Wings 1, Ducks 0
Well, the Wings finally got back on track with a big win over the Anaheim Ducks breaking a four game losing streak for the Wings. Since the Wings game was the only one tonight, they are now tied atop the Western Conference with Nashville. Well, technically Nashville is still ahead due to having two more wins, but both teams have 103 points. Buffalo also has 103 points as they lead the Eastern Conference.
I was unable to watch the game as my hotel in Cincinnati did not carry the Versus channel so this game recap is just from the offensive scoresheet and various game recaps.
Pavel Datsyuk scored the only goal 4:50 into the second period on a backhand shot. Mathieu Schneider and Tomas Holmstrom were given the assists.
Both teams had eight penalties including a fighting major (Moen vs. Lilja) with neither team scoring a power play goal. Detroit outshot Anaheim, 28-25. Wings goaltender Dominik Hasek notched his seventh shutout this season after stopping all 25 shots tonight.
Before the start of the game, USA Hockey honored Wings veteran defenseman Chris Chelios for playing the most NHL games out of all the US born players. He’s played 1542 games thus far in his career.
Dave at Gorilla Crouch has a nice recap of the game.
Dominik Hasek made some big saves during an Anaheim power play near the end of the first period. Right as the period was ending Kyle Calder got hit a little late. The Wings responded and Mikael Samuelsson got in a bit of a pushing match with Scott Niedermayer and Andreas Lilja actually fought Travis Moen. It wasn’t much of a dustup but at least the Wings responded and showed they weren’t willing to be pushed around.
Happy Anniversary!!
Today marks the 10 year anniversary of “The Turtle.” I am compiling comments, quotes, and photos to give you one giant anniversary page of my favorite hockey game ever. Why is it my favorite game that I’ve ever seen? Well, there were 9 fights (and McCarty getting Lemieux wasn’t even considered a ‘fight’ in terms of penalty minutes), 11 goals, and 148 penalty minutes. The game ended with the Wings winning, 6-5, in overtime.
Before I get to the quotes and whatnot, here is my favorite YouTube clip highlighting the game on March 26, 1997.
As all Wings fans know, the game was a long time coming from Colorado Avalanche’s Claude Lemieux’s hit from behind on the Wings’ Kris Draper who fell into the boards. The hit resulted in serious facial injuries (broken nose, jaw, cheekbone, and right eye socket), which caused Draper’s jaw to be wired shut for days and 40 stitches. Dino Ciccarelli later said following the game, “I can’t believe I shook this guy’s frickin’ hand.” Not only did Draper suffer this terrible injury, but his team had just lost in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals in 1996.
Darren McCarty
Mac obviously played a critical role in the March 26, 1997 game. Not only did he pummel Lemieux, but he also scored the game winning goal in overtime and ‘interacted’ with Adam Deadmarsh.
The Vancouver Sun printed a nice article with an interview with McCarty. Here are my favorite quotes from the article:
“First thing,” said Darren McCarty, one of the affair’s major protagonists, “I can’t believe it was 10 years ago.”
“You want to see a great game?” said McCarty, the former Red Wings muscleman who is now with the Flames. “It’s on the NHL Network, the Classic channel or whatever. If it’s on, I’ll watch it. It’s just unbelievable.”
“It had a lot of buildup,” nodded McCarty, “and it exceeded the buildup. If they were taking odds in Vegas, it was probably a million-to-one the game could supersede the hype. But it did. It annihilated the type. It dropped an atomic bomb on it. It just nuked it. You can’t argue that.”
“The icing on the cake,” said McCarty, “what made it so special, is that I scored the overtime goal. That’s what ties everything in all together.”
“I’ll never replace that winning-the-Cup game and scoring that goal, but to take just a game in general, [the March 26, 1997 contest] was the greatest game I’ve ever played in, that I ever saw. Just because it had every ingredient you could ever want. That game had everything.”
Wings head coach Mike Babcock remembers watching that game ten years ago. He enjoyed the competition and emotion that the two teams displayed as well as the great hockey.
“Claude and Darren fighting, and Darren scoring the game-winning goal, that was great,” Babcock said.
“People tend to forget, after all the other stuff that happened, it was a great game, going back and forth, 6-5 in overtime.”
