Stanley Cup Or Bust For Hossa?

Marian Hossa has about six months left in Detroit. Maybe. It’s borrowed time that he’s spending in the Motor City, and no one knows just how finite it is. He could be gone in June, a Stanley Cup champion. Or not.

It’s typical when the short-timer and the media get together. The short-timer wants to talk about now. The media wants to talk about later. The result is that nothing gets accomplished.

So we don’t know if Hossa, the Red Wings’ prized free agent signing of the summer, will play in Detroit beyond this season, having signed just a one-year deal last July. We don’t know if this Stanley Cup-or-bust move of his will pay off. And of course, we’re not about to listen to him as he tries to convince us that it’s all about the present.

“I’m not too worried about money now,” Hossa said as he engaged us skeptics via phone the other day.

Well, no – of course he’s not. He shouldn’t, since he’s being paid millions to be yet another superstar player just trying to fit in on the best hockey team on the planet.

But those millions are only through this season. Hossa spurned a chance to rake in millions more, for many more years, when he instructed his agent to phone the Red Wings and talk about a one-year commitment. The logic was simple, really: I want to win a Cup – and Detroit’s about as good a place as any to give that a whirl. So goodbye, guaranteed long-term contract elsewhere – like in Pittsburgh, from where he came, or someplace else. Edmonton was a player in the Hossa Sweepstakes. It was reported that the Oilers had scraped up enough Canadian dough to make Hossa one of the richest players in the NHL, or any HL in the world.

“I have no regrets,” Hossa says. “I came to Detroit for one reason.”

Don’t they all?

If you want to gamble and see a show, you go to Vegas. If you want to grab a cheese steak hoagie, you go to Philly. And if you want to win a Stanley Cup, you go to Detroit. The Red Wings have won four of them in the past 11 years – or often enough to fend off the dogs who call in to sports talk radio and pound away sans spell check on the Internet message boards.

“Expectations are really high here,” Hossa said as he spoke of how the superstar player like himself gets his juices flowing when the ante is raised. “So far it’s been great. I try to play my best. We have lots of great players. Right now, we’re just having fun winning games.”

There it is again – “right now.” If you want to talk to Hossa about what may happen past the 82-game regular season and the playoffs, you’re out of luck. I know. I tried.

Playing Devil’s Advocate, I asked Hossa, who leads the Red Wings in scoring by the way, about the unthinkable – namely, if there’s a team hoisting the Cup next spring that doesn’t have a Winged Wheel on the front of its jersey. Does he stay on and try it again in Detroit?

“That’s hard to say,” he says, and by then you already know that he’s fending you off, like he does every night with the puck against opposing players who futilely try to take it from him. “(The Red Wings) have quite a few other players they have to sign. It also depends on the salary cap – whether it goes up or not. There are a few things to figure out. I’m not thinking about next year right now.”

Well, that makes one of us.

It’s hard not to fast forward to next summer and wonder where Hossa fits in, if he does at all, with the Red Wings. His parry of my question was astute: the Red Wings do, indeed, have a number of high-profile people to sign. That group includes Henrik Zetterberg, who’s the best player on the ice on the nights when Hossa or Pavel Datsyuk is not, and Johan Franzen, the Red Wings’ Scoring Mule. It’s a long shot that GM Ken Holland can keep everyone in the fold, as he now operates under a budget that isn’t infinite, like the good old days, pre-labor lockout.

So forget about getting any introspective comments from Hossa about the future. For now, he’s a very happy camper in Detroit.

He speaks highly of coach Mike Babcock (“He likes details. He can play different systems, which makes him one of the best coaches in hockey”). All he said about captain Nick Lidstrom was that Lidstrom “is the best Swede to ever play.” And he recognizes and relishes the passion for hockey in his current hometown (“People talk about hockey and the Red Wings here. It gets you going”).

In other words, let me enjoy this while I can, OK?

Hossa doesn’t want to repeat this end-of-Finals disappointment in Detroit

On Wednesday night against the Calgary Flames, Hossa was a terror – and he didn’t even score a point. It wasn’t for anything he didn’t do. It was just one of those nights when the other team got lucky that no. 81 didn’t get on the scoresheet. Because it was another game in which Hossa had the puck a lot, and when he didn’t have it, he just went and got it again.

This fetish for controlling the puck was at its most ridiculous during a 15-to-20 second sequence that started with Hossa barreling down the left wing on a pseudo breakaway, continued with him being checked at the last moment just before he was about to deke the goaltender, and ended with Hossa skating three-quarters of the length of the ice to take the puck back, as he is its rightful owner, you know. That play didn’t have any bearing on the game, per se, but it wasn’t any less fascinating.

The Red Wings’ most talented players are also the hardest working. The team has, at the same time, three of the best offensive forwards in the game in Hossa, Zetterberg, and Datsyuk. They also happen to be three of the best defensive forwards in the game, too. So the question begs: will that trio become a duo next off-season?

