Of all traditions in sports, the post-series handshake in the NHL has to be one of my favorites. After being vanquished in a tough series, it's always heartening to see smiles and handshakes, shows of respect to one another. Nick Lidstrom sharing extra words with Suter and Weber. Zetterberg and Weber sharing a civil handshake. Jimmy Howard and Pekka Rinne having a handshake and brief man-hug. Lidstrom and Babcock both having extra words to Barry Trotz. Beautiful moment from a tight series; an obvious show that both teams have great respect for one another.
Now, congratulations to Nashville. They've slain their Goliath, putting down the divisional rival Red Wings, the team that was their standard to beat. They put the NHL's primary current dynasty on their butts and made them the first team out this year. Not only that, but they did it convincingly. For those who watched all five games, did you ever suspect at any point that Nashville would lose the series? I predicted a Nashville victory in 5, but I didn't expect Detroit to spend a lot of it looking deflated. Nashville ground them down and wore on them all series long. The pressure from their top guys was relentless. Have you seen such a stifling defense? The praise of this victory is going to Rinne, who had an impressive save percentage from it, but that was courtesy of a defense that rarely let Detroit have a good shooting lane. The Red Wings are a team that doesn't dump the puck on net often as it is, rather content to cycle the puck until the right shot opens up. With Nashville, the right shot never opened up. Many of the pucks that came Rinne's way were easy saves.
Did you see those sweet Datsyuk highlights, though? No? Oh, right, that's because there weren't any. Yet another mark of that Nashville defense - they controlled the Red Wings' top players. Datsyuk was under such pressure from Fisher or Suter so often that he never got to play wizard on them. The Wings looked tired. How many shots did they not get because their reactions seemed a split-second too slow? Meanwhile, Nashville was all over everything. Trotz said it perfectly early in Game 5 - they weren't going to try to beat the Red Wings at their game, they were going to make the Red Wings play theirs. It worked. They didn't try to play a puck possession game or prevent the Red Wings from doing so. They responded to it with a perfect defense, clogging the shooting and passing lanes and leaving the Wings very little reward for their effort.
The biggest thing the Wings were missing in this game was a grinding element. Babcock even acknowledged after Game 1 that they really didn't have the personnel to exact revenge on Shea Weber for his WWE-style tactics on Zetterberg. Bertuzzi apparently disagreed, but in truth, Babcock was right. The Wings are a finesse team. They have been for a long time. But they also used to keep about a line's worth of grinders - guys like McCarty or Maltby or Draper. Guys who could go out and wear out the opposition, or punch them in the mouth when need be. To be fair, Helm is the new (faster!) Draper, a grinder in the mold of those guys, although a much more significant playoff "x-factor" because of his breakaway speed. Eaves, even fills in that role some. Abdelkader can do that, too, as he led the Wings in fighting penalties this year, but he can't do it alone, and he's still a pretty young kid up against some pretty big Nashville guys. The Wings can finesse their way past a lot of teams, but it was clear from the start of this series that the Predators would have none of that, indeed, were built and schemed specifically to not allow that.
So where do the Wings go from here? There's been talk already among the Detroit media of "blowing the team up" or "shaking things up significantly." That's pretty premature, if you ask me. For one, the Wings were lacking two significant playmakers in Darren Helm and Patrick Eaves. While two injuries shouldn't make or break a series, it leaves a mark, and as some NHL pundits have mentioned, the winning team is often the least injured team. Beyond that, the Red Wings are an older, veteran team, and perhaps Father Time is catching up with them some. Perhaps the new parity of the NHL is catching up more now, as well, as other teams are closing the talent gap more, with several years of planning and modeling paying dividends now. Perhaps some of everything.
As far as shaking things up, well, some of that will happen naturally. There's no certainty that Nick Lidstrom will be back; he'll be 42 in a week and while he still plays at a high level, he's starting to slow down, especially at the end of the year. Brad Stuart is almost certain to be gone; he wants to be on the West Coast, nearer his family and home, and if he offers teams from those areas a discount on his market price, well, he'll find a home there. Tomas Holmstrom is 39 and has acknowledged the wear and tear on his body from the game he loves; he's an unrestricted free agent.
