonez to DH and send Carlos Guillen to the DL. All smart moves, in my opinion.

Eno: Yeah, Guillen was doing no one any good, including himself, by staying in the lineup. Six RBI in 90 AB, and a .200 BA. Yuck. Pretty gruesome. These young pitchers—Porcello, Ryan Perry, and the re-emergence of Justin Verlander as the team’s ace, make me feel a lot better about the team while the big guns get their act together. The Tigers need more consistent OH-fense, as they say in Canada. The team’s production, if you were to graph it, would look like an EKG reading.

Big Al: The Tigers are being carried offensively by Miguel Cabrera, who is mashing the ball again, and hitting over .400. He’s proving to be worth every dime the Tigers are paying him AND Dontrelle Willis. Something else worth mentioning about improving the offense was moving Curtis Granderson down in the order, batting fifth Tuesday night. It makes more sense to bat him third, but the Tigers have to make better use of his burgeoning home run power. Granderson is a 100+ RBI man waiting to happen.

Eno: Granderson is funny, in a way. On the one hand, he seems to be the quintessential leadoff guy, but in other ways he’s that No. 3 guy, like you said. It’s almost like his prowess makes it tough to slot him correctly. But I say leave him at leadoff. When he’s not there, last night notwithstanding, the Tigers’ offense seems to be out of sync.

Big Al: The Tigers could try Josh Anderson at leadoff, who is more of your prototypical leadoff man. But his offensive liabilities are likely to be exposed the more he plays. Anderson is being used correctly, as the fourth outfielder. Which means Granderson is still your best option at leadoff. But the offense is going to be inconsistent, as the Tigers went for defense over offense this past off-season. Adam Everett is a non-entity at the plate (his weekend grand slam notwithstanding), Brandon Inge is playing over his head offensively; he won’t continue to lead the team in power stats. Same for Gerald Laird, who has really begun to tail off at the plate. You may be calling the Tigers “out of sync” all season.

Eno: True that. OK, big news out of Allen Park: the Lions found their middle linebacker! Mr. Larry Foote, freshly cut by the Steelers. Thoughts?

Big Al: It should soothe the savage fans who were ticked the Lions didn’t draft an inside linebacker in the draft, for one thing. The Lions had to have seen the Foote release coming, otherwise not drafting a MLB still makes little sense. Or maybe they got lucky! Either way, this bodes well for the Lions, who now have a starting linebacker corps that is actually of NFL quality. Foote is not a cure all, he’s not an all-world player. But he was a good player in Pittsburgh, and one with something to prove—that he’s a three down player. Foote’s gambling on a one year deal, meaning he’s banking on a good season, allowing him to go to the bank with a big-time free agent deal next year. A hungry football player is something the Lions have long lacked…at every position.

Eno: Absolutely. I like to think the Lions had this planned out. This also gives draft choice DeAndre Levy time to learn, behind Foote. Like you pointed out at TWFE, there’s really no depth, beyond Levy. So here’s to everyone’s good health! I still don’t see a true pass rusher on the team, do you?

Big Al: Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Lions can’t build a new defense in one off-season. The only player on the Lions’ starting D who has a history of rushing the passer is OLB Julian Peterson. But it’s unrealistic to expect him to carry the pass rush load. At this point, I’ll be happy with the Lions no longer having one of the worst defenses in NFL history. They can worry about getting a pass rush specialist next year, as they aren’t going to find one now.

Eno: Well said. What do you make of the QB situation? Daunte Culpepper and a couple of peach fuzzies. I think the Lions should go after a veteran backup. We’ve discussed this before. Do you think the three QBs they have now are the ones that they’ll still have in August? Actually, let’s boil it down: does Drew Stanton stay or go?

Big Al: He’s gone, as soon as a relatively respectable veteran backup QB is available. The Lions are more likely to find one later in this summer, when training camp draws near. There are bound to be more players cut due to salary, and a few may play under center. It seems the only person in Detroit who liked Stanton as a QB was Matt Millen. Not exactly a sterling endorsement. The selection of Matt Stafford has made Stanton even more irrelevant in Detroit, if it’s even possible.