In Hossa’s words, “That’s hard to say.”

But easy to imagine. And curse the thought.

18-4-4 Red Wings Still Not Happy, Which Is Nothing New

The Red Wings are seeking a spark. They’re shuffling lines. The starting goalie has been benched — temporarily. Two of the three defensive pairings have been switched. There seems to be some concern that they’re not dominating enough at home.

All this, and there they sit at 18-4-4.

Oh, to have such troubles, eh?

It’s amazing, the measuring stick by which the Red Wings operate nowadays.

They keep winning, yet no one truly seems happy — from coach Mike Babcock to goalie Chris Osgood to captain Nick Lidstrom.

You kind of get the feeling that the Red Wings look at these 82-game schedules that the NHL offers up every season as nothing more than 82-game playoff tryouts. As Osgood himself told the Free Press, “If you start winning in April, no one cares what happens in December.”

He continued. “That’s what we do here, is prepare for the playoffs. When we won the Cup, I couldn’t care less what my stats were.”

Well, he may have to go that route again, because the stats aren’t too pretty right now.

A 3.17 GAA. An unsightly save percentage of .876. Those are about as un-Vezina as it gets. But then there’s this on Osgood’s line: 11-1-4 — as in, his won-lost-OT/shootout loss record. It’s the only line that really matters. Incredibly, despite his pedestrian numbers, Osgood hasn’t lost in regulation since opening night. Where else but on the Red Wings can you have such stats and yet be undefeated in regulation for two months?

There’s no one better suited to coach these Red Wings than Babcock

I rarely know what to write about here when it comes to the Red Wings, between October and March. The regular season records have been monotonously brilliant. There’s been little off-the-ice drama — like, none, really. The players are sickeningly team-oriented. They positively burst with leadership. They win Stanley Cups often enough to fend off the dogs in town.

But this is, actually, something to spend some time on in this space. For I can’t recall when the Red Wings’ record has been so stellar while so many in the inner sanctum have been so critical.

Yet this is another example of Babcock’s mastery. He’s Scotty Bowman Lite, but that’s no knock. It just means that he has a way of keeping the troops motivated and interested without resorting to mind games or other nefarious tactics. Babcock is able to call out his players without embarrassing them. He knows that when you point a finger, several are pointing right back at yourself. So he includes himself, often, when critiquing his team. He also knows when to allay the fears of the aforementioned dogs who call sports talk radio and pound away angrily without spell check on the Internet message boards.

All this adds up, of course, to bad news for the rest of the NHL. The San Jose Sharks, coached by Babcock disciple Todd McLellan, have an even better record than the Red Wings. But no doubt they’re a lot more giddy over there than the Red Wings ever will be until May or June. McLellan has a very nice team in Northern California, but it is not as talented as what’s in Detroit. There’s no shame in that; none of the other 28 teams can match the Red Wings, pound-for-pound, either.

So the Red Wings are 18-4-4, they’re unhappy about it, and vow to correct themselves in preparation for springtime hockey. What do they want? 22-2-2? 24-1-1? Is that what they expect of themselves?

Yes — and that’s why the rest of the NHL should be soiling their long johns right now.

Hate? It Was All In Spirit Of Competition, Roy Says Now

It all started on December 2, 1995. That’s when the Detroit Red Wings, unbeknownst to them, created a monster.

That night, the Wings went into the famed Montreal Forum and put a good old-fashioned pasting on the Canadiens. They beat them, annihilated them, 11-1. Never before had a Red Wings team beaten a Canadiens squad so badly. And it happened on Montreal ice, no less.

In the process, the Red Wings helped set off a flurry of events that, ultimately, would lead to a key figure in a near-future rivalry tormenting them for years. Until he, finally, got his comeuppance.

I was watching the tube that night. The Red Wings were merciless, pelting Canadiens goalie Patrick Roy. As puck after puck poured past him, through him, behind him, the Forum crowd got nastier and nastier. Now, when a hockey team loses 11-1, it’s not because of one man, not even the netminder. It’s a total breakdown. Yet the Canadiens fans made it clear that the object of their derision was the arrogant and defiant Roy, a two-time Stanley Cup winner in Montreal. It mattered not that had it not been for Roy, there wouldn’t, most likely, be those two Cups, won in 1986 and 1993. Sports is a “what have you done for me lately?” business. So the Forum crowd let their frustration and embarrassment get the best of them.

Roy’s coach, Mario Tremblay, a former Canadiens player, didn’t do his goalie any favors, either. In retrospect, perhaps it’s Tremblay that the Red Wings should blame for toppling the first domino. For Tremblay didn’t do the honorable thing and pull Roy from the goal when the score was getting out of hand. He left his goalie on the ice, in the net, as if being punished. The inference was painfully evident: Tremblay had it out for Roy, for whatever reason, and thus was making a spectacle of him. Earlier, Roy had looked to the bench, after maybe the eighth or ninth goal. Patrick’s inference was evident, too: Get me out of here!! It’s not my night, coach!