Ken Holland knows these things. There's a reason they traded for Kyle Quincey, who will hopefully be better in a full season wearing the Winged Wheel. Assume that Lidstrom and Stuart both leave; without acquiring any new players, the Wings' starting six defensemen would likely be Kronwall, White, Ericsson, Quincey, Jakub Kindl, and Brendan Smith. Not a bad set. Not what we'd be used to, but honestly not bad. Brendan Smith is considered the top prospect in the Wings' farm, and he showed in a brief stint with the Wings this year that he belongs on the roster. Kindl and Quincey both need work, but that comes from playing. I expect the Wings to go out and acquire another defensemen or two to have depth and competition, but given the above, don't expect a big splash. That's not how the Wings do things. People griped at ho-hum nature of the Ian White acquisition in last year, but he's been huge for the Wings this year and fit into their system perfectly. As for Holmstrom, his departure would only clear the way for some of the other young Wings to rise up - both Gustav Nyquist and Jan Mursak impressed me during their time with the team this year and both, I feel, should be on the roster to start next season.
The Red Wings are entering a period of transition, insofar as the Red Wings transition. If it's not this year, I am certain next year will be Lidstrom's last. The "C" will be passed on (to Zetterberg, I'm sure). A new group of veterans will guide a new group of young players. Just as Yzerman, Draper, and Lidstrom brought up a group of upstarts named Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Kronwall, so will those guys bring up more. It's how the Wings do things. Maybe then they'll find that ever-important, never-quantifiable "hunger" to bring another Cup to Hockeytown.
Showing posts with label Detroit Red Wings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detroit Red Wings. Show all posts
Friday, April 20, 2012
Friday, December 2, 2011
What sports can mean to a person...
Steve Yzerman returned to the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit this past week for a game in which his Tampa Bay Lightning faced off against the Detroit Red Wings. I caught the game on Versus, as I typically try to catch Red Wings games when they're on. You see, the Red Wings are the most important sports team there is to me.
I'm not sure why that is. We have the Red Wings, the Tigers, the Lions and the Pistons in Detroit. Professional basketball stopped appealing to me by the turn of the millennium and really, even before that, the Pistons were never a team I had my eye on - they often put up solid teams, but never a marquee guy you watched for - no Jordan or Ewing or Magic. And we got to see a lot of Jordan in Detroit. There really was no act in basketball in the '90s that compared. But that's another discussion for another day. The Tigers were decent - they had memorable guys like Cecil Fielder and remarkable guys like Lou Whittaker and Alan Trammel. But they didn't contend in the '90s like they did in the '80s. The Lions had Barry Sanders, who was to the NFL what Jordan was to the NBA. That might be an exaggeration, but it felt like it to Detroiters - and quite frankly, there's never been anyone like Barry. But the Lions were never particularly great, either.
Sometimes in sports, a team captures magic. You can feel it around them. I felt it with the Red Wings before anyone else and it's for that reason that the Wings are first and foremost in my heart. I'll remember the moment vividly for all my life - I'm sitting up as a kid, 12 or 13 years old, watching Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals. It's at Joe Louis. It's against the Philadelphia Flyers, who were favored to win the series, and yet, these young, upstart Red Wings have a 3-0 series lead and a 1-0 lead in the game in the second period. And Darren McCarty takes a pass at center ice. He pulls out a truly awesome deke on the Flyers' defenseman, then follows it up with another on All-Star goalie Ron Hextall, backhanding the puck into a virtually empty net. I remember being absolutely slack-jawed. It was a move you expected from Wayne Gretzky. McCarty was our enforcer - our resident beat-'em-up bad boy. He didn't score goals, at least not like that. And yet, there it was. And the Joe Louis Arena erupted. I'd never seen anything like it. The place went nuts. Right there, right then, that series ended and everyone knew it. The Red Wings knew it. The fans knew it. The Flyers knew it. The place rocked for the rest of the game. There was magic in it, magic I still see and feel when I see replays or videos of it now. It just coursed through the place. I knew, when that puck hit the net, when the Joe erupted, that my team was going to win it all. It wasn't the first Detroit sports championship of my lifetime, but it was the first I was actively cheering for; the first I was emotionally invested in.
