Fleury’s Rump The Perfectly Timed Nudge Red Wings Needed For Cup #11

The puck slid, slid, slid — slow as molasses yet fast enough to make your heart race. It moved toward the goal line and really it was like a microcosm of this entire playoff run: you were pretty sure that it was going to get there, but there was still a hint of doubt. Then down came Marc-Andre Fleury’s padded rump, and it provided the final nudge the puck needed to finally cross the goal line. And with it, the Red Wings could finally breathe, right?

Well, kinda.

That goal, which gave the Red Wings a 3-1 lead, wasn’t immediately evident until the referee’s right arm went chop, chop, chop, pointing vigorously to the back of the net, and even the Wings players on the ice seemed as surprised as someone who just found an old $20 bill in their pants pocket. They lifted their sticks and gathered into a group hug, perhaps still not certain how Henrik Zetterberg’s marshmallow shot finagled its way through Fleury’s pads, sweater, and legs and how an “innocent-looking play” — that marvelous hockey term — could end in such a happy manner. In fact, probably those of us watching at home knew before the Wings themselves did, how a 2-1 nail-biter turned into a 3-1 mini-exhale.

The replay was in slow-motion, but I think they could have run it in real time and there wouldn’t have been any discernible difference in the vulcanized disc of rubber’s speed. But as I watched the videotape roll, I kept thinking that that goal symbolized everything that has happened since the first week of April, when 16 teams started on a journey that each of them believed would end the way it ended last night, with their team captain lifting that 35-pound chalice. It symbolized the long, sometimes excruciating path that simply cannot be avoided if you want to call yourselves NHL champions. Inching, inching toward the finish line. All it needed was a nudge.

In a playoff run where Tomas Holmstrom’s butt supposedly caused goaltender interference, waving off a critical marker in Dallas, it’s only fair that the Red Wings get their Cup-winning tally because an opponent’s posterior betrayed him. Butt, butt, nudge, nudge.

Of course, that wasn’t the only drama, nor the only metaphor, nor the only symbolism. You could point to so many things: the 86-second 5-on-3 penalty kill in Game 4. The final, furious moments of Game 6, when the Pittsburgh Penguins scored to move within a goal — again — and the clock showed 1:27 remaining. 87 seconds. 87 — same as Sidney “The Next Great One” Crosby’s uniform number. Those 87 seconds finally clicked off, the clock finally showed that glorious trio of :00.0, and 87 was gone for the summer, too.

Gone too was Pens coach Michel Therrien, and I wish I knew where he kept his pacifier, bottle, and bankie, because he was, by far, the biggest crybaby coach of this post-season. But his bleatings worked to a degree, getting the officials to look harder at all that annoying obstruction that Therrien said was going on, and getting a few more calls along the way. Red Wings coach Mike Babcock didn’t get sucked in, and wonderfully once referred to Therrien as “the other guy” when he allowed himself a degree of complaining. “I’m just trying what the other guy has been doing,” Babcock said at one of the between-games pressers. Zing.

So it’s over — another two-month long playoff run in the books. Red Wings champions, as I predicted they’d be wayyyy back at the beginning of April. Granted, it didn’t happen the way I suspected it would — Chris Osgood in net; a brutal sweep of the once-mighty Colorado Avalanche; a scary 3-0 lead turning into 3-2 against Dallas; being 35 seconds away from the Cup in Detroit and letting it slip through the ice cracks. No, none of that was I clairvoyant enough to forecast. Nor would I have wanted to. Part of the fun of winning the Stanley Cup is that it’s never the same every time. Each run is different. Someone said on the radio that you should treat all your teams’ championships like your children: separate but equal in affection. Right on.

Now, about that baseball team of ours…

Time Not On Red Wings’ Side In 3-OT Thriller

This Stanley Cup Finals series has suddenly become slave to the clock. The numbers we deal with aren’t so much shots on goal and power play and penalty kill percentages, but those that are tied directly to some sort of timing device.