Eno: Well, being a Millen disciple didn’t hurt Martin Mayhew, did it? (rim shot!) OK, how about some WordAss?

Big Al: Sure thing! Feel free to start…

WORD ASSOCIATION

Eno: Let’s start with the Kevin Garnett-less Boston Celtics. Are they in trouble?

Big Al: I hope so, if only to remove the ghastly sight of Brian Scalabrine in a headband from our TV screens. I would not be surprised in the slightest if the Celtics go down to the Magic.

Eno: BTW, those who missed our radio broadcast missed a wonderful diatribe by Al against Scalabrine’s headband. Man, he looks brutal—Scalabrine, that is! OK, on to the next one: the scuffling-along Magglio Ordonez.

Big Al: He’ll pick it up, and have a respectable season, but he’s 35 and no longer the player who had 35 home run power in Chicago, and won a battling title with Detroit. Ordonez was made to play DH. Leyland should do what it takes to keep him there.

Eno: Two more: Marian Hossa.

Big Al: Has to make an impact for the Wings to advance! He did last night, till the Anaheim Screwjob happened…

Eno: And finally, I ask you if Nick Lidstrom wins another Norris Trophy, and if Pavel Datsyuk wins the Hart Trophy, and you say…..

Big Al: No. There’s an anti-Red Wing bias, remember?

Eno: Right! OK, fire away, Mr. Big Shot!

Big Al: The former Piston is who is now the new Mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing.

Eno: Ha! Just wrote about him at “Enotes”…umm, good for him. The city needs a visionary and a guy with some urgency. Kenny Cockrel would have been OK, too—but Bingo is better. But I bet he finds Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar easier to deal with than the city council!!

Big Al: Good luck on that; the Detroit city council is full of Matt Millen types. Clowns. Next, Rasheed Wallace reportedly wants $8 million a season to return to the NBA next year. You say…

Eno: Things not fit for print. Either that, or I simply laugh like a hyena.

Big Al: One more, sir. If I say Carlos Guillen is done as an everyday player, you say…

Eno: I hope not. I know that’s a wishy-washy answer, but then again, he’s played thru injuries before, so I’m going to say no—but not much longer than 2010.

Big Al: As we’ve covered the gamut on Monday and today, we should wrap things up. You ready to name your second Jerk of the Week?

JERK OF THE WEEK

Eno: YES!! It’s Mr. Brett Favre, who now reportedly wants to play for Minnesota, to stick it to the Packers. Suddenly, Favre is the guy you wish would go away; a bad end to his illustrious career, if you ask me.

Big Al: Good call, Eno! Even the Favre-loving media is fed up with his antics. There’s no question who my JotW is. It’s NHL referee Brad Watson, for giving Red Wings fans nightmares. I doubt we’ll see him work another Wings playoff game anytime soon. A pox on the NHL’s house!

Eno: Ah, the Don Denkinger of NHL refs! OK, my friend. Thanks again, and I’ll see you next Monday on Blog Talk Radio. That’s Monday, May 11 at 11pm ET!! Be there or be square!

Big Al: And next Thursday as well, for our final text chat. As my hero, the head of Hawaii Five-0, Steve McGarrett says, aloha!

Eno: Ciao, Italy!

Ref’s Jitters Costly To Red Wings

“How do you fix this? If a referee blows a whistle, or intends to blow a whistle, then it’s pretty much olly-olly oxen free.”

 

Brad Watson ought to teach a class to the delinquents and ne’er-do-wells: How to commit robbery in public, on television, without even wearing a mask.

Referee Watson got blind, jittery, and whistle-happy in the final minute of regulation last night, and his panic cost the Red Wings the game-tying goal in Game Three of their conference semi-finals series with the Anaheim Ducks.

No need to explain the gore in too much detail, for you already know what happened: the puck trickled near the goal line, and Watson inserted whistle in mouth and, despite the puck being poked in before he blew it–or, at the very least, at the same time–the goal was disallowed because Watson had the intent to blow his whistle.

Intent. Isn’t that a word that’s associated with criminal activity?

Replays showed how Watson could, indeed, have lost sight of the puck, due to his angle versus where the puck was and the bodies between he and it.

