ORAL HISTORY: The 1996-97 Detroit Red Wings season

WARNING: Contains explicit language.

PART 1: The Hype

The Detroit Red Wings enter the 1996-97 season as a powerhouse Stanley Cup contender, but despair permeates the city. They Red Wings have produced one dominant team after another in the 1990s only to choke away their opportunities over and over – in shocking fashion. In the first round of the 1992-93 playoffs, they blew a 2-0 series lead and lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs in seven games. In 1993-94, the massive underdog San Jose Sharks upset them in Round 1. Detroit reached the Stanley Cup final in 1994-95 only to be shockingly swept by the New Jersey Devils and their neutral zone trap. And in 1995-96, after setting a single-season NHL record with 62 victories, the Red Wings flopped again, losing to their hated rival, the Colorado Avalanche, in the Western Conference final.

Will the Wings ever break through and win their first championship since 1954-55? Patience wears thin from owners Mike and Marian Ilitch and the Wings’ fans. The pressure weighs on the players and front office.

KRIS DRAPER, center: Back then, the pressure wasn’t on social media, but it was certainly prevalent in the newspapers, on the radio shows. We all knew about it.

JIM DEVELLANO, vice-president of hockey operations and general manager: In ’93 we had a good lead on the Toronto Maple Leafs. We wound up losing it in overtime in Game 7 at Joe Louis Arena. I thought we had a team that could have competed that year. In ’94, we bring in Scotty Bowman as coach, and we’re a No. 1 seed, and San Jose was the No. 8 seed. Guess what? In Game 7 at Joe Louis Arena, San Jose upset us. I thought we could win it that year. I thought our team was good enough. The following year, I was certain, absolutely certain we were going to win our first Stanley Cup. We got through, in ’95, the first three rounds with 12 wins and two losses. Won the Presidents’ Trophy that year, albeit in a 48-game shortened season. We had home ice in the Stanley Cup final. We got swept by the Devils. You can only imagine what my feelings were.

MARTIN LAPOINTE, right winger: Especially in ’95 when we lost against the Devils in four, that was a kick in the nuts, excuse my expression. That was one of the most disappointing things that ever happened in my career. And I was young at the time but still, just seeing the veterans, the older players, that didn’t win a Cup and hadn’t won a Cup and to come that close…We couldn’t even get in the zone because they were playing the trap and we didn’t know how to react to that.

DEVELLANO: In ’96 there was no doubt we were going to win it. We won the fucking league by 27 points. We had 131 points, 62 wins. You know what happened. We lost in the third round to Colorado.

DARREN MCCARTY, right winger: After losing to Colorado, that was the scariest feeling I’ve ever had. When we lost to Jersey in the final, we were young, and it was like, “We’ll get back here,” but when we lost to Colorado, it was, “Oh my god, we may never get back here.”

DRAPER: People were really doubting and questioning the core of the Detroit Red Wings. Were we big enough? Tough enough? Fast enough? A lot of people thought we had too many Europeans. We were great regular-season performers, but they questioned a lot of us come playoff time, and rightfully so, because we hadn’t gotten it done. There was nothing we could say.

LAPOINTE: One thing that stuck in my mind: going up the stairs of ‘The Joe’ at the time and seeing Steve Yzerman walking up the stairs, shaking his head as he goes, “Is this ever going to end?”

Trying to increase their toughness and scoring touch, the Wings pull a shocker just days into the regular season, trading all-world defenseman Paul Coffey, who won a Norris Trophy with them in 1994-95, and rising star center Keith Primeau to the Hartford Whalers for left winger Brendan Shanahan, who was traded to Hartford from the St. Louis Blues a year earlier.

BRENDAN SHANAHAN, left winger: Before I ever got traded to Hartford, I knew Hartford was discussing whether they were going to move and where they were going to move, so it was a franchise with a lot of questions. I was going into my ninth season in the NHL, in my mind almost at the midpoint, and I had just said, “I would prefer to go to any team that’s just not going through this with their city and fanbase at the time.” I understood what they were going through. I just didn’t want to be a part of it.

When the 1996 World Cup of Hockey was over, that’s when (Whalers GM) Jimmy Rutherford and I had our first conversation. Camp had already started. Jimmy and I met in Toronto where I lived and asked if I still wanted to be traded. After experiencing the pressure of that kind of hockey and how much fun it was and big stakes and playing for a rabid fanbase in Canada, I said yes. The one thing Jimmy did say to me at that meeting in Toronto was, “You’re going to have to come out and request the trade in the press,” and so it was all out in the public.

