9501190648 DETROIT FREE PRESS 950523 Tuesday, May 23, 1995 METRO FINAL

SPT

1D MITCH ALBOM SEE ALSO METRO EDITION, Page 1D Copyright (c) 1995, Detroit Free Press WINGS' VERNON DOESN'T NEED HIS MIND IN THE SEWER As a man who would like to see a Stanley Cup come to Detroit before Bruce Willis makes "Die Hard IV: My Hair Falls Out," I propose a deal with the city of Birmingham. That is the city in which the Red Wings' goalie, Mike Vernon, lives. Birmingham. Here is the deal: If the Wings reach the Stanley Cup finals, you stop drilling your sewers until they capture the title, OK? Or better yet, how about stopping right now? Today? In the second round of the playoffs? This way Vernon can get some sleep. I'm not kidding. Every morning, around 7, the drills begin in Birmingham, rattling the quiet in Vernon's parkside neighborhood. "They're doing something with the septic systems," he says, rolling his eyes. "It's a racket." This cannot be good for a goalie's nerves -- as though a goalie had any left. Just think. You spend all night whacking pucks from your head, you take a long, hot shower, you drive home, settle into bed, close your eyes and . . . Ratatatatatatatatat! I mean, come on, Birmingham, whose side are you on here? Sewers? Why not make something more indigenous to your area, like cappuccino? No. Scratch that. Vernon doesn't need the caffeine. Already, the star of this team is a jumping jack. You watch him go through interviews, and you notice he talks quickly, he laughs, stops laughing, laughs again, sits forward, sits back. Maybe such darting motion is what makes him an ace in the net. Then again, when I ask Vernon -- who has won five of his six Wings playoff games -- how he stays so calm on the ice, this is what he says: "I'm not as not nervous as you think." And Birmingham wants to drill at 7 a.m.? What is it trying to do, push him over the edge? His only goal was to play goal Clearly, something must be done. Vernon, when he allows a rare bad goal, already apologizes to his team by saying, "I fell asleep out there." We don't want him to mean it. I can just see the headlines: "WINGS LOSE; SEWERS BLAMED." Or, "B'HAM CLOGGED; WINGS FLUSHED." The saving grace in all this is that Vernon, a solidly built, wavy-haired, slightly cocky 32-year-old, was born to be a goaltender. Sleepy or not, even jackhammers couldn't shake him from his destiny. This is a kid, raised in Calgary, the son of a hockey coach, who brought his pads to school and put them in the coat room beside the other kids' boots. He says he never -- never -- played forward or defenseman. "I wanted to play every minute, and goalies didn't sit the bench," he says. When Vernon was 6, he was given a goalie mask. He took it home and spray-painted it green, the color of his team. (Of course, at 6, his team probably took naps between periods.) The next day he wore the mask -- even though it was still sticky -- and when the game ended he took it off. The kids started laughing. His face was covered in green paint. You could say the job stained him right there. But it wasn't done testing his nerves. Vernon led the Calgary Flames to a Stanley Cup in 1989, then spent five years besieged by fans in his hometown. They wouldn't say hello in restaurants, in shops, in the street. No. They would ask him questions. "What about that goal last night? When are we going back to the finals? What about the other goal last night?" "It got to be that come the playoffs, I would only eat in places where I knew the owner and he could hide me in a back room," Vernon says. It didn't help. After the glory of '89, Calgary, despite excellent regular seasons, never got past the first round of the playoffs. Things got so bad, that at one point, Vernon went to a local basketball game -- to watch a team in which he was part investor -- and the fans heckled him. They heckled him -- and he owned the team? Whatever happened to executive privilege? New partner, new team Wait. We're not through. Vernon decided to get married, and the week of the wedding, the Flames traded him to Detroit. Now. Anyone who has ever tied the knot knows the week of the wedding, you can blink and the bride and groom start screaming hysterically. Yet here he was, traded half a continent away. He remained calm. But somehow I think -- despite his stellar performance so far -- we don't need to push Vernon's nerves. True, he is the answer to last year's Detroit prayers (those prayers being "Get us some goaltending!"), and true, in his six Detroit playoff games he has a goals-against average of 1.67. "The key is not being great," he says, "the key is being consistent." Except in the playoffs, where, for goalies, the key is being consistently great. This is asking a lot. So we ask Birmingham a little. Take June off, B-Town. Let Vernon get some sleep. Or drill at night. Or during road trips. The septic system isn't going anywhere. Besides, think of how happy your citizens will be if Vernon stays hot, and the Wings win the Cup. There'll be loads of celebrations in Birmingham and people will drink lots of cappuccino -- and maybe even feel kooky enough to run into a local store and pay $200 for a bathrobe. I hope this works. I hope this makes Vernon sleep better. I am here to help. That is all that's bothering you, isn't it, Mike? "Actually, there's this bird that comes by every morning and makes a hell of a racket, too." OK. Where's Ted Nugent?