But this isn’t about whether Watson lost sight of the puck, which in the world of hockey officiating means the whistle should be blown.

Watson couldn’t see the puck; I’ll buy that. Fine.

The issue is how quickly Watson got whistle happy.

In such an important situation, in such an important game, Watson–and every NHL referee on the planet–ought to make damn sure that puck is nowhere to be found before tweeting.

The real time replay FSD showed indicated that Watson was way too fast in determining that the puck had vanished. Way too fast.

Not only that, but the goal crease wasn’t filled with players piled on top of one another. In that scenario, erring on the side of “quick whistle” is preferred, because waiting too long lends itself to the puck being nudged over the line by nefarious means, difficult to prove.

The crease was mostly empty. There wasn’t a pile of players. It was pretty much goalie Jonas Hiller and a few skates and sticks.

Watson’s view did look to be obstructed, but not for very long–perhaps a fraction of a second.

The play, of course, was not reviewable. Those involving inadvertent whistles never are.

The Red Wings had no recourse but to point at the robber with no police around to apprehend him.

It might not make the Red Wings or their fans feel much better, but you can bet Mr. Watson will be getting a talking-to by league management. That kind of panic attack simply can’t happen in the playoffs.

Yet there really isn’t anything that can be done about similar plays in the future. How do you fix this? If a referee blows a whistle, or intends to blow a whistle, then it’s pretty much olly-olly oxen free.

I suppose the league could advise its refs to exercise extreme caution and discipline, but that’s about it.

Watson’s blunder is just one of those errors that humanizes officials and can’t be legislated to anyone’s satisfaction.

The Red Wings can still win this series, of course, and I believe that they will. They outshot the Ducks by a 2-to-1 margin last night, and they’ll dent Hiller before it’s all said and done.

So says me.

Brad Watson panicked, pure and simple.

The Red Wings, though, ought not to.

Bring on Game Four.

But leave Watson at the hotel, please.

“The Knee Jerks” On Blog Talk Radio: One Down, ?? To Go!!

We don’t have theme music. Yet.

Al needs a less squeaky chair. And a new microphone.

But the first episode of “The Knee Jerks”, online radio version, is in the books.

We had a blast, Big Al and I, taking our weekly text chat to the next level, i.e. Blog Talk Radio.

Our next show will be next Monday, May 11, at 11:00 p.m. ET.

This will likely become a weekly thing, phasing out the Thursday text chat altogether.

You can listen live next Monday night (don’t worry, we’ll remind you) and even call in to talk to us, or you can download the episodes and listen to them at your leisure.

Either way, you can check out our BTR page here.

Hope you can join us, live or via download!

Red Wings At Home In Playoff OTs? Not So Good

“So whenever the Red Wings go into overtime on the road, I’m much more comfy. Though they’ve lost a few that way, too. But only a few.”

The overwhelming trend continues.

The Red Wings, for as mighty as they’ve been for the past 20+ years, have a dirty little secret, about to be outed right here, right now. There are a few of you who know about this secret, but none of you are employed by the mainstream media, because those folks don’t appear to be clued in.

The Red Wings don’t win home playoff games in overtime.

Quick amendment: they rarely do–for there have been exceptions.

This tendency began way back in 1984, when the team made the post-season in Steve Yzerman’s rookie season.

The first round series were best-of-five back then. And the Red Wings split the first two games in St. Louis.

In Detroit over the weekend, though, the Blues won a double OT game on Saturday and a single OT game on Sunday. End of series.

There’ve been plenty more examples–only some of which I will now list.

Game Five in 1988’s first round against Toronto, when current NBC analyst Eddie Olczyk beat the Red Wings, playing for Toronto.

A crucial Game Four loss to Edmonton in 1988’s conference finals. Jari Kurri, I believe, was the Oilers’ hero.

Games Five AND Seven in 1993’s first round against Toronto.

Game One of the 1996 conference finals against Colorado, courtesy Mike Keane.

Game Five of the 2002 conference finals against Colorado, courtesy Joe Sakic.

Game One of the 2002 Stanley Cup Finals against Carolina, thanks to Ronnie Francis.

Game Five of the 2007 conference finals against Anaheim, after a gruesome turnover by Andreas Lilja.