SCOTTY BOWMAN, head coach and general manager: Keith Primeau was picked No. 3 in the draft. He was getting better every year. Big center, tough. He was a holdout and he didn’t want to sign. He wanted a big contract. Mike Ilitch felt that Primeau was going to eventually to be the player that Yzerman was, and Yzerman was getting older. Our owner was really adamant that if Primeau didn’t want to sign, that’s good, we’ll just wait him out until next year. So we started the season, and I mentioned to Mike Ilitch, “It’s pretty hard to have a player of that caliber not in your lineup or not available.” They were dug in. He wasn’t going to sign. That’s how we ended up making the deal, because it was really trying to get value back for Primeau.

LAPOINTE: You don’t want to see a guy leave the team. But that’s the business we’re in. And I think Keith didn’t feel like he was a third-line centerman. He wanted to be a top-two centerman and that’s why it happened.

SHANAHAN: None of us thought, including Paul Coffey, that Paul would get involved in the deal. He was probably the player I was hoping would be there to help me get to know the rest of the players, so I was crushed when I heard that Paul was going the other way in the deal.

BOWMAN: We were OK at center but we got a player in Shanahan that could give us something we didn’t have: goal scoring and an aggressive player and still young. He was drafted in ’87. He had a lot of time left on his career.

KIRK MALTBY, left winger: It was shocking but maybe in a good way. Not to say you like losing teammates, but you really felt Shanny was a big piece.

DRAPER: It excited the entire organization. Especially inside that locker room, getting, basically, the premier power forward in the National Hockey League, bringing Shanny into our group and I would say a little bit of a statement by Mr. and Mrs. Ilitch on doing whatever it takes and obviously with Jim Devellano, Ken Holland and Scotty Bowman making this trade. It was, “OK, now you have the power forward.” Shanny was a guy that could get up and down the ice, he had a lot of skill, he could score, he was great on the power play. He had that Irish temper and if anyone wanted to go, Shanny was more than willing to stand up for his teammates.

LAPOINTE: One game when he was playing for the Blues. I was playing with Kris Draper on the same line, and all of a sudden, you know Kris, he’s an agitator, and he really pissed off Shanny. And Shanny went after him, and I went in between them and I had to fight Shanny. I’ll remember it until I die. I wasn’t a heavyweight like Shanny was. I was fighting for my life. When he grabbed me, he was throwing rights and all of a sudden his arms were crossing for him to switch, and I was like, “Oh my god, he’s switching to his left and I’m done.” We still laugh about it to this day. So it was awkward when you see him on your team a couple years later.

SHANAHAN: For hockey players, it’s almost the guy on the other team you battle with the most is the guy you’re happiest to have in your dressing room so, I was just hoping they felt the same way.

PART 2: The Team

The face of the Red Wings is captain Steve Yzerman, the stoic leader, 13 seasons into his career and yearning to finally win a championship. He’ll do whatever it takes – even change his playing style, heeding Bowman’s advice.

BOWMAN: The team could score goals, but he was the principal goal scorer. I think he felt really obligated. When players start scoring goals, I don’t want to say freely but regularly, the responsibility gets heavier all the time, because then you get on a “goal watch” and everybody’s expecting you to score. But sometimes you’re scoring at the risk of defense. With defense, there’s a lot of will as much as offence is a lot of skill. So the disappointment in the playoffs resonated into the fact that, if we don’t play a different brand of hockey in the playoffs, we’re going to be continuing on the path of, you have a good regular season and then the playoffs start and teams can shut you down.

So I said, as the captain, your individual points will diminish, but he had enough disappointments in the playoffs that he wanted to take it and run with being a penalty killer, a faceoff man. He’s going to miss his offense but they’re going to gain so much. The culture of the team is going to change. Everyone is going to emulate a guy like that, and that’s basically what happened.

SHANAHAN: Steve had just become the conscience of the team. Everybody sees who scores the goals and makes big 1-on-1 dekes on breakaways, but if you didn’t get the puck out at the blueline, if you didn’t truly get in the lane of the shot, if you didn’t stop and start on defense, if you didn’t put the puck deep or hang onto it on the forecheck when you had a lead, it would run through your mind for all of us that it was unacceptable – because it was being done by Steve Yzerman, who was an elite, elite offensive player.

