Like The Red Wings Proved, Hiring A "No Name" Might Be A Good Thing For Lions

It was a semi-ritual I performed that one Red Wings season. Maybe I did it four, five times.

The Wings would be at home that evening, and I’d knock off work from my TV production job Downriver around 5:30, 6:00. Then I’d make an off-the-cuff, spontaneous decision.

Why not stop by Joe Louis Arena for some laughs?

I lived in Ypsilanti at the time, so a sojourn up I-75 into downtown wasn’t exactly on my way home from Taylor. But these were the bachelor days, so there wasn’t anyone to hurry home to. And after a grind at work it was nice sometimes to stretch out, relax, and be entertained by some ice follies.

It was the 1985-86 season. Perhaps the most vaudevillian of all Red Wings seasons.

They were the slip-on-a-banana peel team, those ’85-86 Red Wings. Stepping on a rake and getting whacked in the face. The squirting daisy in the lapel. The joy buzzer during a handshake. There were nights when you looked for Soupy Sales behind the bench, about to get a pie in the face.

So I’d park my car, always close the arena, and traipse up to the box office. This was about 30 minutes before game time.

“One, please.” And pretty much wherever I wanted, by the way.

I’d find the seat — always in the lower bowl — and spread out, for there was rarely anyone seated next to me. Or next to next to me. Maybe 12,000 or so other curious folks looking for some yuks were with me.

The three acts shuffled, but the final scene was always the same. Sometimes the Red Wings would engage the Canadiens or the Sabres in a real, almost competitive tussle. Or sometimes they’d really have us rolling in the aisles to the tune of 8-1, or worse.

Eddie Mio was the goalie back then. The Swiss cheese of goalies. I used to have a nickname for him: Eddie Mio-My.

So I’d watch the slapstick play out before me, satisfied that I got my $10 worth because I’d pick nights when the NHL’s brightest stars were in town. And I’d watch while first Harry Neale, then Brad Park, gamely tried to match wits with their counterpart, knowing darned well that it was futile because no x’s and o’s in the world could compensate for the disparity of talent on the ice.

The ’85-86 Red Wings won 17 games. All season. In 80 contests, they surrendered over 400 goals. You heard me. Over five per game. And, since the team’s offense was usually incapable of scoring six goals in two games, let alone one, you pretty much get the idea of their chances at victory.

Sometimes, when the action stopped and the teams changed lines before the next face-off, I’d look around the Joe and ponder.

“Will the Red Wings EVER win a Stanley Cup in my lifetime?”

And, if they did…

“What would happen to this place? Would it come down for all the euphoria?”

It was a difficult thing to imagine, believe me, while you were watching NHL hockey in an atmosphere more suited for a chess match. Or an SAT test.

The Red Wings were into their fourth season of Mike Ilitch ownership, and they were regressing.

Or so I thought.

Silly me. I neglected to remember that the GM in those days was Jimmy Devellano, whose background included several years with the New York Islanders, starting with their inception in 1972-73. Jimmy D. was a scout by trade, and it was his keen eye, and those of others that he hired, that brought the Isles from expansion to a Stanley Cup in seven years. And then another Cup. And another. And one more, before being hired away by the Red Wings in 1982.

Little did I know, as I watched the Red Wings stumble through that season, that Devellano was laying the building blocks for the championship organization that the Red Wings are today.

He hired scouts, for starters. Good scouts. And he instructed some to fly overseas, to places like Sweden and Russia and Finland, to look for players who could, one day, play in the NHL. For the Red Wings, of course.

And he put some scouts on the draft, and put some more on the NHL itself, to hunt for players with other organizations who might be attractive trade targets.

All this was going on as the Red Wings were losing, and losing big, in 1985-86.

Now we don’t ask if the Red Wings will win a Stanley Cup in our lifetime, but how many more they’ll win.

The point of all this is to say that the Lions today, I’m sure, are in that same category, in people’s minds, as those ’85-86 Red Wings were in mine.

“Will they ever win a Super Bowl in my lifetime?”

Why, yes. The Red Wings hadn’t won a championship since the 1950s, either. And they did it.

Hire some scouts, for starters.

The sad state of the Lions is really rooted in just one thing, folks. They don’t have enough good players. Haven’t had them in quite some time, in fact. Sorry to state the obvious, but sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle.

I was taking inventory of the Lions roster the other day, and it occurred to me that of the 22 starters on the offensive and defensive platoons, not more than five or six, tops, would be of any interest to another NFL team, should trades be discussed.

Roy Williams. Calvin Johnson. Ernie Sims. Paris Lenon. Maybe Jeff Backus and/or Dominic Raiola. A few others might be attractive as depth or as backups. And that’s about it.

Five or six out of 22?

When 70-75% of your starters are considered trash by all the rest, then you have a serious talent issue.