The Goaltenders
The two goaltenders playing that night were Colorado’s Hall of Famer Patrick Roy and Mike Vernon for the Red Wings. The two got into a fight that evening at center ice. It took a few minutes for the two to actually start fighting with one another, but you can see the action in the clip below.
Wings’ goaltender Chris Osgood’s favorite memory is of the goalie fight that night.
“Vernie skating to center — and I thought he’d be exhausted just skating all the way there,” Osgood said. “I remember pictures of Vernie’s head fitting into Roy’s glove. Remember, at that time, there were no rules on equipment, and Vernie’s head fit entirely in Roy’s glove.
“Roy getting cut and saying he’d won the fight. Vernie was so tired. Vernie skated off the ice, and he was exhausted and was hoping they’d kick him out of the game, but they didn’t, and he had to go back there and play. He could barely move.
“And Shanny flying through the air to get after Roy.”
Source: Tom Pidgeon / Associated Press Roy later said, “Detroit won the Stanley Cup that night.”
The Villian
Claude Lemieux may have been the most hated athlete in Detroit for years after he hit Draper from behind. Not only was it bad enough that Lemieux made a dirty play, but he was upset with the referee’s call.
On the ice, Lemieux was assessed a five-minute match penalty by McCreary, which meant his automatic ejection from the game. Believing McCreary’s call to be unfair, Lemieux made a showy, petulant exit, slamming the door built into the boards behind the north-side net in the aging arena.
The crowd at the Joe was only too happy to see McCarty seek revenge especially after his lack of remorse following that game.
Down the hallway, in the jubilant Avalanche dressing room, Lemieux stood in a Western Conference Championship T-shirt, drinking a beer and high-fiving teammates. A first-year beat reporter for the Denver Post — covering my first NHL team ever — I stood in that dressing room and immediately posed a question to Lemieux about Draper.
“Are you sorry about the hit on Draper?” I asked. “Apparently his injuries are pretty bad.”
“Nobody wants to see a player get injured. I didn’t try to hurt him, and I’m sorry he’s hurt,” Lemieux said.
That was as close as Lemieux would get to an apology. There was no asking about the extent of Draper’s injuries. No asking where he might be in the building for a quick visit. When some Detroit reporters pressed Lemieux about the incident, the two-time Stanley Cup champion and son of a blue-collar truck driver from Mont Laurier, Quebec, took a familiar adversarial posture.
“I don’t want to waste my time talking about Detroit,” he said.
” I try to hit everybody as hard as I can, just like everybody tries to hit me as hard as they can. Everything is always vicious about us, and not them.
“At worst, I thought it should have been a two-minute penalty. I think that was going to be his first call, but then (McCreary) saw blood and decided to change his mind.” With that, Lemieux took a long last drink of his beer, crumpled the can, and tossed it in the trash.
That’s the end of it, Lemieux seemed to say with the gesture. No more questions about that. Move on.
Source: Tom Pidgeon / Associated Press
Blogger Reactions
IwoCPO @ Abel to Yzerman:
Yep, it’s been ten years since Igor Larionov–of all people–started the brawl at the Joe. Ten years since Aaron Ward earned his stripes, Brendan Shanahan truly became a Wing and Mike Vernon won his 300th.
The blogger behind On the Forecheck actually had a press pass for that game ten years ago and wrote it for his hockey website of the time, In the Crease. He re-posted what he had written back then for us to read today.
Here, then, is the piece I wrote that night from press row (sitting next to Phil Myre, then a pro scout with Ottawa) - much of it during the action, on a laptop borrowed from work for the night. Some of the writing is pretty hackneyed, but instead of taking further time to edit it, I wanted to let the emotions of the night come through and sent it in for posting right away. I hope you enjoy it…
The Game
Back in December, I wrote a review on the book, Blood Feud
If you aren’t so interested in reading the behind the scenes stuff, but would rather just watch this classic game, the only DVD I know available for purchase is the four disc Detroit Red Wings set entitled a Celebration of Champions
Bowman starts blogging
As I pointed out in my review of the book Blood Feud, Scotty Bowman likes using technology for his advantage when it comes to hockey.
Scotty Bowman made the Red Wings get him a brand new laptop and he would read every single hockey story. He even knew what time the papers’ early editions were released online. “I’d get a lot of calls: ‘How come I can’t get my computer working?’†Stan Bowman [Scotty’s son] said. “But once he got the hang of it, he read every single hockey story in every single paper in the country. For a guy who is 72, he’s on the computer all day, reading stories on the Internet.†(p. 136)
Well, Bowman has taken it to the next level as he will be blogging for NBCSports.com during the rest of the season and into the playoffs. Today, he talks about the Eastern Conference teams and next week he’ll discuss the West.
