9501230421 DETROIT FREE PRESS 950621 Wednesday, June 21, 1995 METRO FINAL

NWS

1A Photo Color JOHN LUKE :Detroit's Darren McCarty sends the Devils' Scott Stevens flying in the first period Tuesday night. Two teams have won the Stanley Cup after trailing 2-0. MITCH ALBOM SEE ALSO METRO FINAL EDITION, Page 1A Copyright (c) 1995, Detroit Free Press AS PAUL COFFEY COLLAPSED IN PAIN AND FRUSTRATION, SO DID HIS TEAM - AND ITS FANS Paul Coffey was on his knees, his leg throbbing, his head slamming the ice in frustration. No. No. No. No. Seconds before, he had watched a bullet go through the lungs of Detroit's Stanley Cup hopes, and he was helpless to stop it, like some ill-fated soldier in the movies who reaches, reaches, but just can't pull his friend into the foxhole. "Get up!" you could almost hear the crowd yelling, just before New Jersey scored the late goal Tuesday night that would give the Devils a commanding 2-0 lead in these finals. "Get up! Somebody blow a whistle! Somebody stop it!" Nobody stopped it. Nobody blew a whistle. And you could almost feel this bad ending coming all through the night, a hard-hitting, bare-knuckled evening that saw every moment of Wings joy met by a moment of Devil-ish retribution. There goes home-ice advantage. There goes talk of Game 1 being a sort of letdown, nothing to worry about. There is something to worry about now. Nothing to panic over, but something to worry about. Game 2 will go down as a tapestry of good and bad. Coffey was there for the bad parts. He was there at 9:47 of the third period, when Scott Niedermayer -- who is often called the next Paul Coffey -- went the length of the ice, fired wide, rebounded his shot off the back boards, with Coffey right next to him, and poked it in -- like something out of the Harlem Globetrotters. From his own blue line? "I knew it was" Coffey, Niedermayer said. "I just wanted to put a shot on net. It missed, but luckily it bounced right back to me. It was a pretty lucky bounce." Great. Thanks a lot. That was bad enough. Now came the last two minutes, the score tied, 2-2, the crowd on its feet, and whack! Shawn Chambers whizzed a shot that hit Coffey in the leg. Down he went. And down he stayed, even as the puck found its way to Tommy Albelin, who fired a shot that came off goalie Mike Vernon and hung out in front, like a pigeon in the line of fire. Coffey saw it. It was a few feet from his face. Maybe if he were standing, he would have gotten to it, poked it away, kept them alive . . . "A whistle should have been blown," Bob Errey said. "He was down, he could have been hurt." Instead, here came Jim Dowd, a guy who didn't even play in Game 1, and just inches from Coffey's head, he whacked the puck past Vernon and put a clamp on the night, and a handcuff on the Wings' plans to bring the first Stanley Cup to this city in 40 years. A violent affair By the final goal, Joe Louis Arena was a morgue. What a deflating end for a game that, for a while, had Detroit spirits soaring -- despite the fact that the Wings once again got only 23 shots, and once again sent the puck more into the Devils' legs and thighs than into the net, and once again played shorthanded, with injured Keith Primeau not even dressing, after saying he "would have to be dragged off the ice" They could have used Primeau on Tuesday. He is a hulking force, and this was less a hockey game than one of those Toughman contests, bare knuckles, brute strength, last man conscious wins. It was banging, and slamming, and hitting the ice. Here was Vladimir Konstantinov, whumping Chambers and flipping him over the boards into the Detroit bench. Take that! Here was Sergei Fedorov streaking down the ice, puck on stick, and KABONG! -- sandwiched by two New Jersey players, the puck falling away like a dropped penny. Here was Chambers skating into the middle and getting crunched by Slava Fetisov and tackled by Kris Draper. And meanwhile, another Slava, Kozlov, was getting checked so hard by Scott Stevens, he was separated from both his helmet and his consciousness. I don't want to say that was a mean hit, but Kozlov, who is Russian, got up speaking Spanish. But that was the kind of game it was. And by the third period, after all that, the score was still tied, 1-1, and Detroit fans were back to the lumps in their throats, and the growing sense that something really bad might happen. Throughout these playoffs, the Wings had never faced a moment like this, the success of their season perhaps hanging in the balance of their next 20 minutes. Let's face it. Their only two losses of this post-season came when they were up three games to none. That's not really pressure. This was pressure. This was the test that champions talk about. This was the moment you find out what you're made of. Here is what we found. The Wings have heart, but so do the Devils. And, for the moment, the Devils have the bounces, too. Get up? Can they get up? There's still hope "We did some things well," said coach Scotty Bowman, "but we have to protect a lead. We didn't do that." And now the Devils are halfway to the Cup, and heading to New Jersey for the next two games. You almost wish they'd play Game 3 right now, because the next 36 hours here will be full of doom and gloom. For the last few days, this town has been like a crowded room with all the doors locked. You heard the same voices, felt the same heat, until after a while, you couldn't tell if you were standing in your own pool of sweat, or someone else's? "What did it mean? Are the Wings in trouble? What about that trap? How can they stop it? What about Keith Primeau? Are we doomed? Are we doomed?" You can imagine what's coming now. So before we waste a lot of breath, let's face a few facts: The Devils are like a fishy odor. Once they get on you you can't get rid of them. You look up, one of them is draping you, blocking your shot, cutting between you and the man you're trying to hit with a pass. The Wings have to solve that. They keep talking about "playing our game," and not worrying about the opponent. That's a good philosophy. Of course, the Devils are doing the same, trying to play their game, not the Wings'. So what it comes down to is this: Who's got the better game? To this point, it's New Jersey. Much as you hate to admit it, the Devils have the better mousetrap for this series -- so far. They clamp. They wait. And on Tuesday, they even won the game with speed (Niedermayer) and aggressive shots when they had the chance. It is not the end. Teams have come back from 0-2 deficits. For now, it is simply a bad end to what could have been a good night. And the final picture will be Coffey, on the ice, watching helplessly as the winning shot flew past. Eventually, after a few minutes, he got up. The question is, can the Wings?