Game Five of the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals against Pittsburgh, off the stick of Petr Sykora.

Game Two of the 2009 conference semi-finals against Anaheim.

As I said, there’ve been some OT wins at home–and big ones.

Game Five of the 1995 conference finals over Chicago, which ended the series and sent the Red Wings to the Cup Finals.

Game Seven of the 1996 conference semi-finals over St. Louis–Steve Yzerman’s double OT slapper from the blue line.

Game Two of the 1998 Cup Finals over Washington–only one of the most thrilling playoff games in Red Wings history.

But the losses far outweigh the wins–at home.

On the road, the Red Wings acquit themselves much better in playoff overtimes.

It’s a strange phenomenon, one that I don’t think anyone can really explain.

But I’ve been aware of this aggravation since the mid-1990s, and that’s why I never want to see a playoff game at Joe Louis Arena head into overtime.

I had the same sentiment yesterday–and Friday, but Nick Lidstrom took care of that with 49.1 seconds remaining in regulation.

Sunday, Lidstrom, or anyone else for that matter, wasn’t able to ride to the rescue before Game Two against the Ducks oozed into overtime.

That’s it, I thought. The Red Wings, not the Ducks, will be cooked.

Sadly, I was right–despite the overwhelming pressure the Red Wings put on the Ducks and goalie Jonas Hiller in the extra sessions.

That’s never really been the problem at the Joe for the Red Wings in playoff OTs. They bring the pressure. They just can’t seem to finish with the same degree of success as the visitors.

Typically, it’s been an aging veteran who’s done them in, too. Another oddity.

Sunday it was Todd Marchant, who was eerily interviewed by NBC in the intermission between the second and third OTs. So blame the network, if you’d like.

The trend is maddening–all these overtime playoff losses at home–because you can’t really shake your fist at anything and declare that the reason for all the failure.

It’s probably just a statistical oddity, nothing more.

So whenever the Red Wings go into overtime on the road, I’m much more comfy. Though they’ve lost a few that way, too. But only a few.

Of course, if the Red Wings go into overtime in Anaheim, there may be few of us who’ll actually witness the ending, thanks to the late west coast start times.

I remember 1997, when Brendan Shanahan ended a game in Anaheim at around 3:30 in the morning. Moments before, I said I’d be going to bed, whether the game was over or not. And that’s not like me.

Then Shanny found the puck in a scrum inside the crease, and jammed it home.

I went to bed, happy.

The Red Wings, I say, will win their second straight Stanley Cup, yesterday’s loss notwithstanding. But beware the overtime games at home.

Those’ll get ‘em, almost every time.

Monday Morning Manager

My weekly take on the Tigers.

Week of 4/27-5/3: 3-3
This week: 5/4-5: MIN; 5/6-7: at CWS; 5/8-10: at Cle

Goat of the Week

The Tigers’ bullpen had managed to keep themselves out of MMM’s doghouse, but after blowing up on Tuesday against the Yankees, spoiling Edwin Jackson’s start, we have to make them the goats, collectively.

Dishonorable mention goes to Carlos Guillen, who still can’t get his bat going. Of course, Guillen’s been battling a sore achilles. He’s always battling something, it seems.

Hero of the Week

Turnabout is fair play. Last week, Justin Verlander was MMM’s Goat of the Week. Well, welcome to the penthouse after spending a week in the doghouse, JV!

Verlander had himself two fabulous starts last week: seven shutout innings against the Yankees on Monday, and seven uber strong innings against the Indians Sunday.

The totals for the week? 14 innings, 9 hits, 20 strikeouts, one earned run.

Wow.

It was so important that Verlander follow up his Yankees start with another good one, or else we’d think that he was in the “blind nut finds a squirrel” category. But JV’s confidence is soaring; when he got himself into a bases loaded, no out situation Sunday in the seventh inning, Verlander all but prayed that manager Jim Leyland would leave him in.

Leyland did. And Verlander got three outs and stranded all three runners.

When a pitcher wants to stay in under those circumstances, that’s a sign of confidence and belief.

Is JV back to his 2006-07 form?

Ask the Yankees and Indians hitters.