Sure, there’s a couple of important races, and not just for the last few spots. The race between Atlanta and Tampa Bay for the Southeast is important because one of those teams will end up with the third seed while the other will be fighting just to get in the playoffs. Tampa’s got a decent schedule and it gets to play Carolina, which can also sneak up and grab first in the Southeast.
Now what do you say to these bubble teams as a coach? You’re telling them not to look too far ahead. You can’t say ‘we’ve got seven games left, five at home,’ stuff like that. You’ve got to just focus on that next game because, yeah, you will happen to look at the schedules and who’s playing, but when you start to need help from those other teams, it gets real, real tough. You can get carried away.
Lebda doing well
Brett Lebda is doing well after recovering from a hit by Ville Nieminen, which resulted in a concussion. Between that and his college team, Notre Dame, losing to MSU in the NCAA tournament, Lebda did not have a good weekend.
While Lebda was at the Detroit Medical Center, Nieminen visited him while the game was still going on.
“He came over before the game was over and apologized,” Lebda said.
“That was a class act on his part. I thanked him for that part. He felt bad. I saw him for about five minutes.”
Lebda didn’t seem to hold any hard feelings toward Nieminen, who has a previous history of questionable hits on opposing players.
“Everyone is trying to play hard out there, and sometimes you get caught up in a lot of stuff,” Lebda said.
“I don’t know if it’s on purpose on not. You’d like to think it’s not. I’m OK with it. It happens, you get back out there, and hopefully it doesn’t happen too often.”
Nieminen will not be suspended by the league. I think a game misconduct and the five minute penalty was not enough punishment for what he did even if he did go and apologize to Lebda in the hospital.
Lebda won’t skate for a couple of days, but would like to play Thursday when the Wings take on the Nashville Predators.
“We’re fortunate he’s a young guy and still has some elasticity to him and was able to bounce back quickly,” Wings coach Mike Babcock said.
“Now, how long is he going to be out? I don’t know the answer to that. But I’m sure our doctors and training staff will get that sorted out.”
Surgery
Just a friendly reminder that there will be no posts on Monday and possibly Tuesday as well since I won’t be getting home until 5pm or so and may be feeling pretty crappy from knee surgery #9, but we’ll see.
Update: I’d like to thank everyone for the good luck wishes. My surgery went from being at 2pm to 10:55am so I have a lot more free time than I had anticipated plus the hotel I’m at has wireless internet so I can go online from my bed. And I’m feeling pretty good! Thus, I will be posting today, but my hotel does not have the Versus channel so I will not be watching the game tonight.
Johnson to sign with LA
As I said yesterday, Jack Johnson was going to leave college hockey and sign with LA.
Not only will the Wolverines lose seven seniors due to graduation, but I’ve heard from a close friend of his that Jack Johnson will be heading to LA now and could be there by March 27th.
Johnson is currently in LA negotiating the bonuses to his contract and will play on Tuesday for the Kings who have six remaining games. His dad told the Michigan Daily that Johnson will return to take classes in the spring term and has promised Wolverines’ head coach Red Berenson that he’ll get his degree from UM. Apparently, JJ had told Berenson of his decision a week ago.
“I thought I was ready for a new challenge,” Johnson said. “With all my close friends, the seniors, gone now and everything, I thought it was time for me to pretty much go for a new challenge.”
…
“I have no regrets about coming here, being a Wolverine,” Johnson said. “I’m still proud as hell to be one.”
James Mirtle has commented on the immediate impact Johnson will have for the Kings.
Johnson’s the early favourite for the Calder Trophy in 2008, regardless of where the Kings sit in the standings. He’s just a terrific player — one of the best young defencemen to join the league in years — and should make an immediate impact over the Kings’ final six games of the regular season.
Scout.com nicely summarizes his career as a Michigan Wolverine:
In his two seasons at Michigan, Johnson rewrote the record book for a Michigan blue liner. In his inaugural campaign under the winged helmet, Johnson tallied a stat line of 10-22-32 with a +11 rating.