DEVELLANO: Give Scotty Bowman all the credit for that, everything. It was Scotty. And the other person that deserves just as much credit is Steve Yzerman. Because he did. He changed his game. He made an adjustment.

SHANAHAN: Steve Yzerman was a responsible two-way center. That’s complete storytelling for anyone who doesn’t think he was. But in those years Steve decided he was going to become an elite two-way center and he was already elite offensively. It’s not like Steve Yzerman was this guy that didn’t care about defense and then suddenly he just became so good at it.

Supporting Yzerman on the talent and leadership side: ‘The Russian Five.’ The Red Wings had drafted center Sergei Fedorov and defenseman Vladimir Konstantinov in 1989 and Vyacheslav Kozlov in 1990. They traded for legendary defenseman Slava Fetisov and brainy center Igor Larionov in 1995.

All play vital and unique roles on the 1996-97 team. Fedorov, the 1993-94 Hart and Selke Trophy winner, gives Detroit a second superstar.

KEN HOLLAND, assistant general manager: Steve Yzerman went to play for Team Canada in May at the 1989 World Championship, and after he came back, Jimmy D had lunch with him and asked Steve about the tournament: “So you played the Russians? Are there any good players?” and Steve said, “Yeah, there’s this fabulous young player playing for Russia by the name of Sergei Fedorov.” And Jimmy asked Steve how good he is, and he said, “He might be as good as me.”

DEVELLANO: We had a star in Yzerman but we could never get a guy to back him up. Come playoff time, part of the reason we didn’t get through was because it wasn’t hard to match up. If you were the other coach, you’d say, “OK, whoever’s up against Yzerman, you’ve got to play him hard.” It all changed when we got Sergei Fedorov. Because Sergei Fedorov was Steve Yzerman in caliber. They were both superstars.

BOWMAN: Sergei Fedorov was an unusual type of Russian player in that most of the Russian players were so highly skilled offensively, not defensively oriented. Before I was there he was used in a defensive role. He was a big, strong guy. When you had Yzerman on one line, it was a tough matchup for the other team to have. Edmonton had it with Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier. The Islanders had it with Bryan Trottier and Butch Goring. When you have a one-two punch at center like those two…and then Sergei could kill penalties, he was good on faceoffs, he was a complete player.

LAPOINTE: Sergei was a really good athlete, well-tuned, in good shape with his cardiovascular, always worked out in the gym. Big tree trunks. He would do jumps, he would do heavy squats and always worked on his legs. That’s why he was such a powerful skater.

Konstantinov brings blunt force to the blueline.

HOLLAND: At 22 when we drafted him, he wasn’t a project. He was captain of the Red Army team. If you can play for the Red Army, you can play for an NHL team. They were coming over and beating NHL teams. We felt he could be a top-four NHL defenseman.

SHANAHAN: Konstantinov was like this programmed warrior that sort of looked like he didn’t leave his dressing room stall at night. He had your back, he was warm to you, he was a great teammate. I instantly fell in love with him as a teammate because of how hard he battled, not only in games but in practice, and he was funny.

MIKE VERNON, goaltender: He was unbelievable. I think he was only about 185 pounds going up against all the top lines in the NHL. He was one of the big shutdown defensemen for us. Quiet. Smile on his face all the time. Worked hard and did his job. He constantly antagonized the opposition and hit them in their face.

SHANAHAN: We used to laugh at him because he only knew one way to play hockey. Sometimes it might be 7-1 for us with about two minutes to go in a game that we just wanted to get out of, and the team we were beating, they’re playing at home and they’re embarrassed and they just want to get out of there too. If a guy had his head down, Vladdy would throw a hip check or clobber him and then get jumped by everybody, and the next two minutes take 20 minutes to play because there’s another five or six or eight fights. But you couldn’t get mad at him because he would be sitting in the dressing room after the game and he would have a new scar on his face or blemish on his face from whatever attack took place, and he was just stoic. We were like, “OK, we were almost out of that one but Vladdy is going to Vladdy.”

Kozlov brings the skill – and a constant scowl that endears him to teammates.

MCCARTY: I sat beside ‘Kozzie’ for 10 years. He’s the grumpiest man in pro hockey.