A week later, Vladimir Konstantinov, a Red Wings defenseman, was in a car crash with a team masseuse and chauffeur. Konstantinov was paralyzed. It was a sobering moment for a city that was still celebrating. I remember it being a shock, as if a family member or, at least, a good friend had been hurt. I remember there being vigils. I remember the city pouring its heart out to a man whose only words in English had come through a translator. But he was one of ours. He was a Red Wing. When the season started, it was never spoken that I can recall, but it seemed like everyone knew... the Wings played knowing it, the fans seemed to know - we were going to win the Stanley Cup again, for Vladimir Konstantinov. We did. And when the buzzer went off and the game ended, who was wheeled onto the ice but Vladimir Konstantinov, in his jersey. And when Steve Yzerman handed the Cup off, it was to set it on Konstantinov's lap. The team surrounded him at that time, a moment that I have a photograph of, set onto a marble plaque that hangs in my office, because of what that meant. Because that's the kind of team the Red Wings are. It's the kind of city Detroit is. It's a big part of why I'll always hold the Red Wings a bit higher than the Tigers, Lions and Pistons. And sure, a long playoff-appearance streak helps. They're the winningest Detroit team of my life. But that's not my first thought. I think of guys who spend their careers in Detroit - Yzerman and Lidstrom, for example. I think of the Joe Louis Arena erupting, of the magic of that fateful McCarty goal. I think of Vladimir Konstantinov, on the ice in a wheelchair, the Stanley Cup on his lap and the Red Wings surrounding him. That's what I think of.
Sports are a trivial thing on the surface. Men battling each other to throw or hit an object into a larger receptacle for metaphysical points. On the surface, it doesn't mean a lot. And yet, somehow, these contests define entire cities, entire populations. People gravitate towards them. They bleed for the game. Fans weep tears of sorrow, tears of joy. Because sports go beyond the game itself, you know. It's about people, about relationships. It's about magic and destiny. It's about someone like Vladimir Konstantinov, paralyzed in a horrible accident, being on the ice for the celebration a year later. It's about Steve Yzerman playing his entire career as a Red Wing, being an icon to the city, growing up in front of the eyes of every Detroit hockey fan, from being a wide-eyed 19 year-old to growing up to be the face of the franchise, becoming a leader before our eyes. It's about watching a city's worth of people set aside multitudes of difference in favor of a single commonality - loyalty to a sports team.
Yzerman returned to Detroit this week. The Red Wings did him the honor of a brief video tribute during the first commercial break; the fans did him the honor of a deserved standing ovation. We love Steve Yzerman, or Stevie Y as we know him, in Detroit. Steve Yzerman, a good sport, came to the ice to wave to the crowd as it ended, to receive the honor. But he looked the slightest bit uncomfortable during it. But that's Stevie Y - he never hogged a spotlight. It was always about the team, always about the game. And for him, it still is, it always will be. It was an unavoidable event - a tribute to Yzerman on his first game back in Detroit after leaving. It was a formality on all sides; something the Red Wings were obligated to do, something that Yzerman knew would happen. He deserves every tribute, but he's not the kind of person who focuses on that or really cares; he's about the game, about his team, about getting points on that night. That attitude is his legacy, the one that builds champions, the one that earns these inconvenient tributes. In the era of the diva athlete, it's no wonder that Detroit loves Steve Yzerman, it's no wonder that we admire him and we love the Red Wings he helped build. He just went to work, did his job, and built something wonderful.
I'm not sure why that is. We have the Red Wings, the Tigers, the Lions and the Pistons in Detroit. Professional basketball stopped appealing to me by the turn of the millennium and really, even before that, the Pistons were never a team I had my eye on - they often put up solid teams, but never a marquee guy you watched for - no Jordan or Ewing or Magic. And we got to see a lot of Jordan in Detroit. There really was no act in basketball in the '90s that compared. But that's another discussion for another day. The Tigers were decent - they had memorable guys like Cecil Fielder and remarkable guys like Lou Whittaker and Alan Trammel. But they didn't contend in the '90s like they did in the '80s. The Lions had Barry Sanders, who was to the NFL what Jordan was to the NBA. That might be an exaggeration, but it felt like it to Detroiters - and quite frankly, there's never been anyone like Barry. But the Lions were never particularly great, either.