Tremblay, staring hard at Roy from behind the bench, sneered and left his goalie in the net. Humiliating him. Cutting off his nose to spite his face.

Then it all came to a head. Roy made a routine save, and the Forum crowd cheered, oozing sarcasm. Roy heard it – who couldn’t have? – and raised his arms in mock triumph. Now Roy was showing up the fans.

At the next whistle, Tremblay finally, but still without mercy, called Roy to the bench. The humiliation was over, and so was Roy’s night in net.

The Forum had this odd set-up whereby the fans sitting directly behind the bench weren’t separated by glass from the players and coaches. If you weren’t careful, you’d spill your beer on Toe Blake or Scotty Bowman or Claude Ruel or Jacques Demers. On this night, sitting behind the Canadiens bench was Ronald Corey, president of the team. As Roy skated off the ice, he stopped at Corey’s seat. He whispered something into his ear as Tremblay looked on, burning up. What Roy said was basically this, confirmed by the principles: “Get me out of here. I just played my last game for the Canadiens.” Of course, that’s the version that I’m allowed to write in this family column.

Roy, indeed, played his last game for the Canadiens that night. A few days later, Corey obliged Patty, and shipped him to the Colorado Avalanche.

A rivalry was born!

The Red Wings and the Avalanche – shortened to Avs by those impatient and spelling-challenged sports writers – were about to engage in one of sports’ all-time greatest rivalries. From 1996-2002, the teams met in the playoffs five times. Three times the Avalanche, er, Avs, won. The two times the Red Wings triumphed, they went on to win the Stanley Cup.

And all the while, Red Wings fans had to deal with that cocky, disrespectful punk in net. Patrick Roy.

Initially, the object of the fans’ scorn in Detroit was the pugnacious, though cowardly forward, Claude Lemieux, who became Public Enemy #1 after rearranging Kris Draper’s face in the 1996 Western Conference Finals with a vicious hit from behind into the boards. But then Patty Roy opened his mouth one game later, and it was REALLY on.

The Avs won the first two games of that series in Detroit. Finally, in Game 5, the Red Wings won a game on home ice, moving them to within 3-2 in the series. Afterward, Roy refused to give props to the victorious Red Wings. Instead, he said…

“Well, you had to figure that they’d manage to win a home game sooner or later, wouldn’t you?”

Not only did he say it, he smirked about it smugly.

The Avs won that series, and the Cup one round later. The next year, it was the Red Wings’ turn. They beat the Avs in the Conference Finals, and won the Cup one round later.

The Avs beat the Red Wings in the second round in 1999 and 2000. Patty Roy’s team was now 3-1 in playoff series against Detroit. By now, Red Wings fans would have killed for another chance at Patty and the Avs.

Two years later, they got that chance.

Roy (right, battling Chris Osgood at the height of the Red Wings-Avs rivalry)

It was another conference final, another classic series. The Wings won Game 1 in Detroit. The Avs won Game 2. The Wings won Game 3 in Denver, in overtime. The Avs squared the series, then went ahead, 3-2, with an overtime win in Detroit. It looked like another Avs-over-Detroit series in the playoffs.

Then Patty Roy’s arrogance and flair for the dramatic jumped up and bit him, right through his hockey pants.

In a scoreless Game 6 in Denver, after a scramble in the Avs’ goal crease, Roy raised his gloved hand in triumph, certain the puck was in it. It wasn’t. It had fluttered out of his mitt and onto the ice, where Brendan Shanahan saw it and dutifully slapped it into the back of the net. The Red Wings added an insurance goal and won the game, 2-0. There would be a Game 7 in Detroit.

That’s when Roy got his comeuppance. Just like they had in Montreal six-and-a-half years earlier, the Red Wings pelted Roy with pucks. And just like in Montreal, those pucks were going into the net at a dizzying rate. The Red Wings chased Roy to the bench, a defeated rival. The final score was 7-0. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in the next round, right on cue.

This past week, as we media types talked to Roy on a conference call about his upcoming jersey retirement in Montreal, I made mention of those great Red Wings-Avs games. And I asked Patty if he was aware of how hated he was in Detroit. Yes, I used the word “hated.”

“It’s funny. I never really felt hated. The fans in Detroit love their team. I was playing golf with some Detroit people down in Myrtle Beach and they said, ‘Oh we hated you in Detroit’, but they were laughing about it. It was a great rivalry and those games were always a big deal. It was great competition.”

And what of that night in December, 1995, when the Red Wings unwittingly changed the course of hockey history?

“They say that one game doesn’t make a career,” Roy said, chuckling. “But I’m still remembered for that one game on December 2, 1995. People are still asking me about it.”