MALTBY: I was playing with Kozzie one time, playing my traditional North American style game, and he’s got two guys on him in the corner and I went into the corner to help him out. I remember going to the bench afterwards and he’s like, in his broken accent, “Separate, stay away! Stay away! I’ll give you puck. I’ll give you puck.”

MCCARTY: Every morning I would say, “Good morning, Kozzie.” He’d say, “Shut the fuck up, Mac. Learn Russian if you want to talk to me.”

MALTBY: He was grumpy but as long as his clothing said Gucci or Versace or something along those lines, it didn’t matter. He thought he looked good.

SHANAHAN: Kozlov was just an incredibly competitive, talented, grumpy guy that almost embraced that he was like the ‘Archie Bunker’ of the group. He would never crack a smile but some of it was done with humor.

MCCARTY: We all love that guy to death because he’s an absolute warrior. You would miss him when he wasn’t around, because we always wanted that dark cloud, and the goal was to get Kozzie to laugh or smile.

Fetisov brings the grizzled leadership on defense, Larionov the cerebral finesse as Detroit’s third-line center.

VERNON: Slava was the old guard and he was a competitor. All the time. And he competed and he loved the game. He was a world-class defenseman: power play, penalty killing and regular shift. And very reliable, always in good position.

LAPOINTE: Igor is a student of the game. I always called him the Wayne Gretzky of the Russians. He got the name ‘The Professor’ because he obviously had glasses and looked like a professor from a university. I remember coming in, and he said, “Marty, I’m not going to dump the puck. If you want to dump the puck, dump the puck. But you need to give the puck to me and you go to the net. Just do that and you’ll be fine. We worked so hard to get the puck – why give it away?”

The Russian Five don’t operate as clique, however. They are integral in team bonding.

MALTBY: We had a Russian dinner in New York and it was awesome. And the Russian Five basically set it up. They wanted the team to get a taste of what their heritage and their growing up and their culture were about. There was a lot of vodka for sure. And some of the food was maybe not my taste, but you’d try it because you’re respectful and understand what they’re trying to do. As a group it really galvanized the team just in general. I never got the sense that there was any divide between us and the Russians.

MCCARTY: I learned history and geography and life from guys like Igor Larionov and Slava Fetisov: the real way that it was, their life experience, not from reading in a book. We used to say, “We’re living in the United Nations.” And we were proud of it.

Making a major impact on defense, slowly maturing into what will become a Hall of Fame career: a poised young defenseman named Nicklas Lidstrom.

DEVELLANO: From about his second year, he was a star.

SHANAHAN: It didn’t take long before I started to understand and see, even in practice and every single game we played, just the consistency and nuances to Nick’s game.

LAPOINTE: Nick is a specimen. He was such in good shape. Logged a lot of minutes. Always took care of himself on and off the ice. Very quiet. In practices, the whole time I was there, I think it was 10 years, and I never beat him 1-on-1. He was so good with his stick, knocking pucks out of the air. Just putting sticks where it would impede your stride. He was so technical.

VERNON: Never said a lot of words and when he did speak up, you listened. He never complained. It was unreal. It was a joy having him play in front of me. He saved my ass a lot.

LAPOINTE: He was one of the first ones to use the back boards. From the blueline if he couldn’t see a shooting lane to the net, he would bank it off the back of the net so the forward would get it in front. He would practice that every practice. I’m like, “What are you doing?” He’s by himself, shooting off the net in the corner so that he knows what kind of angles the puck comes back at toward the net.

Sharing Detroit’s net: Mike Vernon, who already has a Cup ring from the 1988-89 Calgary Flames, and prankster Chris Osgood.

VERNON: We got along very well. I think his first house, my wife furnished it for him. So we had a very good rapport. To this day we still talk to each other.

SHANAHAN: ‘Verny’ was perfectly built to play in high-pressure games and not let it bother him at all. We never knew who the coach would choose to go with and we didn’t make it our business to have an opinion. We would just go out and play for him or ‘Ozzie.’ One thing I remember about Verny was, we could be in the middle of overtime in a playoff game and you could skate by him and he might make a joke. He was an intense competitor but he had the ability, even in the double overtimes, to just make a funny observation. He just knew how to keep his heart rate down.

VERNON: I was somewhat of a calm goaltender. I just felt if you had someone in there that was calm and in control, your players would see that and it would make them feel comfortable. If I said a comment, I just tried to relax the players and have fun out there, try to have their back and hopefully they’ve got my back.