In Game 4, the magic number was 86, or 1:26 — however you choose to look at it. As in, 86 seconds of a 5-on-3 that the Red Wings killed in the third period, helping to seal their 2-1 win.

In Game 5, first it was :35, then 4:00, then :36, then 49:57. And none of those four figures were friendly to the Red Wings, who now must drag the weight of winning the Stanley Cup to Pittsburgh to play a Game 6 less than 48 hours after a triple-OT loss in Game 5, 4-3.

:35
That was how much time, officially, was left in the third period when Maxime Talbot poked a tantalizingly loose puck past Chris Osgood, tying the game at 3. Sitting upstairs in the JLA auxiliary press box, I could literally feel the rumble begin beneath me as the time wound down and the Stanley Cup would be made public. The roar grew in girth when the puck was bounced out to center ice in the vicinity of Henrik Zetterberg, who looked poised to slide it into a yawning, empty Penguins net. That was with about a minute to go. But the puck got chucked back into the Detroit zone. And even though Talbot’s goal only took a split second to occur, watching it unfold from my vantage point — almost directly in line with the goal line to Osgood’s left — it seemed to happen in slow motion. It was one of those moments when you could see what was going to happen but was powerless to stop it from doing so. You wanted to yell to Ozzie, “LOOK! To your left! He’s going to start slapping at the puck near the goal post!” It was like watching a two-year-old who’s about to spill his glass of milk, but observing it from across the room, never able to get there in time.

4:00
May God strike me down, but as soon as Jiri Hudler was whistled for a four-minute high-sticking penalty, I looked at my watch and muttered to myself and my sleeping wife some 15 miles away, “Well, honey, looks like I’ll be leaving the arena soon.” Because as much as I adore the Red Wings’ penalty killers, I knew there’d be no damn way they’d erase 240 seconds of power play time, fatigued in a third OT. I didn’t even see the penalty. There was an icing, and I looked up at one of the monitors in the press area, and the camera is on Pens coach Michel Therrien, and he’s holding up four fingers. Then the boos started to cascade, and I see Hudler skating to the penalty box, perhaps the loneliest man in the world at that point. Then the look to my cell phone for the time, trying to gauge when my car would be hitting the freeway. There was never any hope, and I’m almost ashamed to admit that. But I doubt I was alone.

:36
That’s all it took for my fears to be confirmed. Again, it was slow motion: watching Petr Sykora receive that pass near the left face-off circle, wide open, eons to fire up his lethal wrist shot — well, it wasn’t a very good feeling. I could see traffic in front of Osgood, in the corner of my eye, and I did what I’ve been doing at hockey games for decades: I simply looked toward the red goal light for confirmation of what I believed was about to occur. And it flashed a bright, ugly red.

49:57
The amount of overtime put in by the Red Wings and Pens. More numbers to make you cringe: the Red Wings had 58 shots on goal, the Pens 32. So you know, that works out to be about 31 for every 60 minutes for Detroit, and less than 19 for Pittsburgh. Typical.

OK, so how did we get here? How did a game get broken down so conveniently into bite-sized increments of time?

The Red Wings came out nervous to start the game. Either that, or someone told them that their families were all being held hostage and would be harmed if any Red Wings player showed any sense of urgency. The Penguins stormed out of the gate and cobbled together a 2-0 lead before the Red Wings finally realized that, you know what, the Stanley Cup isn’t just going to be given to us; we have to actually do more than flash our Red Wings crest and hope the Penguins scurry away, like cockroaches when the lights get turned on.

But the boys in red mounted a terrific comeback, and when they took that 3-2 lead and played very well with it, you were still a little scared, but also confident that the sands in the hourglass would eventually run out and so would the Penguins’ season. Yet time never moves so slow, clocks never tick backward with such molasses-like speed, as when the other team’s net is empty and the puck is being furiously directed toward your goal. I used to think 60 seconds were an eternity only during infomercials. But that ain’t nothing compared to an assault on your goalkeeper while trying to hold on to a lead by a thread.

