0205300418
DETROIT FREE PRESS
020530
Thursday, May 30, 2002
METRO FINAL
1A
Photo JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/Detroit Free Press;Photo MANDI
WRIGHT/Detroit Free Press
In Denver: For the first time in the Western Conference finals, the Red Wings
celebrated the first goal of a game. After the puck fell out of the glove of
Colorado's Patrick Roy, Brendan Shanahan shoved it over the goal line with
38.1 seconds left in the first period.
In Detroit: The fans, watching on the big screens, go eild at Joe Louis Arena
after Shanahan's goal. Displaying his makeshift Stanley Cup is Mike Taglione,
24, of St. Clair Shores.
MITCH ALBOM FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
WINGS 2, AVALANCHE 0. WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS TIED, 3-3
Copyright (c) 2002, Detroit Free Press
PLAY ON!
HASEK EARNS HIS MILLIONS; WINGS RATTLE ROY, FORCE GAME 7 AT THE JOE
DENVER -- You ain't going nowhere. The ice has not yet melted. Summer has not
yet arrived. From the opening minutes to the closing horn Wednesday night at
the Pepsi Center, the message was as clear as a telegram:
Not done. Stop. Not losing. Stop. The Red Wings are not hitting the golf
course. Stop. The Avalanche is not dancing into the Stanley Cup finals. Stop.
There will be a Game 7 in this series, because one team was not ready to give
up on its destiny and one man was more than ready to face his own.
Stop.
You ain't going nowhere.
"When this team loses, people say we're old, and when we win, they say we're
experienced," said a laughing Darren McCarty, who scored the Wings' second
goal in Detroit's 2-0 Game 6 thriller that pushes the Western Conference
finals to a finale Friday night at Joe Louis Arena. "But the thing is, we are
experienced. We've been in these situations before. You have to think of it as
just one hockey game.
"And then you have to go and win it."
That they did, for a myriad of reasons, but one that stands a mask above the
rest: On a night when the Red Wings needed 37-year-old Dominik Hasek to
deliver $8 million worth of goaltending, he did.
He is the reason they are alive today.
"We have no doubts," captain Steve Yzerman said in the Wings' upbeat locker
room, "about our goaltender. None."
Hasek was glue and rock and concrete and granite. He has never won a Stanley
Cup, but there is a time for history, and there is a time to make some of your
own.
So here was Hasek on Wednesday night, pitching his first shutout of the
Western Conference finals, turning away all 24 Colorado shots, stopping the
deadly Joe Sakic at point-blank range, stopping him again by blocking a flip
shot, stopping him again while lying on his stomach.
Here was Hasek smothering a wraparound attempt by Chris Drury. Here was Hasek
falling on another Drury shot not two feet from his body.
He stopped the Avs on four power plays, when they had five skaters and the
Wings had four. He stopped the Avs when they pulled their goalie, and had six
skaters to the Wings' five. He stopped them from all angles. From all
distances.
At one point, when Colorado couldn't beat Hasek with the puck, it tried to
beat him with the rule book. Coach Bob Hartley challenged Hasek's stick width
during a Colorado power play, hoping to gain a 5-on-3 advantage.
Hasek flicked away the challenge the same way he flicked away pucks. His stick
was clean. Hartley's ploy backfired.
"He was trying to get an advantage," Hasek said. "I wasn't worried."
And as the night went on, he seemed to grow in stature. Finally, there was a
moment, in the third period, when Hasek blocked a slap shot that flipped over
his head and for an instant he couldn't see it. It was up there somewhere, and
likely falling. So he simply spread his arms and legs across the net opening,
blocking it with a big, red human X.
X marks the Stop.
You ain't going nowhere.
A professional performance
Now, we mentioned the Wings needed several things on this night. They needed
Hasek to be superhuman. He was. And they needed Patrick Roy to be something
less.
They got that too. Not by much. Not for long. But in the first period, after
Steve Yzerman fired a close-range shot, Roy stopped it, and was so sure he had
it in his glove, he rose up in triumph. Then, like a Little Leaguer who had
his eyes closed on the pop-up, he opened his glove and . . . oops, there was
nothing there. The puck was sliding behind him, heading for the net.
Brendan Shanahan spotted it, finished it off, and the Wings had two things
they have not had in this series. The first goal.
And a crucial Roy mistake.
"You said if you got another great chance, you wouldn't miss this time," a TV
reporter told Shanahan in the locker room afterward.
"Well, it's pretty hard to miss from there," Shanahan said. "I'd have had to
hang up my skates if I missed that one."
So Brendan is on the board. And big deal. People have made too much over "the
big guns' not scoring." Shanahan's goal was far less symbolic than Roy's
posture after the red light flashed. Roy dropped his head and buried it in his
hands. A small thing, perhaps, but an inspirational one to Detroit fans.
And after that, the Wings were untouchable. For one 20-minute stretch, they
outshot the Avalanche, 18-1. Their defense was tight. Their penalty killing
was notable. Sergei Fedorov did an excellent job of thankless puck pursuit.
Tomas Holmstrom took more front-of-the-net punishment than any man should have
to endure.
It was little things. It was big things. It was as efficient and professional
a performance as you could hope for from a hockey team.
Then again, the Wings' average age is, what, 86?
Back to the Joe
So there will be a Game 7. It is fitting. It is right. After all, Wednesday
was the six-year anniversary of the night Kris Draper met Claude Lemieux and
this whole bloody rivalry began. Anything less than a Game 7 would be . . .
unseemly.
But just as the Wings had to fight mental demons Wednesday -- to ignore their
pending elimination -- so, too, must they ignore the notion that they won
anything Wednesday night.
"We're still a desperate hockey team," Yzerman said. "We have to take this
attitude and carry it through the whole game Friday night."
The fact is, the Wings have simply fought all the way back to Square One. Yes,
it was some fight. The Red Wings were trying to climb out of hell, and you
don't do that with baby steps. Everybody charged. Everybody swung. Players
fell into other players, tangled sticks with skates, tumbled headfirst and
flipped bottoms-up. For much of the night, you couldn't tell your defensemen
from your forwards or even from your goalies. It was one big whirling dervish
of a scrum, a rolling ball of helmeted humanity.
And it will have to be the same on Friday.
"The only difference now," Hasek said before heading to the bus, "is that we
both have a 50-50 chance of being eliminated."
It's a countdown now, to the best kind of moment in the best kind of series in
a winter sport that glows brightest as it approaches summer. Stay indoors.
Keep your long sleeves on. You ain't going nowhere.
And neither are they.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "Albom in
the Afternoon" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760). Also catch "Monday Sports
Albom" 7-8 p.m. Mondays on WJR.
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.
HOCKEY;RED WINGS;GAME;SPT