Quick scouting reports: Twins, White Sox, and Indians

Catcher Joe Mauer returned to the Twins last week and slammed a home run in his very first swing of the season. He went 7-for-10 out of the gate. As usual, the Twins stayed afloat during Mauer’s absence. Of course, that’s easier to do in a logjammed division.

The Twins’ other usual suspect, Justin Morneau, is having a fine season: .327 BA, six homers, 21 RBI.

A tale of two starting pitchers: Kevin Slowey is 4-0, despite an ERA of 5.17. Francisco Liriano is 0-4, with an ERA of a tad over 6.00. Looks like someone’s getting offensive support, and someone isn’t.

The White Sox feature lefty starter Mark Buehrle, who’s slated to start against the Tigers this week. Buehrle is 4-0 with a 3.30 ERA.

Offensively, Carlos Quentin has eight homers, and veteran Paul Konerko is rebounding from a poor 2008. He’s batting .310 with 18 RBI.

The Indians, as we saw last weekend, have bullpen issues. Here’s a stat with a “wow factor”: the Indians have been outscored, 35-12, in the 8th inning this season. Closer Kerry Wood, who signed a fat contract with the Tribe, hasn’t been handed many 9th inning leads.

The Tribe still has all-world CF Grady Sizemore, but he has been getting precious little help offensively.

2008 Cy Young winner Cliff Lee, who lost three games all season last year, is 1-4, thanks to his loss to Verlander on Sunday. The Tigers will see Lee again, probably Friday.

Under the microscope

It’s a close call, but I’m going to put Guillen under the scope this week. Carlos says his achilles isn’t bad enough to go on the DL, but if he keeps not hitting, the Tigers may want to re-visit that assertion.

Also under the scope, believe it or not, is backup catcher Dane Sardinha. Why? With Matt Treanor likely out for the season after hip surgery, the Tigers will need a capable backup to spell Gerald Laird, whose fast start at the plate might wane if the Tigers overuse him. Leyland likes to keep players fresh, especially his catchers.

When the Tigers won the pennant in 2006, Vance Wilson was the supreme backup catcher. Occasional offense, very good defense, wonderful clubhouse presence.

But Wilson was a veteran, and Sardinha isn’t. Plus, Sardinha is a notoriously bad hitter. But the Tigers say they’re fine with him, despite the Mariners’ release of veteran Jamie Burke, a career .293 hitter.

“I need to hit, a little bit,” Sardinha told reporters Sunday. “Or else Dusty will be on my tail.”

That would be minor leaguer Dusty Ryan, considered the team’s best catching prospect, long-term.

That’s all for this week’s MMM. Join me every Monday!

Kicking It Up A Notch: “The Knee Jerks” Invade Blog Talk Radio!

Good news (I hope!) for all you “Knee Jerks” fans out there!

Big Al of The Wayne Fontes Experience and I, who have a meeting of the (ahem) minds every Thursday in this space, are going to take the chat to Blog Talk Radio, probably eventually phasing out the text version.

To get a sneek preview of what this might sound like, click on our link at BTR.

Our first BTR broadcast will be Monday, May 4, at 11:30pm ET.

Info on how to dial in (if you’d like to participate as a listener/caller) can be found at our BTR link.

More details on how frequently we plan on doing the BTR version of “The Knee Jerks” will be forthcoming. But you can bookmark the BTR link, which will let you know when upcoming broadcasts will occur.

Remember, with BTR, you can listen even if you can’t make it when we’re live. There’s downstream capability, and every broadcast is automatically archived.

Here’s hoping you’ll join us on BTR!

Red Wings’ Annual Cup Contention Began With Four-Eyed Frenchman

“Ilitch shanghaied Demers from St. Louis, causing some rancor and ill will. But Ilitch didn’t much care about whether he ruffled the Blues’ feathers. He had himself a disaster in Detroit, and needed relief NOW.”

 

The last time the Red Wings failed to qualify for the playoffs, we were in the midst of President Bush I and the “Bad Boy” Pistons had only won one championship and Dennis Rodman wasn’t weird yet.

We hadn’t quite shaken off the after effects of the 1980s. Miley Cyrus’s dad wasn’t even popular yet. No one had heard of Bill Clinton, outside his home state of Arkansas.