Overtime play was mostly the Red Wings delivering punch after punch, and let’s give a shout out to Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who was outstanding. I mean, really. He was the reason there’s a Game 6 tomorrow night.

But OT was also when the Red Wings had to kill off three penalties, the Pens one. The first two Detroit penalties, for goaltender interference, were suspect. Zetterberg’s was maybe 50/50, but the one on Dan Cleary, whose momentum caused him to gently bump Fleury as he crashed the net during a one-man rush, was despicable. Yes, the Red Wings escaped those calls, but the penalties forced the team to expend extra energy and effort that wears on you as a player in such a grueling game.

So there’ll be a Game 6. The Cup gets put back into storage, and will also make the trip to the Steel City. And still only one team can win it. But now we’re just one Penguins home win away from not only bringing the Cup back to Detroit, but making it accessible to both teams. Scary, eh?

No Scotty, No Stevie? No Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edmonton WHO? Dwayne WHO?

The Stanley Cup causes amnesia in the best way.

Penguins Get Unsurprising Game 3 Win, But It Won’t Change End Result

So the Pittsburgh Penguins proved, for one game at least — one desperate, gotta win, no tomorrow, backs against the wall kind of game — that they can kinda sorta play with the Red Wings, and get a couple of bounces along the way.

It wasn’t a terrible effort by the Red Wings last night, as they fell 3-2 to the Pens in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals. But it wasn’t one of their best, and against a fired up, playing-at-home Penguins team determined not to go down 0-3, it just wasn’t quite good enough.

But the Red Wings’ ceiling is far higher than the Penguins’ right about now — meaning that Detroit can play a whole lot better, and I’m not sure that Pittsburgh can raise their bar all that much. Which all adds up, to me, to a 3-1 series lead coming back to Detroit for a clinching Game 5 on Monday.

Ahh, the bounces. Detroit’s Brad Stuart zipped a pass straight to Henrik Zetterberg … but to Hank’s skates, not his stick. And as Mickey Redmond would say, “Bingo-bango — the puck ends up in the back of your net.” The turnover was neatly and swiftly converted into a 1-0 Pens lead. Sidney Crosby scored it, added a power play goal, and the Red Wings played catch up. And they almost caught all the way up. More bounces: Pitt’s third goal was purposely banged off Chris Osgood’s legs and into the net.

The Red Wings waited too long to pull Osgood, however, and by the time they did, less than 30 seconds remained to mount an attack on the Pittsburgh net. There were chances to get the sixth attacker onto the ice with over a minute remaining, but perhaps coach Mike Babcock got a little, ahem, cocky, and put too much faith in his team’s ability to score the tying goal while playing 5-on-5. Regardless, the Wings blew it.

But they have hardly blown the series. I doubt too many folks in Hockeytown are surprised by last night’s result. Game 3 is a tough one for the 2-0 team to win, on the other team’s ice — although the Red Wings were 2-1 in that department going into last night.

Yes, the Penguins have a smidgen of confidence now — at least they’ve seen the brick wall Osgood surrender some pucks past him — but the Red Wings can still smell this latest Stanley Cup. Half the roster has won it before. You think they’re going to let the Penguins off the hook here? Besides, even a Game 4 loss, while unseemly, wouldn’t be disastrous. The Penguins don’t look ready to beat the Red Wings in Detroit any time soon.

So the Penguins got off the schneide. They scored a few goals. The puck bounced their way. They were more aggressive. Looked comfy at home. Upped their confidence a bit. Now they’re 9-0 at home in the playoffs. Good for them.

Detroit in five, that’s all. Or six. But Detroit, nonetheless.

Babcock’s Hunch Might Win A Bunch, After All

The other day, I was thinking about some of the most exhilarating and most disappointing playoff series in Detroit sports history. I did the Pistons and the Red Wings in my scattered brain. Obviously, the ’87 conference finals — Pistons/Celtics — is right up there in the disappointing category, for it was the series of Isiah’s “pass” to Larry Bird.