Sometimes in sports, a team captures magic. You can feel it around them. I felt it with the Red Wings before anyone else and it's for that reason that the Wings are first and foremost in my heart. I'll remember the moment vividly for all my life - I'm sitting up as a kid, 12 or 13 years old, watching Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals. It's at Joe Louis. It's against the Philadelphia Flyers, who were favored to win the series, and yet, these young, upstart Red Wings have a 3-0 series lead and a 1-0 lead in the game in the second period. And Darren McCarty takes a pass at center ice. He pulls out a truly awesome deke on the Flyers' defenseman, then follows it up with another on All-Star goalie Ron Hextall, backhanding the puck into a virtually empty net. I remember being absolutely slack-jawed. It was a move you expected from Wayne Gretzky. McCarty was our enforcer - our resident beat-'em-up bad boy. He didn't score goals, at least not like that. And yet, there it was. And the Joe Louis Arena erupted. I'd never seen anything like it. The place went nuts. Right there, right then, that series ended and everyone knew it. The Red Wings knew it. The fans knew it. The Flyers knew it. The place rocked for the rest of the game. There was magic in it, magic I still see and feel when I see replays or videos of it now. It just coursed through the place. I knew, when that puck hit the net, when the Joe erupted, that my team was going to win it all. It wasn't the first Detroit sports championship of my lifetime, but it was the first I was actively cheering for; the first I was emotionally invested in.
A week later, Vladimir Konstantinov, a Red Wings defenseman, was in a car crash with a team masseuse and chauffeur. Konstantinov was paralyzed. It was a sobering moment for a city that was still celebrating. I remember it being a shock, as if a family member or, at least, a good friend had been hurt. I remember there being vigils. I remember the city pouring its heart out to a man whose only words in English had come through a translator. But he was one of ours. He was a Red Wing. When the season started, it was never spoken that I can recall, but it seemed like everyone knew... the Wings played knowing it, the fans seemed to know - we were going to win the Stanley Cup again, for Vladimir Konstantinov. We did. And when the buzzer went off and the game ended, who was wheeled onto the ice but Vladimir Konstantinov, in his jersey. And when Steve Yzerman handed the Cup off, it was to set it on Konstantinov's lap. The team surrounded him at that time, a moment that I have a photograph of, set onto a marble plaque that hangs in my office, because of what that meant. Because that's the kind of team the Red Wings are. It's the kind of city Detroit is. It's a big part of why I'll always hold the Red Wings a bit higher than the Tigers, Lions and Pistons. And sure, a long playoff-appearance streak helps. They're the winningest Detroit team of my life. But that's not my first thought. I think of guys who spend their careers in Detroit - Yzerman and Lidstrom, for example. I think of the Joe Louis Arena erupting, of the magic of that fateful McCarty goal. I think of Vladimir Konstantinov, on the ice in a wheelchair, the Stanley Cup on his lap and the Red Wings surrounding him. That's what I think of.
Sports are a trivial thing on the surface. Men battling each other to throw or hit an object into a larger receptacle for metaphysical points. On the surface, it doesn't mean a lot. And yet, somehow, these contests define entire cities, entire populations. People gravitate towards them. They bleed for the game. Fans weep tears of sorrow, tears of joy. Because sports go beyond the game itself, you know. It's about people, about relationships. It's about magic and destiny. It's about someone like Vladimir Konstantinov, paralyzed in a horrible accident, being on the ice for the celebration a year later. It's about Steve Yzerman playing his entire career as a Red Wing, being an icon to the city, growing up in front of the eyes of every Detroit hockey fan, from being a wide-eyed 19 year-old to growing up to be the face of the franchise, becoming a leader before our eyes. It's about watching a city's worth of people set aside multitudes of difference in favor of a single commonality - loyalty to a sports team.
Yzerman returned to Detroit this week. The Red Wings did him the honor of a brief video tribute during the first commercial break; the fans did him the honor of a deserved standing ovation. We love Steve Yzerman, or Stevie Y as we know him, in Detroit. Steve Yzerman, a good sport, came to the ice to wave to the crowd as it ended, to receive the honor. But he looked the slightest bit uncomfortable during it. But that's Stevie Y - he never hogged a spotlight. It was always about the team, always about the game. And for him, it still is, it always will be. It was an unavoidable event - a tribute to Yzerman on his first game back in Detroit after leaving. It was a formality on all sides; something the Red Wings were obligated to do, something that Yzerman knew would happen. He deserves every tribute, but he's not the kind of person who focuses on that or really cares; he's about the game, about his team, about getting points on that night. That attitude is his legacy, the one that builds champions, the one that earns these inconvenient tributes. In the era of the diva athlete, it's no wonder that Detroit loves Steve Yzerman, it's no wonder that we admire him and we love the Red Wings he helped build. He just went to work, did his job, and built something wonderful.
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