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All for one Team unity helped make 2002 Wings a team for the agesPosted: Friday June 14, 2002 5:16 PMUpdated: Friday June 14, 2002 9:42 PM
DETROIT (AP) -- Amid the red-and-white confetti, as players piled merrily upon Dominik Hasek, the champion Detroit Red Wings finally revealed why they might be one of hockey's greatest teams ever. All those things that can preoccupy star players -- the Hall of Fame rings, the broken records, the huge Stanley Cup-winning bonus checks -- simply didn't matter. Theirs was a rare convergence of time, talent and fate, where egos don't matter, where winning games and a big silver trophies became more important than contract extensions, bonuses and individual awards. The Red Wings are Stanley Cup champions for the third time in six years because their all-stars became all for one. Hall of Famers willingly agreed to be grinders. One of the hockey's greatest scorers sacrificed his statistics to watch over a line with two youngsters -- "two kids and an old goat," as Brett Hull himself called it. And then there's coach Scotty Bowman, who is so old-style that he'd be running the single wing if he were a football coach. And captain Steve Yzerman, who kept playing shift after shift, grueling game after grueling game, on a knee so badly ripped up he needs reconstructive surgery and might not play for six months. Hasek, one of the sport's greatest goalies ever but never a Cup winner before, put aside the individualistic quirkiness that sometimes marks his play, stopping everything in sight. Including, until the proper time, the speculation he may retire. "We'll talk about that later," he said before the Red Wings wrapped up the 10th Stanley Cup in franchise history -- and the ninth and last for Bowman -- by beating game-but-not-good enough Carolina 3-1 in Game 5 on Thursday night. Now, there's plenty of time for talking, for putting all the Red Wings accomplished -- their 22-3-1 start, the Presidents' Trophy, the Stanley Cup -- in historical perspective. "Everybody on this team at some point stepped up for a big play in a big play," Yzerman said. "The only thing that mattered was winning, and the only thing that mattered was the team." Certainly, the now-retired Bowman, one of the greatest coaches in American pro sports history, set the tone. But, as he reflected in a talk with Lakers coach Phil Jackson a few years ago, during a meeting of the minds of coaches with a combined 18 championships, coaching can only go so far. "He said, really it comes down to this: If those players don't get it, me saying it isn't going to get it, either," Bowman said. "So you put it with the players, they are the ones that decide the games. Naturally, the coach has a game plan, and it has to be exercised or executed. "But I remember saying the players have to get it on their own. If they are struggling, they have to work their way out of it." These Red Wings certainly got it. The Hall of Famers to be -- Yzerman, Hasek, Hull, Luc Robitaille, Chris Chelios, Sergei Fedorov and more -- and those that won't get in. The Grind Line of Kirk Maltby, Darren McCarty and Kris Draper, a fourth line that played like a first line for much of the playoffs. Conn Smythe Trophy winner Nicklas Lidstrom got it, too, playing so much and so well that he became hockey's version of Chuck Bednarik, the NFL's last two-way player, mostly because he simply refused to come off the field. Igor Larionov got it at age 41, saving himself and his scoring touch for the biggest moments of the season. Hull got it, keeping the finals from taking a potentially far-different turn by scoring the Red Wings' biggest goal of the season late in a momentum-swinging Game 3. Tomas Holmstrom, not much of a scorer during the season, got it with eight postseason goals, three in the two biggest games (Game 7 against Colorado, Game 5 against Carolina). Some will say these never-wing-it Wings don't deserve to be ranked as all-time champions with the Canadiens of the '50s and Bowman's team of the '70s, and the Islanders and Oilers of the 1980s because they didn't put together a long run of consecutive titles. But the game, and, more importantly, the business of hockey aren't nearly the same as then. Due to free agency and ever-climbing salaries, teams rarely stay together for more than a season or two, much less for a decade as they once did. Ten Red Wings played on all three of their most recent title teams in 1997, 1998 and 2002, but they had three different goaltenders (Mike Vernon, Chris Osgood and Hasek). And this championship team didn't really come together until Hasek, Hull and Robitaille were added as the last missing pieces to a team dumped in the first round of last year's playoffs. The 2002-03 Red Wings won't resemble these champions, either, because Bowman won't be the coach, Hasek might retire and player movement is inevitable. "Time takes care of it all -- always," Bowman said. "That's the way I feel." If that's true, these Red Wings should be judged very well by history. Not only were they the right team for the times, they were a team for all time. |
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