Anyhow, I rattled some of these around and I came to one conclusion: ALL playoff series are disappointing when you lose. There just isn’t a worse feeling. Yet winning a series mostly seems to bring out feelings of relief, at least in me, instead of any pure exhilaration. Funny how that works.

But one Red Wings series sticks out in my mind, and it’s the 0-4 effort in the 1995 Cup Finals against New Jersey. Oh, how that series gives me the creeps when I think of it! A powerhouse Red Wings team going up against a defensive-minded Devils club with the brilliant young netminder Martin Brodeur. Detroit was the clear favorite, though some more level-headed folks went with the Devils and their trapping play as their predicted winners.

The Red Wings lost both Games 1 and 2 at home, and both by one goal. I can still see Paul Coffey lying on the ice, trying to draw a penalty, while play continued and the Devils scored late in the third period of Game 2.

The series just got worse and weirder when it went to New Jersey. Seemed like the Devils would score on every one of their few scoring chances, while Brodeur kept stoning the Red Wings and their vaunted offense. The Wings led briefly in Game 4 but couldn’t hold it. They got swept.

Chills. Creeps.

Not that the Pittsburgh Penguins were favorites going into this series, but I imagine Pens fans must be getting that creepy feeling, watching their team go 0-for-2 in Detroit — and by that I mean no goals, let alone victories. How maddening must it be to watch your team play for the Stanley Cup and not even be allowed the common courtesy of occasional puck possession?

Back in the glory days of the 1950s in Montreal, it was once said of the Canadiens’ success: “They play a funny brand of hockey in Montreal. They never let you have the puck.”

Same kind of hockey that they’re playing in Detroit nowadays.

I don’t want to gloat (yet I will), but I predicted a Red Wings Cup wayyyy back as the playoffs began. Just had a hunch — though I thought the Wings would have to go through San Jose to do it. But I must confess that my visions of Lord Stanley didn’t include Chris Osgood in net. And, I’m ashamed to admit, had I thought it would be Ozzie in goal for almost the entire playoff run, I might have been a little skittish. Yes, shame on me.

Why is that, I wonder? Osgood has won a Cup. He played magnificently for almost the entire season. He made the All-Star team. Yet I was content to place my eggs in Dominik Hasek’s basket and take my chances.

Now, a word or two about Hasek. First, just because he was replaced after Game 4 of the Nashville series doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t have gotten it together and led the team to the same place it sits right now — two wins from the championship. Second — and this word is actually more about coach Mike Babcock — Hasek was replaced on a hunch, more than anything else. Kind of like my hunch that the Red Wings would win the whole thing.

As we look back on this 2008 playoff run, we might want to put Babcock’s decision to replace Hasek with Osgood on the same mantel as Tigers manager Mayo Smith’s dare to put Mickey Stanley at shortstop in the 1968 World Series. It’s a move that Colorado’s now ex-coach, Joel Quenneville, didn’t have the man-berries to make after Jose Theodore stunk up the joint in Detroit in the first two games of the second round.

This Stanley Cup Final isn’t over with. Not by a long shot. Every playoff hockey series is always just one strange bounce/fluke goal, hard hit, or costly penalty away from being turned around. But it’s hard to imagine that these Red Wings are NOT the NHL’s team of destiny this season, Osgood capturing another Cup ten years after his first. By the way, what IS the longest gap between Cups for a goalie for the same team?

Oh, and since that Devils Debacle of ’95, the Red Wings are 14-1 in Finals games against their Eastern opponents.

Memorial Day Weekend Hockey Once Yzerman’s Time

They sat all in a row, in one of the cramped cubbies adjacent to Joe Louis Arena’s ancient and too-small press box. Five suits – the stuffed shirts of Red Wings hockey. Hall of Famers and icons.