Hated or not, it’s nice to see Roy’s dramatic exodus from Montreal be overshadowed by his no. 33 jersey being hoisted to the rafters. It deserves to be up there, even if some folks would have liked to have seen Patty himself hanging instead of just his sweater. Perhaps you’re one of them. It’s likely that you are.

Red Wings Giving Up Goals By The Bucketful, But At Least They’re Doing It In November

So what will the Red Wings’ winning percentage be once they get around to playing some defense?

Scoring is up around the NHL, and nowhere is that more true than in Detroit, aka Hockeytown (if you believe the hype).

We’re used to seeing GAAs just barely peeking above 2.00 around these parts. After last night’s unseemly 7-6 overtime loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Red Wings have now given up 47 goals in just 14 games — a GAA of 3.36. If Scotty Bowman was behind the bench of a team with such numbers, Hockeytown would need, in the words of Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Batman, “an enema.”

But this is the NHL, where November is part of that great, big black hole called the regular season. What’s more, it’s still the early throes of that big black hole. Translated: don’t worry, be happy.

After all, the Red Wings ARE 9-2-3, and that’s very Red Wings-like, indeed. They’re just going about it in a different way now: running-and-gunning, their aim now to simply outscore their opponents. Lord knows they’re not getting much help from the blue line corps, nor the goaltenders all that much.

The good news is that if you’re going to be sieve-like defensively, you may as well possess one of the best offenses in the world. Which the Red Wings do. Last night’s game could just have easily ended in a Detroit 7-6 win instead. The Red Wings should never be afraid of having to score, of having to lean on their firepower while they clean up their mess on the back end. Because as bad as they’ve been defensively, the fact of the matter is that the odds of the Red Wings scoring six goals on any given night is still much better than them giving up seven. But they shouldn’t have to do that — at least not long-term.

Already, stalwarts such as Niklas Kronwall and Brett Lebda have slumped and, in Lebda’s case, been scratched from the lineup. Goalies Chris Osgood and Ty Conklin have had their spectacular moments, but they’re not bailing their teammates out enough to keep that GAA down.

Last season, right around this time, I fussed about goalie Dominik Hasek. The 42-year-old was off to a slow start, and I went into Chicken Little Mode, suggesting that perhaps he was done as a quality netminder. It wasn’t the first time that I cried wolf. Hasek, of course, made me look silly — my keyboard hanging from the scoreboard, as Mickey Redmond would say — recovering in short order and turning in another remarkable season. Then, Hasek fooled me again. As the playoffs neared, I wrote that he was just the man to lead the Wings to the Stanley Cup. I was half-right; the Wings took the Cup, but not before Hasek hiccuped again, and Osgood took his place. Dom always was a tough guy to figure out.

So here I go again, restless in November about goals against. Frowning even though the Red Wings gather points at a .750 clip.

But it’s also the nature of covering and following the Red Wings beast to crab about the regular season in November because there’s precious little else to discuss until April. Because you know the Red Wings will somehow end up with 50+ wins, 110+ points and will be serious Cup contenders come spring. That’s a given. You gotta have SOMETHING to complain about!

Besides, there are no 7-6 games allowed in the playoffs. It’s a league rule, I think.

Sculptor Amrany Has One More Red Wing (At Least) To Capture

How wonderful it is that Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, and Alex Delvecchio are still in our midst.

I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I’m pretty confident that no other Original Six team still has an entire forward line of the magnitude of those guys alive and kicking, and with their faculties. We’re talking 50 years ago when nos. 7, 9, and 10 were doing their thing.

The Red Wings, as an organization, has done its part in recognizing this treasure trove of old school talent. Numbers have been retired and lifted to the rafters. Special nights have been held throughout the past 20 years or so. And Howe (age 80), Lindsay (83) and Delvecchio (76) are always included when the Red Wings celebrate a team banner-raising ceremony. It’s great that that trio has received all the accolades and honors while they were still alive to see it.

The two most recent instances have occurred over the past couple of weeks, with the unveiling of statues bearing the likenesses of Lindsay and Delvecchio, similar to the one honoring Howe, which was dedicated in April 2007. All three statues were created by Chicago-based artist Omri Amrany. And, all three are scattered in the Joe Louis Arena concourse.

“One thing I love about my statue, it’s indoors,” Lindsay said. “The pigeons are not going to get a chance to get at it.”

Well, that’s ONE way to look at it, Terrible Ted.

I hope Amrany won’t mind if I commission him for one more statue. Maybe he needs the money. You know, starving artists and all.

Sadly, it won’t be one attended by the subject, but I don’t know how you can get into statue-unveiling mode and not have one of Terry Sawchuk greeting JLA visitors. Even the kiddie Red Wings fans who’ve only known success by this franchise are aware of the exploits of Howe, Lindsay, and Delvecchio — largely because they’re semi-regulars at JLA and around the team in general. I wonder how many of them, though, have any idea what goalie Sawchuk did for their team, back in the day.