MALTBY: Ozzie would sign stuff all the time. You would look around and all of a sudden it was a Chris Osgood autograph on a chair, on a wall, on a piece of your equipment or something like that.

MCCARTY: Ozzie is a cerebral assassin. He’d sew your car keys in your pants pocket. He’d cut out pictures of guys’ faces and put them in magazines.

MALTBY: For game time, (assistant coach) Dave Lewis would put on black running shoes, and these laces… they were ridiculously long and he would never tie them up. So the laces were just dragging around. The backup goalie would always sit at the end of the bench where Dave Lewis worked and Ozzie, one game, he moved closer to Dave and grabbed the laces and tied them to the stool that Ozzie was supposed to sitting on. As soon as the horn went, Ozzie left to go down the walkway to the dressing room and ‘Lewie,’ not knowing, walks, and as soon as he moves his one leg, the stool goes flying. You’ve got Scotty Bowman behind him saying, “What the hell is going on, Dave?”

DRAPER: At the old Montreal Forum, the hot dogs there were incredible. And Ozzie wasn’t playing one game and he was hungry. We end up winning the game in Montreal, and Ozzie comes and meets us on the ice. He’s giving everyone the high fives and everything. I saw him and I was like, “How’d you enjoy the hot dogs tonight?” and he goes “No, no, no! I’m waiting for you guys. I haven’t had any.” And we were wearing our white Wing Wheeled jerseys and he didn’t realize there was a huge mustard stain on his jersey.

The team is extremely close. They bond off the ice over everything from paintball to card games. It’s partially by design. In Bowman, they have a coach who deliberately separates himself from, and sometimes manipulates, the players in an effort to make them bond with each other.

SHANAHAN: I always laugh because Scotty can be a very talkative and great personality to anyone except while he’s coaching you.

DEVELLANO: There was no doubt that the coach was the boss in those days. Actually, you were a little nervous of the coach. Not so much today. The players tend to run things today. And so Scotty had that air about him coming in. I don’t know if intimidating is quite fair, but he always kept everybody on edge. I believe it was by design.

SHANAHAN: I always knew where I stood with Scotty because when I was in his good books, on the bench he would call out the centerman, right winger and ‘Shanny’, and when I was sort of in the middle, it would be centerman, right wing and ‘Brendan,’ and then I used to hear him sometimes say the centerman, right wing and ‘him.’ And I always knew then, oh, I better start producing again.

DEVELLANO: If you weren’t doing well, and you weren’t playing well, a lot of funny things could happen: sitting on the end of the bench, being scratched, maybe even a funny little comment to the player. People call that head games. Well, Scotty could do it. And he had the resume to do it. He had two hands full of rings when he arrived from Montreal and Pittsburgh.

MALTBY: When you were left alone and he didn’t say much to you at all, it made you wonder if you were OK, if you were doing well. But I think that’s what he wanted. He kept you on your toes. He wouldn’t talk to you a whole lot so you’re like, “Man, am I in the good books, the bad books?” So you just made sure you were ready to go and did your best and stayed focused every day.

MCCARTY: He would always do it so it was us against him – and so we were all together. He’s the ultimate chess player.

LAPOINTE: Scotty was a master of how to utilize guys, how to approach guys, how to deal with certain personalities, of knowing each in the locker room. “This guy I can be hard on, this guy I can’t be hard on, I’m not going to talk to him, I’m going to let him do his thing.” That’s what he did and that’s why (for example) Sergei flourished in that environment because he knew he could do his thing without being reprimanded by Scotty. But if me, ‘Drapes’ or ‘Mac’ would do something, he knew that we could take it and bounce back and get more because we had that kind of character.

DRAPER: The greatest bench coach in the history of the game. Scotty just had an uncanny knack of getting the matchups he wanted. He was way ahead of his time when it came to that.

MALTBY: A couple times during the course of playing for Scotty, we would fly into a town and go to the hotel, go out for dinner and maybe Scotty was being interviewed because it was getting close to the playoffs or something. And we’re like, “Oh, we’ve got to listen to this!” And it would be like, “Holy smokes, Scotty is a human being!”

The Wings aren’t dominant during the 1996-97 regular season. By mid-March, they’re comfortably in a playoff spot but tracking toward a third-place finish in the conference. Looking for a shakeup, co-GMs Devellano and Bowman buy low on defenseman Larry Murphy, who has endured a nightmarish season with the Toronto Maple Leafs. They get “future considerations” in return with the Leafs paying the remainder of his salary for that season.