Scotty Bowman, nine-time Stanley Cup winner and one of the all-time greatest coaches in any game, from hockey to tiddly-winks. Jimmy Devellano, as Red Wing as you can get without ever having slipped a hockey sweater on. Kenny Holland, one of the deans of league GMs. Mark Howe, three-time Cup finalist and a fine defenseman who toiled in pro hockey for 22 years, yet is still only the second-best player in his own family.

And SteveYzerman, the youngest and newest of the stuffed shirts.

Bowman is still employed by the Red Wings, in that purposely ambiguous role of consultant. Devellano is an executive vice president. Holland is in his 11^th year as GM. And Howe was back in town – a rarity, as he is usually elsewhere, scoping out other teams in his duties as an advanced scout.

I looked over at the stuffed shirts often during breaks in play of Saturday’s Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, and four of them looked relaxed and seemed to be enjoying the action as easily as if they were watching the game from their sofas. Only one of them tended to lean forward, hand on chin, at times looking like he wanted to jump from his seat. Not until late in the third period, the game well in hand for Detroit, did the fifth and youngest stuffed shirt tend to relax.

Playing hockey on Memorial Day weekend is a privilege – earned and not assumed, as if a right. And it was the youngest of the Red Wings’ management core who knows that better than anyone.

Steve Yzerman was that fidgety stuffed shirt last night. And I can only imagine what must be going through his mind right about now. Down below, the next captain, Nicklas Lidstrom, played his usual robotically brilliant game on the blueline – a predictably major reason why the Red Wings smothered and shutout the star-struck Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-0, to move in front at the end of the first turn in these 2008 Finals. But I doubt that seeing how Lidstrom had things under control somehow lessened the angst Yzerman experienced last night.

This used to be Yzerman’s time – when hockey was a diversion from the holiday grilling and was sharing the headlines with the Indianapolis 500. Not always did Stevie Y’s teams make it to Memorial Day, but when they did, it all started with the one wearing the “C”.

There was the occasional locker room pep talk – given when Yzerman felt things slipping away from his hockey club. They were few, but because of their rarity, they became legendary. Some words in St. Louis, one year. A gathering in the friendly skies, jetting out to Vancouver in an 0-2 series hole in 2002. And some others. But words were never Yzerman’s deal. He was about pushing himself, physically and emotionally, and leading by example.

Lidstrom is that way; he’s eloquent in his speech but he’s no Knute Rockne. He, too, prefers to just play hockey to the very best of his ability and be a pied piper that way.

Yzerman says he doesn’t miss the game on the ice. Hasn’t really even put his skates on, to hear him tell it. He’s content to be a stuffed shirt and learn about front officing. And there are dumber folks to learn from than Holland, Bowman, and Devellano.

But what must Yzerman be thinking now, his team on the verge, perhaps, of another Stanley Cup? Can he truly say this morning, without crossing his fingers behind him, that he doesn’t miss playing? He might not miss the physical pain he put himself through in order to be in the lineup, but is he really impervious to the allure of playoff hockey competition, some of the toughest, most draining in all of sports?

I would have asked him these things but he was huddled up, away from the media, along with the other stuffed shirts. There are no more post-game comments from Yzerman, no more patient, hang-on-every-word answers coming from him under the brightness of the TV lights and the pushiness of the hand-held microphones shoved into his face. Post-game for Steve Yzerman now is an office and a few of his management types, hashing over what just happened; what else is there to do? All the work by the shirts is done. All that’s left now is for the coach to coach and the players to play. And for the sophomore vice president to perhaps gaze longingly at the other side of the hall, where the Red Wings’ dressing room is located.

If the Wings capture this Cup, which they should, it will be the first one since 1955 that didn’t have Steve Yzerman on its roster. There was a time when no one thought the Red Wings could win a Cup WITH Yzerman, and now we are wading through a period where some have wondered if they could win one WITHOUT Yzerman. No disrespect to Lidstrom, of course. But look how long it took the team to win one after Gordie Howe retired.

