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Posted: Tuesday May 04, 1999 03:42 PM

Big Wheel  

General manager Ken Holland is one reason Detroit is again in the driver's seat

By Kostya Kennedy

In late February the pressure was mounting on second-year Detroit general manager Ken Holland. The Red Wings were barely over .500 and seemed unlikely to win a third straight Stanley Cup, in part because Holland's off-season signing of free-agent defenseman Uwe Krupp had failed. (Krupp played just 22 games this season because of a back ailment.) Holland was responsible for doing something drastic to revive Detroit. The trade deadline was a month away.

By trading for Samuelsson (in red), Holland put new fight in the Wings' defense. David E. Klutho

Then, on Feb. 21 Holland's mother, Lee, called and told him he had better come home to Vernon, B.C. "My father had fallen," says Ken, 43. "He just had a broken arm, but because of his condition we knew it was serious." Ken's father, Rienie, was suffering from Parkinson's disease, and the broken bone began a series of complications that caused his body to fail. For three days, from 8 a.m. until past midnight, Ken sat with his younger siblings, Diane and Dennis, by Rienie's bed at the hospital in Vernon. At 2 a.m. on Feb. 26, Rienie died. "That week was the first time I can remember Ken putting something before hockey," says his wife, Cindi, who has been married to Ken since 1980.

On March 2 Ken delivered the eulogy at Rienie's funeral. Three days later he was with the Red Wings on a road trip. He turned his cell phone back on; the trade deadline was 18 days away. "While I was with my father, there was no hockey in my life," says Holland. "I needed to grieve and to sort things through. When I came back, life was marching on. I had to march on too."

On March 23, in the most significant cluster of trades by any team this season, Detroit acquired winger Wendel Clark and goalie Bill Ranford from the Lightning and, more important, landed hard-hitting defensemen Chris Chelios (from the Blackhawks) and Ulf Samuelsson (Rangers), who transformed the Wings' defense from suspect to fearsome. The Red Wings responded by winning nine of their final 12 regular-season games and sweeping the Ducks in the first round of the playoffs. "Even if we don't win another game, I feel the trades were right," said Holland last week. "We're back in the picture. We were kind of falling out."

Hired as a western Canada scout in the autumn of '85 by Jimmy Devellano, the former general manager who is now the team's vice president, Holland became Detroit's chief scout within five years. Under Holland the Wings drafted such essential players as goalie Chris Osgood and forwards Slava Kozlov, Martin Lapointe, Darren McCarty and Keith Primeau, the last of whom was traded for star wing Brendan Shanahan.

In 1994 Holland was named assistant general manager, and when he succeeded Devellano as general manager in the summer of '97, he immediately made a gutsy move by trading Cup-winning goalie Mike Vernon, who was 34, to the Sharks to make room for the 24-year-old Osgood. Osgood rewarded Holland by winning the Cup last year. "Trading Vernon was very hard," says Holland. "After that, it's been smooth sailing."

Playoffless Palffy:  
The Postseason Is Just a Dream

The Ducks, Oilers and Senators endured first-round sweeps, but at least their players felt the warmth of the postseason spotlight. For Islanders right wing Ziggy Palffy, a three-time 40-goal scorer, this has been another cold spring. Palffy has played 331 regular-season games without appearing in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the most among active players. "I'm not having fun, and I want to be in the playoffs," Palffy said when New York's season ended last month. "I've been here five years; that's a long time."

Given the Islanders' poor management Palffy could be in for five more long years. That's how much time he needs to reach the standard set by forward Guy Charron, who played for four teams between 1969-70 and 1980-81 and holds the NHL record for having played in the most games (734) without setting a skate onto playoff ice.

In the meantime Palffy began competing last weekend for the Czechs at the world championships in Norway, where he might have done some commiserating with Canucks defenseman Bryan McCabe, who was playing for Canada. McCabe has appeared in 315 NHL games without reaching the postseason and is the only other active playoff virgin to have played more than 300 matches.

Yushkevich's Hair:  
A Gentleman Prefers Blond

Maple Leafs defenseman Dimitri Yushkevich has been losing his hair for some time, and when he dyed his rapidly receding black mane blond before the playoffs, many observers wondered if he was losing his mind as well. Because Yushkevich, 27, is a soft-spoken family man from Yaroslavl, Russia, his new hairstyle would have seemed more fitting on, say, his 22-year-old tattooed teammate, Bryan Berard. "I felt it was important to get something new in my life," Yushkevich says.

Apparently he was also thinking of his heirs. Dimitri and his wife, Oksana, have two-year-old triplets (Abegail, Julia and Dimitri Jr.) who have fair locks, and he says he grew weary of people asking, "Why are your kids blond?" Apparently the little Yushkeviches were as unnerved as anyone at his fresh look. Often when Dimitri comes home with the facial bruises common to his trade, the triplets gather around and say, "Daddy, boo-boo," while pointing at his cuts. When he walked in after the dye job, the kids aimed their fingers at his scalp and said, "Daddy, boo-boo."

Issue date: May 10, 1999

 

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