That’s why I hope the Lions, when they do their internal self-evaluation, place a high priority on hiring someone with expertise in finding young football talent. Forget the high-profile name for the sake of the high-profile name. I made the reference to Jack McCloskey already, and I’ll add Jimmy Devellano today. All I knew of Devellano was he was this short, stocky guy with the squeaky Canadian voice who had been some sort of cog with the Islanders. Turns out, that was good enough.

Don’t be surprised, or better yet, disappointed, if the Lions’ new football man is someone you’ve barely heard of — or at the very least, someone you wouldn’t have heard of it wasn’t for the speculation in the papers. Don’t look at the name, look at the pedigree.

If he comes from the Colts, or the Patriots, or the Packers, or the Cowboys, you should be happy. From anywhere else, you should be wary.

The unknown shouldn’t always be feared.

Devellano’s First Foray Into Free Agency An Unmitigated Disaster

I can still hear Jimmy Devellano’s squeaky voice, some 26 years after the fact. He had just been hired by the Red Wings as the team’s general manager, coming from the excellence of the New York Islanders organization. It was June, 1982. And the Red Wings were a steaming, runny pile of dog doo-doo. Had been for years, near the end of the Norris family ownership. But a pizza pie guy, Mike Ilitch, had bought the team and brought Jimmy D. on board after some due diligence. The Islanders, at the time, had just won their third straight Stanley Cup. They’d win another the following season — a grand slam of Cups.

Now Jimmy D. was speaking to the Detroit media on his first day as Red Wings GM. And he wanted to emphasize that the team would not mortgage its future for any quick fixes.

“I want to say right now to the people of Detroyet,” Jimmy said in his Canadian squeak, “that as long as Jimmy Devellano is the general manager of the Detroyet Red Wings, we will NOT trade a draft choice.”

And Jimmy never did.

He chose to cultivate the team from within, mostly. He began working on overhauling the scouting department, which was wretched. Jimmy D. would plug in a veteran free agent here and there — band-aids, nothing more. Just about every one of the NHL players Devellano brought in was over-the-hill: Reggie Leach, Rick MacLeish, Stan Weir, Eric Vail. And so on.

Then, after a few years of this method, Devellano got antsy. He decided to make a bigger free agent splash — still sticking to his promise of not trading away draft choices.

In the summer of 1985, Devellano signed and signed and signed some more. The Red Wings were coming off two straight playoff appearances, but they were bounced in the first round each time, going 1-6 in the process. Jimmy was impatient.

Devellano (left) with coach Nick Polano (right) and 1983′s #1 Red Wings pick, Steve Yzerman

First, a flurry of college free agents were signed — players who weren’t drafted but who had OK resumes on campus. If you don’t remember names like Tim Friday, Ray Staszak, and Dale Krentz, you’re forgiven. Each of them was a bust. The only college FA that amounted to anything who Jimmy D. signed was a center from RPI named Adam Oates.

After the college dudes, Jimmy D. brought in established NHL players — and ones who didn’t appear to be on their last legs, necessarily. Harold Snepsts was signed from Minnesota; Mike McEwen from Washington; and Warren Young, a 40-goal scorer the year before, from Pittsburgh.

The new-look Red Wings caused a stir. Some national pubs picked them to win the Norris Division. There was a photo spread in Sports Illustrated. It showed Snepsts and McEwen and others playfully making pizza pies in a Little Caesars kitchen. Devellano had tossed around a lot of Mike Ilitch’s pizza dough, and anticipation for the 1985-86 season was high. There was even a new coach to mold everything together: Harry Neale.

It ended up being the worst season in Red Wings history. In their HISTORY.

The team finished 17-57-6, giving up 400 goals in the process — an average of five per game. They surrendered 10 goals in a game on four separate occasions before Christmas. They were flat awful. Devellano’s spending spree had bought nothing but defective items.

Young was a perfect example. He scored 40 goals playing on a line with Mario Lemieux in Pittsburgh, yet in Detroit it would have taken three or four players’ talent to make one Lemieux, and even then it was close. Young scored 22 goals in Detroit without Lemieux to feed him passes.

Neale was fired on New Year’s Eve and Brad Park took over. It didn’t get any better.

Stung by that failure, Devellano changed course. He made trades. Kids began contributing from the minor leagues. He hired Jacques Demers as coach. The team made it to the Final Four in each of the next two seasons.

Free agency is heating up this summer in the NHL. A bevy of players have switched teams already, on the first day of signing. The Red Wings signed a backup goalie, Ty Conklin, and re-signed defenseman Brad Stuart. If they can add another veteran forward, they will. But there’s no sense of urgency. Not when you’ve just won the Stanley Cup.

Jimmy D. is still around, of course. If he can survive the debacle of ’85-’86, he can pretty much survive anything. Owning seven championship rings doesn’t hurt, either.

One thing has changed, though: the Red Wings do, indeed, trade draft choices nowadays. But that’s worked out pretty well for them, too.