Memorial Day weekend hockey. Some of the best – for players, coaches, media, and fans. Oh, it’s fun for the stuffed shirts, too, but maybe not as much for the one who only two years ago was on the other side of that hallway.

Steve Yzerman had his time. I just wonder how tough it is for him to let go of it.

Game 6 Is Really A Matter Of K.I.S.S.

Here’s something you’ll be force-fed ad nauseam between whenever you’re reading this and tonight’s Game 6 of the NHL’s Western Conference Finals. And if you’re reading this AFTER the game, how was that Pepto-Bismol, anyway?

Ready? Here comes.

The team that has scored first has won every game of this series so far.

A compelling stat, no? Something tangible for the microphone types to blather about throughout the game, right? Only one problem. It’s not true.

Oh, officially it’s true. But as far as I’m concerned, the Red Wings scored first in Game 4. The refs, sadly, didn’t see it the same way. Too much junk in Tomas Holmstrom’s trunk for their liking.

But enough about that.

Chris Osgood, bless his heart, tried this misguided logic after the Wings lost Game 5. It shows that it’s all a matter of timing.

“If you would have told us that we’d be in the conference finals going to Dallas up 3-2, we would’ve taken that,” the goalie said — trying to prove how wise he’s gotten from his 15+ years in the league. But not so wise for this old curmudgeon, who pointed out to myself that had you presented Osgood with that scenario after Game 3, it wouldn’t have sounded so alluring.

“So, Chris — your team has just won the first three games of this series. How would you like to come back to Dallas up 3-2?”

I doubt he’d have said, “We’ll take it.”

See? Timing.

Enough about that as well.

I’m old enough to know that tonight’s Game 6 isn’t about spilled milk in Game 4 or Osgood’s Beltway-like spin doctoring or bemoaning Johan Franzen’s now notorious “concussion-like symptoms.” It’s not about being a-scared of Marty Turco or fretting over the ice conditions in Dallas.

Time to quote that legendary sage and soothsayer. You know, the Pistons’ Rasheed Wallace.

“Just playin’.”

That’s what Sheed likes to say after big Pistons victories — especially the ones on the road.

Just playin’.

It’s not bad advice, really — especially for a team that might be teetering a bit. MIGHT be.

Just go out there and play Red Wings hockey. Coach Mike Babcock, spoiling the media’s fun by actually speaking words that are soaked in logic and common sense — how DARE he, anyway? — said as much yesterday, quoted in today’s Free Press.

“Guys, we directed 58 shots at the net yesterday,” Babcock said. “They directed 28. Let’s not make things bigger than they are or smaller than they are. We had clear-cut opportunities that didn’t hit the net. That’s being too fine. Pound it off the goalie and shoot the rebound in the net.“

The man clearly has no future as a TV analyst. Or a sports talk radio blabbermouth. Or a bottom-feeding blogger.

Babcock’s assessment was the Canadian’s version of Rasheed Wallace’s “just playin’.” To do otherwise would be to, as Babcock said, “make things bigger than they are or smaller than they are.” In other words, be like Goldilocks. Don’t make things bigger. Don’t make things smaller. Ahh — make them just right.

Oh — and score first. Just to be safe. Not that I believe in that stuff or anything.

Once Again, The MSM Misses The Boat

I don’t know who the referees are that have been assigned to tomorrow’s Game 5 of the Red Wings-Dallas Stars series, but I suggest they utter something like this prior to dropping the puck, to both centers in the face-off circle at center ice:

“OK, we’re Even Steven now, alright? Detroit, we let you have a goal that should have been disallowed earlier in the series. Dallas, we took one away from Detroit that should have counted. Everyone should be happy. Now let’s play some hockey!”