It may seem like ancient history to some, but there was actually a time where we didn’t expect the Red Wings to be in the thick of things when it came to the Stanley Cup playoffs. A time where a first round exit or even a conference final failure wasn’t cause for heightened security around the Ambassador Bridge or a spike in the sale of razor blades.

Or before Detroit goalies did things like cry in front of their locker (Chris Osgood, 1994) or publicly declare suicidal feelings (Manny Legace, 2006).

I’ll end your suspense: it was 1990.

It sometimes gets boring, writing about the Red Wings and their nearly twenty-year reign as the most successful franchise in hockey. We keyboard mashers and the quote-unquote experts wearing headsets and jabbering into microphones think it much more interesting when the teams we cover, founder.

So it was 1990 when the Red Wings couldn’t manage even a fourth place finish in their division, thus finding themselves on the outside looking in when the playoff party began.

A couple months later, the bespectacled French-Canadian coach spoke in tears to the media.

“Mr. Ilitch and I both had a good cry,” Jacques Demers said. “But he was a man about it. I respect that about him.”

Demers was speaking of his getting the ziggy, and the manner in which he received it.

A phone call came from Red Wings owner Michael Ilitch, asking for a face-to-face meeting. It was mid-June. Ilitch told his coach not to bother leaving; he’d be over to his place.

Inside Demers’s home, Ilitch, in an emotional moment according to both men, told Jacques that he would no longer be coaching the Red Wings.

“I love Jacques Demers,” Ilitch told the media. “And I always will love Jacques Demers.”

Ilitch called the firing one of the most difficult things he ever had to do in his life.

But both men agreed that it had to be done.

Ilitch was probably emotional because if it wasn’t for Demers, Lord knows where the owner’s hockey franchise would be. And I mean today, let alone 1990.

Four years prior, in 1986, Ilitch was heading into his fifth year of ownership and things were arguably worse than when he bought the team. And things were so bad when Bruce Norris sold to Ilitch that we didn’t think it could be any worse.

We were wrong.

The ’85-’86 Wings went 17-57-6. They gave up 415 goals. Yeah.

Ilitch, along with GM Jimmy Devellano, tried patching the roster with cheap, veteran free agents shortly after Ilitch bought the team. That didn’t work so well. So with the farm system still not developing quality players, the strategy changed to hiring higher profile free agents and those fresh out of college.

That worked even less.

So in the summer of 1986, Ilitch, at his wit’s end, looked within his own division and saw how the rival St. Louis Blues responded to their coach who resembled Inspector Clouseau. The spunky Frenchman Jacques Demers.

Ilitch shanghaied Demers from St. Louis, causing some rancor and ill will. But Ilitch didn’t much care about whether he ruffled the Blues’ feathers. He had himself a disaster in Detroit, and needed relief NOW.

Demers bounced into town, made 21-year-old Steve Yzerman his captain (that worked out pretty well) and preached work ethic, defense, and team.

Demers made the 21-year-old Yzerman his captain shortly after becoming coach in Detroit

The Red Wings made it to the conference finals in Demers’ first year, doubling their win total to 34. Demers won the Jack Adams Award for coach of the year.

The next year, the Wings won 41 games and again made it to the Final Four. And Demers won the Adams award again. He won it because he guided the Red Wings into the third round despite losing Yzerman to a knee injury in March.

In Year Three, the Wings won the division, albeit with a pedestrian .500 record. They lost in the first round of the playoffs.

In Year Four, no playoffs. Then came the ziggy, as Ilitch, with Demers’ agreement, felt that another coach would be needed to shove the team up another notch.

Later it was reported that Demers was on thin ice—no pun intended—ever since an unfortunate incident during the 1988 playoffs, in Edmonton. The now infamous Goose Loonies bar debacle, where several players were seen partying into the wee hours, the night before a game that the team lost, dumping them out of the playoffs.

That fall, Bob Probert got busted at the Detroit-Windsor border with drugs. Maybe not Demers’ fault, but combined with the Goose Loonies thing, it gave the impression that Jacques wasn’t the disciplinarian the Red Wings needed.