Millen’s Cowardice Has Only One Cure: Winning

The short, dumpy, bespectacled man with the un-combed hair and ill-fitting suit stood before the throng of reporters at his introductory press conference and if you thought he was funny-looking, you were in for a treat once he began speaking.

In a squeaky, nerdy voice singed with Canada, he said, “As long as Jimmy Devellano is the general manager of the Detroy-et Red Wings, we will NOT trade a draft choice.”

It was the summer of 1982, and this little pipsqueak of a man was the one entrusted with the future of a hockey franchise teetering on the brink of self-destruction.

Jimmy Devellano. Jimmy D. The first man hired by new Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch, taking over after the Norris family era had fizzled out with one playoff appearance in 12 years. Years damaged by “Darkness With Harkness” and curious coaching hires and absurd draft choices. Grotesque re-naming of the team the “Dead Things” by an increasingly fed up media and fan base. A new hockey palace, Joe Louis Arena, that was hemorrhaging ticket-buying peasants.

Devellano’s addition, for my money, was the best bang-for-your-buck executive hire in Detroit sports history. He still works for the Red Wings as an Executive Vice President, and has been a key cog for six Stanley Cup winners: three in Detroit, to go along with the three he helped win with the New York Islanders, when he was a scouting genius. Twenty-six years of faithful service in Detroit ensued when Mike Ilitch, in one fell swoop, put an end to the front office nonsense that had been going on with the Red Wings for over a decade.

After he bought the Tigers in 1992, Ilitch monkeyed around with different GMs and scouting directors and player development people before he finally found his gem in David Dombrowski, hired in 2001. This time, Ilitch righted his own wrongs, instead of cleaning up someone else’s mess.

Bill Davidson, who would work out of offices in Detroit, then Pontiac, then Auburn Hills with the Pistons, was trying like mad to get his arms around a highly-dysfunctional front office after he bought out a syndicate of owners in 1974. He made some bad decisions before a league insider tipped him off to a little-known man sitting on the bench of the Indiana Pacers as an assistant coach.

When Davidson hired Jack McCloskey in December 1979, the Pistons had been reduced to expansion team status. McCloskey’s words. Once, Trader Jack offered his entire roster to the Lakers for Earvin “Magic” Johnson. When I reminded him of this youthful indiscretion a couple summers ago, McCloskey laughed, recalling it fondly and with total recollection.

McCloskey, though, was no fool. He built a championship team from the dregs he was handed when he signed on with the Pistons. And he did it rather rapidly, all things considered. Hiring a coach named Chuck Daly accelerated things a bit.

Davidson would learn more lessons after McCloskey departed, all of them the hard way. Until he handed the Palace keys over to Joe Dumars in 2000.

The Red Wings, Tigers, and Pistons have all graduated from the school of hard knocks. The Lions are still in detention hall.

Matt Millen was no coward on the football field. There really aren’t any of those in the NFL, if you want to know. One does not play professional football if one has any propensity toward fear. Millen was a middle linebacker, the kamikaze of the defense. He learned linebacking from the LB factory of college, otherwise known as Penn State University. Some schools make good doctors, or lawyers, or scientists. Penn State made linebackers. And Millen was one of the best – college and pro. He won pro championships – almost being able to fill all of his fingers on one hand with rings.

Millen does not run the Lions, anymore, with the zeal or reckless abandon that he once used to crush enemy ball carriers. There may not be any cowards on the football field, but there sure are some of them walking around in the management offices of professional sports teams across the country.

Millen is now one such coward.

He held an absurd, brief Q&A session with some Detroit sportswriters at the NFL combines in Indianapolis the other day. The newspapers printed portions of it, and the websites ran it in its entirety. But it had all the substance of a rice cake.

The questioners wanted to know why Millen is increasingly less visible and quiet the deeper he gets into his reign, which is now 112 games old – 81 of those losses.

“I can’t do anything about the perception,” he said. “You can perceive it any way you want. The facts are these: I have 100% confidence in Rod Marinelli. I trust him. I think he’s doing it the right way. I trust his words. So I don’t have to say anything. I think he does a great job with it, and I think it’s good. There’s one voice. Go ahead and speak. I’m very comfortable with him. …”

In other words, I’m going to prop my coach out there to take all the heat, even though he’s working with the chicken feathers I’ve given him, his charge being to make chicken salad out of it.

Millen says we can perceive it any way we want. That’s a fastball down the middle.

Millen is in seclusion most days because he has nothing good to talk about. Simple as that. And losing breeds cowardice among executive types.

When the Tigers were losing 119 games in 2003, Dombrowski didn’t vanish. Dumars of the Pistons and Kenny Holland of the Red Wings have put themselves in the line of fire, answering all the “what happened?” questions in the wake of playoff disappointments. No cowards, they. Winning has made them visible, and by extension, brave. And I can assure you that none of them would go into hiding if things were to ever go south again. They’re not those types of dudes.

Because they’re hard-knock school graduates, you see. They have diplomas, where Matt Millen has been too yellow to earn his.