The fact that Pavel Datsyuk’s disallowed goal in Game 4 was so blatantly a make-up call for what happened in Game 1 somehow has eluded many in what my friend Big Al likes to call the MSM (Mainstream Media). Big Al’s favorite columnist, Mitch Albom, wrote an entire chronicle of the disallowed goal — the referee said that Tomas Holmstrom was in the crease when he clearly wasn’t — without once mentioning that it MIGHT have been a make-up call from Game 1, when Holmstrom’s body was significantly in goalie Marty Turco’s personal space. All Albom did was bellyache about the call, which without question was a turning point, wiping out a 1-0 Wings lead. But his omitting the obvious over-reacting by the zebras as being made in make-up fashion made me wonder if Albom had even seen Game 1 — or had at least overheard a discussion about it at the Free Press water cooler. HA!! As if Albom has set foot in the Freep’s building on West Lafayette even once in the past 15 years — unless it was to have a check signed, or to be presented with another award based on popularity rather than skill.

Sorry — I digress.

But it wasn’t just Albom. The “make-up theory” didn’t get much ink, at least not like it should — especially when it appeared to be so blatant. Versus analyst Eddie Olczyk — I like him a lot, by the way — picked up on it as the Stars exhaled after the decision had been rendered.

“Maybe a make-up call from what happened in Game 1,” Olczyk said. Ya think?

So, even up in the “goals disallowed” column. At least, it should be. Tonight’s game should start with a clean slate. And Holmstrom should keep doing what he does best: camp out in front of the Stars’ goal. Coach Mike Babcock has rightly announced that the Red Wings will keep doing what needs to be done, and that includes crashing the net. He’s not going to let one bad call stop his team from playing its game.

By the way, Albom has been splitting himself in two lately, penning columns about the Red Wings and Pistons, sometimes on back-to-back days. Clearly, some things are falling through the cracks.

Oh, and I had a feeling the Red Wings would lose. The franchise record for consecutive wins is nine. They’ve reached it a few times over the recent years, never able to get that 10th straight win. It happened again this season. So when the playoff streak reached nine this week, I felt a disturbance in the force. So with that loss out of the way, expect a conference trophy presentation at JLA tomorrow evening.

Cup For Red Wings Fait Accompli

Check with the Wayne County Road Commission. Make sure there aren’t any plans for Woodward Avenue the first week of June. Tell ‘em to get any and all orange barrels out of the way. While you’re at it, tell them to not mess around too much with I-75, the Lodge Freeway, I-94, or I-96 until we’re done; we want as many people as possible to make it into downtown. Might as well confer with the Big Guy, God himself, and put in our request for sunshine and blue skies to drench ourselves in.

I can’t make any such assurances for the Pistons — far from it, actually — but I’ve made up my mind about the Red Wings. Stanley Cup no. 11 for the franchise will be hoisted into the air by captain Nicklas Lidstrom sometime within the next four weeks. It’s money in the bank. May as well give the engraver the Red Wings’ roster and have him start doing his thing.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way during these playoffs; just the first time that I’m going public — and not just for some sort of shock value to get a discussion thread going at some online forum. The Red Wings’ karma is right. They’re healthy, happy, and wise — and that’s a tough combo to beat in springtime. Oh, and they have goalie Chris Osgood — who’s all three of the above, and on a mission. Don’t kid yourself that he’s not. How’s this? He last won the Cup 10 years ago, and he had to beat the Dallas Stars in the conference final in order to do it. Weird, huh? But in a good way. By the way, I wonder what the longest gap is between Cups for one goalie with the same team. Ozzie’s ten year chasm between champagne baths surely must rank right up there. What’s more, he’s been gone and come back again. His would be a remarkable story — correction, WILL be a remarkable story — when the Red Wings again call themselves champions. Think of it. 35-year-old backup figures to play maybe 30 games this season, then not only exceeds that, but starts in the All-Star game. Then not only THAT, he starts the playoffs as the backup anyway. Then not only THAT, he steps into the fray in the post-season’s fifth game and proceeds to rack up seven straight wins. Whew! This would be the easiest movie script anyone could ever write, because it’s penning itself.