Terry Sawchuk, whose career record of 103 shutouts is only now being threatened (New Jersey’s Martin Brodeur has 96), and he played his last game 38 years ago. Terry Sawchuck, who put on a display of goaltending in the Stanley Cup playoffs of 1952 so dominating it almost doesn’t seem true (8-0, four shutouts, 0.63 GAA). Terry Sawchuk, who barely lived to see the end of his career, let alone any post-retirement honors that would have come his way.

Ask just about any Red Wing from those glory days of the 1950s, and Sawchuk will be one of the first teammates they talk about in terms of contributing to the success the Wings enjoyed. The Red Wings were a marvelous team, no doubt, but it was still left to Sawchuk to stone the opposition and steal two points on many a night. It’s not a fit of homerism to declare him the best goaltender of all time.

He didn’t just play for the Red Wings, though he did play for them on three different occasions. Sawchuk was, at various times, a Boston Bruin, a New York Ranger, a Toronto Maple Leaf, and a Los Angeles King. But he played most of his 971 games with the Red Wings, by far.

His no. 1 jersey is hanging alongside 7, 9, 10, 12, and 19 near the girders at JLA, and that’s very nice. But now that we’re erecting statues of the forwards, may as well include one for the goalie, too.

I think it’s appropriate that fans get hit between the eyes with a larger-than-life, 3-D display of Sawchuk making a save as they enter the Joe — and the new arena, whenever that may be. And make it of him maskless, as he spent most of his career.

We’ve had some fine netminders in Detroit: Glenn Hall; Roger Crozier; Roy Edwards; Dominik Hasek; Chris Osgood. But none, with the exception of maybe Hasek in his prime, can touch Sawchuk. And they’d all agree.

So sorry, Mr. Amrany — but I don’t think your work is done. Let me work on the Ilitches for you. Meanwhile, keep your chisel handy. And don’t forget Steve Yzerman, who’s going to be due for a statue, too — but I think that one can wait till the Red Wings christen their new arena.

Sawchuck, who died tragically at age 40 in 1970 after some horseplay with Rangers teammate Ron Stewart led to internal bleeding and infection, won’t be able to see it, but his family can. It’s great that the Red Wings honor the living legends among us, but let them not forget about the goalie who died young who backstopped them to glory. Just because he’s not around doesn’t mean he should be left out of the statue party.

Babcock, Players Eager To Start Defending Stanley

Mike Babcock said it as if he needed to remind all of us.

“It’s hard to win the Stanley Cup,” the Red Wings coach said. “It was hard to win it last year, and it’ll be hard to win it again this year.”

But, contrary to what is sure to be trendy belief, it won’t necessarily be because of the so-called “Cup hangover” that sometimes inflicts the defending NHL champions.

Babcock and GM Ken Holland were speaking in an NHL-coordinated media conference call yesterday afternoon, and as usual when anyone from the Detroit organization sits down to talk hockey, the event takes on an almost professorial/student tone.

One of the themes was how Babcock would approach his job this season. Because what inevitably comes after you win the Cup for the first time as a coach is coaching a Cup-defending team for the first time. When the media merry-go-round stopped at me, I asked Babcock about it — wanting to know if he’d spoken to anyone in the league, including Scotty Bowman, in a tone of, “What do I do NOW?”

But lest I forget, these are the Red Wings, and that means there is no shortage of champions to seek out for advice.

So Babcock talked to Nicklas Lidstrom. He talked to Steve Yzerman. He talked to Kris Draper. And he talked to Bowman. And he spoke to some people from other orgs, like Ron Francis and Jim Rutherford of the Carolina Hurricanes, Cup champs in 2006.

“I asked everyone I possibly could. The list goes on and on,” Babcock said.

“I’m a big believer in each year is different, and I don’t think there’s much carry over from year to year anyway,” Babcock said. “We have a great opportunity here. This is our big chance. We don’t know when a chance will come this good again. I hear Kenny talk about next year (when the Red Wings have to make some tough decisions based on impending free agents), and so I’m already nervous about next season.”

Earlier, Holland had spoken about a “one-year window”, referring to the addition of superstar forward Marian Hossa as a free agent. Hossa signed a one-year deal in July. And that accounted for Babcock’s nervousness. But there shouldn’t be any nerves shown by his players.

“We’re in shape. We’re ready to go. The players know what kind of an opportunity we have. I’m excited about this year, and so are our players, so let’s get at it.”

It almost made me want to lace on some skates.

Holland said, to give an idea about how the Red Wings will wear the bulls eye this season in an era of parity, “I figure out of 82 games, about 70 of them will be playoff-type games. I figure there might be 10-12 games where it’ll be decided after the second period — either we’re out of it or we have the game put away. But beyond that, I think the other 70 games will be like playoff games — going down to the last three or four minutes.