So Ilitch had his tearful goodbye with Demers in June 1990. In Washington, the Capitals had just canned longtime coach Bryan Murray. Ilitch decided on a swap: Demers for Murray.

Bryan Murray was hired, despite concern that his teams in Washington couldn’t win in the playoffs. Concern that would be validated in Detroit. Concern that would, three years later, lead to Murray’s own cashiering. But without tears.

The Red Wings though, were on their way. They hired Scotty Bowman, and he took the franchise the rest of the way home, to Stanley Cup land. To “Hockeytown.”

But if Mike Ilitch doesn’t hire Jacques Demers in 1986, who in turn made Yzerman his captain at an aggressively young age, the fortunes of the Red Wings may not have been as rich as they currently remain.

We’re spoiled in, ahem, Hockeytown. We demand Stanley Cups, and are offended when the Red Wings don’t contend for them seriously. We’ve become Montreal, the way Montreal used to be.

Oh, and speaking of the Canadiens—the last time they won the Stanley Cup was in 1993. Their coach? Jacques Demers.

Ironic, eh, that we should have become like the French-Canadians with their hockey, since it all started with the four-eyed Frenchy named Jacques Clouseau—I mean, Demers?

I Liked Ike: The Tigers’ “Other” Brown

“Ike was a guy who was just happy to be in the big leagues. He didn’t fuss, didn’t complain about playing time, didn’t grouse. Just putting on a big league uniform seemed to be enough for him.”

 

Ike Brown was, for his entire Tigers career, the “other” Brown on the Detroit roster.

The more famous Brown was William “Gates” Brown, who thrilled Tigers fans with his pinch-hitting heroics. The Gator wasn’t much of a fielder, so he decided that if he was going to stay in the big leagues it better be with the bat. The designated hitter rule, introduced in 1973, was made for guys like Gates Brown.

But what of Ike Brown, the jolly, happy-go-lucky utility man?

Ike Brown played for the Tigers from 1969-74, which was also the extent of his major league career. He tooled around in the minor leagues for about six years before finally debuting as a 27-year-old rookie.

Ike was mainly an outfielder, but he played many positions. In fact, Ike played them all, except pitcher and catcher, while wearing the Old English D.

I like Ike Brown because he was a free spirit. Kind of like the utility man version of Norm Cash: affable, goofy.

One of the Tigers yearbooks has a photo of Brown, having fun before the team picture was taken. He’s got his head beneath the cloth shrowd attached to the camera, pretending to take the photo, with just a few players and coaches on the arranged benches in the outfield.

Then there’s another snapshot of Brown reacting dramatically to a Tigers home run — splayed out on the dugout steps, his hand on his head, as if he’s fainted. And with a kidding grin on his face.

Ike never got more than 170 AB in any season, but his career numbers are the equivalent of one full big league campaign: 536 AB, 20 HR, 65 RBI, 90 BB, 130 K, .256 BA.

Yeah, Ike Brown had a little bit of power; in 1971, he had eight homers in just 110 AB.

Ike was a guy who was just happy to be in the big leagues. He didn’t fuss, didn’t complain about playing time, didn’t grouse. Just putting on a big league uniform seemed to be enough for him.

The Tigers released him after the 1974 season, and at age 32, no one picked him up.

Sadly, Ike Brown died in 2001, at the young age of 59. He died in Memphis, TN, where he was also born.

He was one of those players I gravitated to, despite him not being a star. I suppose I was attracted to his fun-loving nature.

Ike Brown may not have captivated Tigers fans like Gates Brown did, but let those folks speak for themselves. I think I favored Ike.

Sorry, Gator. No offense.

Ducks’ “Puck Luck” Carried Them Past Wings In ‘07

“So the puck flutters and floats and no one can stop it, despite its lazy movement. Hasek helplessly watches it flit over his shoulder. And over the goal line.”

It’s not a stretch, really, to say that with a couple more favorable bounces, the Red Wings could be playing for their third straight Stanley Cup this spring.

The Red Wings are set to get it on with the Anaheim Ducks tonight in Round Two, and you’ve read and heard much by now about how this is shaping up to be quite the little rivalry.

The Colorado WHO??