The Red Wings were systematic and opportunistic — again — in grinding the Stars into the Joe Louis Arena ice last night in Game 1. As usual, Osgood could play the role of interested observer at times — especially in the first period, when the Red Wings outshot the Stars, 12-4. And, as usual, when called upon to put his mask back on, slip on his glove and grab his stick, Osgood made one key stop after another. It’s been the same formula as in Games 5 and 6 versus Nashville, and in the rumored series against Colorado.

I never feared the Stars; in fact, I was much happier for the Wings to play them than San Jose, who still scares me, even though they’re eliminated. If the Sharks, who had a monstrous second half of the season, would have escaped an 0-3 hole against Dallas, then there’s no telling what they would have been capable of against Detroit. But the waters are clear of Sharks — I’m pretty sure — and so it’ll be on to the Cup Finals, where I’ve also made my choice: bring on the Flyers. I want no part of Crosby, Hossa, Malkin and company. But even if the Red Wings draw the Pens, they’ll win. See the opening paragraph.

Call me counting my chickens before they’re hatched. That’s fine; they’ll be cute little chickies when they do. I’ve gone out on a limb, and I rather like the view from here, thank you. Seven more wins to make it official.

Save me a spot near Hart Plaza.

Stars’ Hull Faded In Detroit Before Emerging As An Exec

I’ve seen Brett Hull wear many sweaters slipped over his street clothes, sitting in a chair at center ice, as he participates in a tribute — be it for him, or for someone else. His no. 16 is in the rafters in St. Louis, retired. He wore the winged wheel a year ago January when the Red Wings shuttered no. 19 in honor of Steve Yzerman. And he wore a Dallas Stars sweater proudly over his streets when they celebrated a Stanley Cup in 1999.

Now Hull just has the suit, not the sweater, as he will watch his Stars — he’s co-GM — take on the Red Wings in this year’s Western Conference Final. He still, to me, seems too much of an oddball to be a general manager — not that he won’t be a good one.

When last seen around these parts — prior to the Yzerman tribute — Brett Hull was a washed up, malcontent forward who vanished into thin air during the 2004 playoffs. A coach with a stronger resume, i.e. Scotty Bowman, almost certainly would have benched him; he was simply awful. But the Red Wings were in the post-Bowman Era, and Dave Lewis opted for sticking his head in the sand while Hull loafed. Communication broke down between Lewis and Hull, which is ironic, because if there’s anything Brett Hull does better than score goals, is communicate — whether you want him to or not.

So Hull faded away, and turned up with the Phoenix Coyotes after the lockout, though he only played in five games before retiring at age 41. He tried his hand at TV, but found it too suffocating, under NBC’s intermission format. Then he landed the Stars’ gig, and it’ll be interesting to see how long he lasts there.

Hull gave the Red Wings three solid seasons (scoring 92 goals), and one lousy playoff. Sadly, my lasting image of him in Detroit is the Hull whose mug should have been on the side of a milk carton, rather than the one that will rightfully be on display in Toronto, at the Hockey Hall of Fame. Maybe that’s my baggage that I’m making him carry, but that’s how I feel. I think after seeing him for nearly 20 years in the NHL, I had just grown weary of Hull’s outrageous mouth. He quit on a first-year head coach, letting his team down in the process, and that’s just not cool.

But what’s past is past.

There’s no questioning Hull’s knowledge of pro hockey, and he may even be a pretty astute judge of talent. Those two things are a good start for an aspiring GM. But while being outspoken and brash and abrasive might be good traits for a superstar player — or even a coach — it’s hard to see that translating to the front office. Likewise, it’s difficult to imagine “Hullie” toning his act down, even if he’s wearing a tailored suit rather than a hockey sweater.

We’ll see how quotable Hull is — or isn’t — during this conference final, a series in which his team will lose in no more than six games.