“And that’s before the playoffs even start,” he added.

Babcock figures to need all of the depth at his disposal under such a scenario — depth that he put into perspective this way.

“This is easily the best group of players I’ve ever sent to the minors. Ever,” he said of the moves that sent forwards Ville Leino and Darren Helm to Grand Rapids.

For the record, Holland says he’s trying to trade defenseman Kyle Quincey, but he won’t rush a deal. The Wings have some time, with Darren McCarty, Chris Chelios, and goalie Jimmy Howard all starting the season on injured reserve.

“We can start the season without any moves, but when our people get back (from IR), we’ll have to make some decisions,” Holland said.

Someone asked Holland if the Red Wings would be interested in power forward Brendan Shanahan, who’s an unrestricted free agent.

“We’re so close to the cap,” Holland said. “Not unless Brendan wants to play for the minimum salary.” Then he added, laughing, “I don’t anticipate that happening.”

I don’t, either.

Ho-Hum – Another NHL Regular Season That Needs To Be Suffered Through In Detroit

They’re about ready to start another National Hockey League season. Or, as it’s known around these parts, the Playoffs Pre-season.

They’ve become 82-game annoyances, these NHL regular seasons for the Red Wings. But they play them, because the contract says so and players’ stats need to be updated and Mike Ilitch needs to pay for everything, after all.

That, and it gives folks a halfway decent shot at seeing their team play in person without having to break into their 401-(k)s and other investments.

Chris Chelios once told me as much.

It was a couple springs ago, the playoffs finally ready to start. Another 82-game annoyance over and done with, the Red Wings somehow able to stay interested enough to ring up another of those sparkling regular season records. You know the kind: 50+ wins, not that many losses, few goals against, lots of goals for. Tons of points. The usual.

We were allowed into the Red Wings’ inner sanctum as they peeled off their gear after the last practice before the Real Deal – the playoffs – began. I settled next to Chelios, and he started telling me of the boredom he just had to work through from October to mid-April.

“I’m not really much of a regular season guy,” he said. “The playoffs are what I live for.”

If those sound like the words of some sort of hockey snob who’s only mostly known success, then sue him, for Chelios at the time was 45 and I can understand his having his fill of games in Columbus or Minnesota in January. Nothing like Hockeytown in the springtime.

“It’s nice to have all the wins and get the points,” Chelios continued as he tossed the sweaty stuff into a nearby pile that was growing exponentially by the minute. “But these are the playoffs now. New season.”

And this – more of the usual: “I think we have a really good team. I’ll put this team up against any.”

You can pretty much take those last two sentences and apply them to any one of the Red Wings’ previous 14 seasons to this one.

It’s all about winning Stanley Cups in Detroit nowadays. It used to be about making the playoffs. Before that, it was about not doing anything too terribly embarrassing.

They used to say the same about Montreal: win the Cup or else. The “or else” part was pretty reliable. Despite all their success, the Canadiens were never shy to change coaches, especially after Scotty Bowman left in 1979. Most of the coaches had French names befitting the Quebec city. But their heritage didn’t help them if they didn’t deliver. They have words for “throw the bum out” in the French language, too.

But the Canadiens haven’t been Cup champions since 1993, when our old friend – and Frenchman, natch – Jacques Demers guided them to the chalice. I’ve complained about the Hockeytown moniker for Detroit, truth be told, because I don’t know how you can lay claim to that when you’re still far, far behind the Canadiens in terms of Stanley Cups won. But the marketing suits started that jazz up in the mid-1990s, it caught on, and the city’s hockey fans seized on the title. So we’re Hockeytown in Detroit – but only lately. I still don’t think two good decades following three bad ones gives you that status, but whatever.

Yet I’ll say this: every year since 1993, and I mean every year, the Red Wings go into the playoffs as a legitimate Cup threat. They might not always get out of the first round, but the pre-playoff expectations are there. And they’re deserved. In any given year, you really can’t come up with more than one or two teams that would seem, on paper anyway, to have a better shot at winning the whole deal than the Red Wings.

The great Wings teams of the 1950s didn’t have that long of a stretch of championship contention. Neither did the Lions’ near-dynasty of the same decade.

In other cities, you’ll find a handful of teams who can rival the Red Wings’ current streak. The Canadiens of the 1950s, ‘60s,and ‘70s had good runs in each decade. The Yankees in baseball, of course, throughout the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The Celtics of the 1950s and ‘60s.

These are times that you should tell your children about, and their kids.

“I remember when the Red Wings, every year, had a legitimate shot at the Stanley Cup,” you can tell them as they gaze up to you, wide-eyed – for who knows what state the hockey team will be in at that point. “Yes sir. If they didn’t win the Cup, the season was considered a failure.”