The Avs are so 20th century. The 21st century Red Wings rivals are, I’d agree, these Ducks. There’s some playoff history that’s growing, both in terms of frequency and intrigue.

Take 2003, when the defending Cup champion Red Wings were broomed out of the first round by the Mike Babcock-led (yeah, that’s another anecdote for the rivalry) Mighty Ducks.

Or how about 2007, when the Red Wings had the Ducks half-drowned, only to see them bob back up to the surface and turn the tables.

I love hockey terms. Some of them are trendy, just like any other sport, but that’s OK.

One of those terms making the rounds the past few years is “puck luck.”

Careful. It’s bad enough that hockey has one word that ends in “uck”. So watch it.

Babcock, who switched sides and became the Red Wings coach in 2005, likes to use the term.

“Puck luck” refers to either a player or a team that gets the bounces or, as in the case of an individual player, seems to score at a higher rate of frequency than other skaters.

In 2007, the Ducks had puck luck. Or else last year, the Red Wings might have become back-to-back champs.

In a way, I can’t believe it was two years ago.

Seems like yesterday, when I sat in the press box for Game Five of the Western Conference Finals, covering the series for a former employer. It was a Sunday afternoon, I recall.

The Red Wings were clinging to a 1-0 lead late in the third period in a series tied 2-2. The Ducks pulled their goalie. Less than a minute stood between the Red Wings and a 3-2 series lead, one victory away from the Cup Finals.

Then puck luck struck. Another “uck” word.

Game action involving a sixth attacker is a frenetic, wild display. Throw everything at the net, including the proverbial kitchen sink. Squeeze as many bodies as you can in and around the goal crease.

The puck was shot from the top of the face-off circle, and with the usual heavy traffic in front of Dominik Hasek, thanks to the sixth attacker, there was bound to be a crazy bounce or deflection or carom.

Or, in this case, all of the above.

I can see it now, as if in slow motion: the puck ricocheting off a body, then glancing off the unfortuitously-placed stick of Nick Lidstrom, of all people. Then the puck flutters, like a butterfly. And you know how hard it is to catch a butterfly. Especially with no net. This isn’t lacrosse, after all.

So the puck flutters and floats and no one can stop it, despite its lazy movement. Hasek helplessly watches it flit over his shoulder. And over the goal line.

Tie game. About 45 seconds remained in the third period.

I didn’t think an arena could be deflated that quickly–until one year later, when I stood in press row and watched the Penguins tie Game Five of the Cup Finals, the Red Wings about 30 seconds away from parading the Stanley Cup in front of their home fans.

So the Ducks-Red Wings Game Five goes into overtime.

Then more Duck puck luck struck. Ugh! More “uck” words.

Red Wings defenseman Andreas Lilja was bringing the puck up ice, in his own zone. Not a soul was around him. Until he coughed up the disc, inexplicably. He simply fanned on a pass, leaving the puck sitting on the ice, maybe 20 feet in front of Hasek.

Then, where Lilja had been lonely, he was now joined, quickly, by Teemu Selanne, whose eyes must have been as big as the puck itself when he saw the gift that Lilja had left for him.

There are tons of players in the NHL who you could give the puck up to in such a situation and not be terribly worried, for they have hands of stone.

Sadly, Teemu Selanne was not one of them.

Selanne pounced on Lilja’s gift, swooped in on Hasek, and made like the Hall-of-Fame caliber goal scorer that he is, neatly backhanding the puck over the sprawling goalie. You knew it was going in as soon as you saw who found the gift.

Ducks win, 2-1.

Two nights later, the Ducks finished the Red Wings off.

Selanne buries the puck, and the Red Wings’ chances to move on, in OT of Game Five of the 2007 Western Finals

Had the Red Wings won Game Five, I’m convinced they would have won the series. And I’m just as convinced that they would have handled the Ottawa Senators in the Finals.

So here come the Ducks, once more. The playoff history between the two teams sits at two series wins for each side. After winning the first eight post-season games over the Ducks, the Red Wings are now in a 2-8 slump against Anaheim.

Yes, with any puck luck at all, this could be a three-peat attempt for the Red Wings.

But, as they say, two out of three ain’t bad, either.