His 16 goals as a sophomore set a new Michigan sophomore record, and, despite only using two years of eligibility, Johnson sits in 8th place on the Michigan defensemen goals list, just 14 goals behind Steve Richmond’s Michigan record.
Along with his 16 goals in 2006-07, Johnson also set a new career high in assists (23) and points (39), all the while more than doubling his plus/minus rating to +26 in his final season in Ann Arbor.
As a result of his efforts, Johnson was rewarded with the CCHA’s 2007 Offensive Defenseman of the Year Award as well as being named to the All-CCHA team as the conferences leading vote getter.
As a UM student, I am sad to see JJ go but I will definitely watch his progress in the NHL and try to attend some Wings-Kings games for sure. This clip is in honor of JMFJ.
Sports filled day
I made quite a few posts today covering a wide variety of teams so I wanted to quickly link to these posts (or you can scroll down). I just didn’t want the Country Day post to be the first one you saw on the website and then click away because it wasn’t hockey related.
Recent Posts…
- Country Day wins state title
- Whalers lead series, 1-0
- UM out of NCAA tourney
- Wings 2, Blues 3 (SO)
- Lebda suffers a concussion
P.S. After the Whalers playoff victory, I went out and saw the movie Shooter starring Mark Wahlberg. It was a fantastic film. I thoroughly enjoyed this sniper movie. Lots of action, explosions, and guns. Go see it. Today.
Country Day wins state title
I graduated from Detroit Country Day School in 2005 and I’m very proud of my high school and our academic and athletic accomplishments. The women’s basketball program has been quite successful for years (they won state titles 3 of the 4 years I was there), but the men’s program always seemed to lose in the regional part of the state tournament.
This season, the YellowJackets were able to win the state championship game against East Grand Rapids, 66-61, at the Breslin Center (MSU). It is the seventh state title for the men’s program and its first since Shane Battier led the team to a state title in 1997. Of those seven titles, three came from Chris Webber’s leadership and another three came during Battier’s time at DCDS.
“It’s not about seven,” Keener said. “It’s about one. They believed. This is special. They faced a lot of adversity of their years here. I’ve experienced this. This is for them.
“We had our ups and downs this season. Sometimes when you have great individual talent you just have to put them in the right position. I’m blessed to have smart kids. The key was to get them to play their roles.”
I just want to congratulate DCDS and head coach Kurt Keener!
Whalers lead series, 1-0
The Plymouth Whalers (Ontario Hockey League) won their first playoff game Saturday night in overtime against Guelph Storm, 3-2. After being down by a goal for most of the game, the Whalers were able to tie it up with less than 7 minutes left in the third period. Daniel Ryder and Sean O’Connor, both trade deadline acquisitions, scored the two goals in regulation. Evan Brophey scored the game winning goal 2:14 into overtime to give the Whalers a 1-0 series lead over the Storm.
The Whalers have been fortunate to have two excellent goaltenders, but head coach Mike Vellucci decided to go with Michal Neuvirth Saturday night and it paid off. He won his first OHL playoff game even after Guelph outshot Plymouth, 34-26. Neuvirth had led the OHL in GAA and save percentage during the regular season with a 2.32 GAA and .932%. The Whalers other goaltender, Jeremy Smith, was fourth in the league in terms of GAA at 2.59 and second in save percentage at .923%.
The Whalers will play the Storm Sunday at 6:30pm in Guelph. If you want to watch the game, Ginopolis at Compuware Sports Arena will be broadcasting the game (aka WhalersVision). Their next home game will be Tuesday at 7:05pm.
UM out of NCAA tourney
Source: Ryan McKee / NCAA Photos
The University of Michigan Wolverines’ hockey team lost to North Dakota in its first game of the NCAA tournament, 8-5. UND will face Minnesota in the West Regional final.
Twice the Wolverines had a lead of two goals, but they were unable to hang on as time winded down at the Pepsi Center in Denver.
Not only will the Wolverines lose seven seniors due to graduation, but I’ve heard from a close friend of his that Jack Johnson will be heading to LA now and could be there by March 27th.
Other NCAA tournament updates: Michigan State beat No. 1 ranked Notre Dame, 2-1, to advance to the Frozen Four. MSU is the first CCHA team since 2003 to make it to the Frozen Four. Wings’ prospect Justin Abdelkader notched an assist for MSU in the third period against the Fighting Irish.