From Ilitch to GM Ken Holland to coach Mike Babcock, they all know the drill: the Red Wings exist to win Stanley Cups. Some teams bravely talk like that. The Red Wings just do it.

Our other teams have played at being champions for brief times. The Lions won a few in the ‘50s. The Pistons have won three since 1989. The Tigers have sprinkled their four World Series triumphs over 73 years. All have had decent runs of respectability and peripheral contention.

But the babies who were in diapers the last time the Red Wings were playoff outsiders are now graduating high school. We’re in danger of rearing an entire generation who’s never known anything BUT playoff hockey in Detroit. The horror of it all!

So what did the Red Wings do within weeks of winning their fourth Stanley Cup in the past 11 years? They simply went out and snagged one of the stars from their vanquished Finals opponents – Marian Hossa of the Penguins – and signed him to a one-year deal, staying under the salary cap, somehow. The rich got richer.

“I come to Detroit to win a Stanley Cup,” Hossa said before the ink dried on the contract.

Don’t they all?

Helm Can Be Red Wings’ X-Factor

You know you’ve reached at least some sort of cult status as a pro athlete, when people start dubbing young, up-and-coming players as a “little” you.

Kris Draper has, believe it or not, achieved that status.

Don’t look now, but Draper is a grizzled, 15-year veteran now. He’s one of those four-time Stanley Cup winners that dot the Red Wings’ roster.

The Draper story is near legend in these parts.

Purchased for $1 from the Winnipeg Jets. Speedy Gonzalez on the ice. Founding member of the Grind Line. Face smashed like an egg shell into the boards by Claude Lemieux. Eventually, one of the premier face-off men in the league, and maybe one of the best penalty killers in history. Scores a goal every other full moon.

Today, Draper is one of the faces of the Wings who kind of functions as an unofficial team spokesman. He’s no longer an afterthought with reporters; he’s one of the first Red Wings whose opinion is sought out.

Now here comes a player that has been called, by some, a “little Kris Draper.” I’m one of the some.

Darren Helm is 21 years old, skates like he was shot out of a cannon, and seems to make the other team nervous out there because of his speed and forechecking ability.

Draper is 37, and with most teams that means he’s nearing his swan song, but with the Red Wings, that really doesn’t mean jack. How can it, when last year the team employed a 43-year-old goalie and still keeps a 46-year-old defenseman on its roster? And, correct me if I’m wrong (but I’m not), but isn’t Nicklas Lidstrom 38? And isn’t Lidstrom simply the best defenseman in the NHL, and in Europe, and in the Milky Way?

So it’s not like Draper is being booted out the door by the emergence of Helm, who made quite an impression in last spring’s playoffs. But there certainly is room for two jitterbugs like Draper and Helm on the payroll.

Helm sat out the first four games of the first round, and was inserted in time for Game 5 against Nashville, when the Red Wings found themselves in a shaky 2-2 series tie. He didn’t come out of the lineup the rest of the way.

I was stunned at how much influence Helm, a rookie who had just seven NHL games under his belt come playoff time, had on the tempo of the game whenever he was on the ice. It wasn’t just his speed, which is blurring, but it was his puck sense and his knack for being around it. In short, you can usually tell who the veterans are during the playoffs. There’s an intangible there. They play with a certain calmness and are able to harness their amped up energy. So here Darren Helm was, flying around the ice, but in control and making things happen. Maybe this is the highest praise: I felt absolutely no uneasiness whenever Helm was on the ice. To the contrary: I WANTED Helm on the ice, and as much as possible.

Helm chipped in four points (2 G, 2 A) in his 18 playoff games.

Yet Helm’s place on the 2008-09 Red Wings is hardly sealed. Competition is fierce, and there’s no guarantee, none at all, that Helm will be among the Red Wings when they prepare for their season opener a week from Thursday against Toronto. Helm’s biggest hurdle, it appears, is Finnish forward Ville Leino.

Coach Mike Babcock had nice things to say about Leino after last night’s exhibition against Atlanta, but said this about Helm: “I think Helm’s an NHL player. Every time he’s on the ice, something happens. He’s an elite skater; he’s got good hockey sense.”

You know, just like a little Kris Draper.

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.

Harkness’s Furniture Moving Was An Ominous Sign

Ned Harkness is dead. Now maybe he’ll join Gary Bergman up above, and they can do some more interior re-decorating. If Gary will speak to him, that is.

Harkness died Friday, at age 89 – on his birthday in fact. A stroke had been suffered recently, they say, and that was the final straw.

So mathematics says that Harkness was 50 when he was tabbed to coach the Red Wings, way back in 1970. It was less than a year after the Wings fired Bill Gadsby just two games into the 1969-70 season – two games that Gadsby, apparently, made the mistake of winning. When I spoke to Gadsby about it a couple of years ago, Bill still didn’t know why he got the ziggy.

So here came Harkness, fresh from college. Ned had done some serious winning at the college level, first at RPI and later at Cornell. These were the days before college players found their way onto NHL rosters with any regularity. Perhaps Harkness’s most famous pupil in college was goalie Ken Dryden, who helped Ned and the Big Red win the NCAA championship in 1970.

It was a perplexing move, hiring Harkness – one of many that Wings owner Bruce Norris engaged in as he started to lose it. NHL teams simply weren’t hiring coaches from college in 1970. It would have been a trailblazing hire – had it worked.

Bergman, the Wings’ craggy defenseman who was never shy about taking on management, was minding his own business one day in the summer of ’70. Then came a knock on the door.

“It was Ned,” Bergman, who died in 2000, said in a published interview. “He sticks out his hand and introduces himself as my new coach.”

Which was fine and dandy. Until Bergman let the new coach into his house.

“He’s a bundle of energy, and he wants to talk about his theories of hockey,” Bergman continued. “So he starts moving the furniture around in my living room, to symbolize hockey players.”

You know, that chair is a defenseman; that sofa is a left wing. Or something like that.

Bergman said he looked at the spectacle taking place in his living room, his home being turned into Olympia Stadium II, and he didn’t know what to make of it. Then Gary’s wife poked her head in, to say hello to the visitor.

“She comes in, sees her living room turned upside down, and gives me this look,” Bergman said. “I just smiled and said, ‘Honey, this is Ned Harkness, the new coach of the Red Wings.’

“Then she offers Ned some coffee, as if nothing was the matter.”

Bergman went on to say, though, that he heard plenty about the matter after Harkness had left.

“Right there,” Bergman confessed about the furniture rearranging, “I knew that we were in trouble.”

Gary Bergman (top) and Ned Harkness

Somehow, owner Norris – and some would say the alcohol might have played a part (“When he fired me, there was a glass of Scotch in front of him,” Gadsby told me) – allowed Ned Harkness to infiltrate the organization and hold it hostage, as simply its coach. Bergman and several other Red Wings players rebelled. They wanted no more part of Harkness as their coach – and this was before Christmas.

A petition was circulated. The list of players who signed it included, purportedly, even Gordie Howe. The petition said, basically, this: Get rid of Harkness, or else there’ll be trouble.

The petition was submitted to GM Sid Abel, who was beginning to tire of Harkness’s college act, too.

On a Saturday night in early January, the Red Wings went into Toronto for Hockey Night In Canada. Then, as if to underline their feelings about playing for Ned Harkness, they lost to the Maple Leafs. The score was 13-0 – one of the most infamous results in team history.

Abel went into Norris’s office, armed with that poor effort and the petition in his pocket.

“We need to fire Ned,” was what Sid pretty much told his owner. No word whether the Scotch was out and visible.

Norris answered with some choice words about where Abel and the players could put that petition. Maybe the Scotch had been there, after all.

Flabbergasted, Abel quit. Then Norris had his own remedy: promote Harkness into the GM chair. At least he wouldn’t be the coach anymore. And Norris could get back to his Scotch.

There have been villains in Detroit, as in any major sports city. Many of them here, though, haven’t necessarily been those in uniform. Unless by uniform you mean suit and tie.

There was Russ Thomas, the stubborn, cheap GM of the Lions. Thomas was not only hated by the fans; he wore the black hat and twirled his handlebar mustache with the media and players, too. There was Bo Schembechler – Tigers president version. Bo became Public Enemy No. 1 when he fired Ernie Harwell from the broadcast booth. Of course, there is Matt Millen – today’s Bad Guy. Stories of the protests against Millen will go down as legend in these parts.

Ned Harkness was a big time enemy here – and maybe that’s not the greatest thing for me to be writing in the wake of the man’s death, as part of this twisted obituary. But it’s true. They even have a name for Ned’s time here: Darkness with Harkness. Because after Ned became the GM, and after he had traded away most of the Red Wings’ best players, never getting face value in return, hockey fans in Detroit got cranky. So did the players themselves. Players like Bergman, who was forever at odds with Ned and the front office, it seemed.

One of Ned’s most dastardly deeds, in my mind, was when he fired coach Johnny Wilson in 1973. The Red Wings had barely missed the playoffs, and Wilson had been credited with taking Ned’s chicken feathers and turning it into chicken salad. Wilson was a bright, young NHL coach who could have really been something in Detroit. But Ned fired him anyway.

I saw Wilson about two years ago as I prepared to monitor a roundtable discussion about hockey with Johnny, Ted Lindsay, and Shawn Burr. I told Johnny what I thought of Harkness’s decision to fire him.

“I always thought you got shafted,” I told Wilson, though I don’t think I used the word “shafted.”

Wilson smirked and shrugged.

“Darkness with Harkness,” was all he said.

It was all that needed to be said.