DEVELLANO: It’s trade deadline day. Cliff Fletcher, who was Scotty’s assistant in St. Louis, calls about 2:15, says “Scotty…my owner Steve Stavro, we’re trying to cut payroll here. I’ve got a player here who played for you in Pittsburgh. His name’s Larry Murphy. He’s getting booed here in Toronto. He’s got a year to go on his contract. If you’ll take it over, you can have him.” Scotty says, “Give me two minutes.” So he puts the phone on hold and says, “Jimmy, he’s got another year to go. I wouldn’t mind having him as a depth guy but I don’t know if I want his salary at ($2.57 million) next year. I don’t know how much he’s got left. I said, “Scotty, do you like him?” He said, “Yeah. I could put him with Lidstrom. Anyone can play with Lidstrom.”

SHANAHAN: He was still very confident in himself. As Fedorov did for me when I arrived, I asked Larry if he wanted to go for a beer after (his first) game, so he and I went to a little Irish pub in Birmingham, Michigan called Dick O’ Dow’s. I always had the impression of Larry Murphy, as an opponent, as a very straight guy – and I learned that night that it wasn’t Larry Murphy’s first beer. So we had a great time together. He told a lot of stories. He just had a really good perspective on what happened to him in Toronto: it was a struggling team, they never had the puck, and somehow (the fans) had just picked him to blame.

VERNON: Larry Murphy got booed out of Toronto. And he comes to us…he was solid. He was probably one of the best first passers in the game, getting the puck out of our zone. And you’re watching video and he’s up ice in the high slot looking for a cookie. It was unbelievable.

DEVELLANO: He came in and helped and was good with Lidstrom, but what was amazing was he played several years after that. We signed him to another contract.

PART 3: The Avalanche

The Wings are geared up for the stretch run, but they must summit an important emotional mountain: The Colorado Avalanche, the defending Stanley Cup champions, who eliminated Detroit in the 1996 Western Conference final. The stain on that series: Avalanche right winger Claude Lemieux catching Kris Draper with a vicious hit from behind that slammed Draper’s face into the boards and broke his jaw, cheekbone and nose.

Detroit is winless in three tries against Colorado during the 1996-97 season heading into their final meeting on March 26. Lemieux missed the first two games against Detroit, and the third was in Colorado, but there’s a vengeful buzz in the air when the Avs come to Joe Louis Arena. Draper is recovered, but his injury weighs on his mind.

DRAPER: My mindset was: I wasn’t going to let the hit and the injury affect me and the way that I’m going to play. But it was a tough summer. You end up being wired shut for six weeks. I think I lost 17, 18 pounds. Physically, I just wasn’t able to do summer training…I was drinking those ‘Ensure’ drinks, and they didn’t have protein shakes then. It was basically that, iced cream, milkshakes, whatever I could put in a blender.

DEVELLANO: It was an awful thing that happened to Draper. It certainly turned that series around for Colorado. It had a devastating effect on our team.

MCCARTY: The only thing that was ever said was between me and Drapes when I got him out of the hospital two days after his jaw was wired shut and broken in four spots. I just sat in the car and said, “I’ll take care of it.” And then I asked him where he wanted to eat. He likes gnocchi. It takes a guy with his jaw wired shut four hours to eat gnocchi, just so you know.

SHANAHAN: It was difficult for me because Claude and I were friends. We were former teammates in New Jersey. We sat together on the plane. We were in a card game together. We were teammates again then in the ’96 World Cup and at the time he was really excited to introduce me to his wife, because they had a baby and they named him Brendan. Just to be clear, Brendan Lemieux is not named after me (laughs). But I’m now on a team that hates Claude Lemieux, and I’m going to as well, and that’s just the way it is. Claude Lemieux would do the same thing to me. I always had one foot in, one foot out with Claude Lemieux. But in Game 1 of the playoffs, there was a bit of a scrum, and he skated by me and said something that released me from that psychology: “You’re a loser, you’ve never won anything.” I looked at him and said “Thank you.” I didn’t say thank you. I probably said, “I’m gonna fucking kill you,” but I thought to myself, “I needed to hear that.”

DRAPER: I was walking into the rink on March 26 in the same way that I always walked in, and all of a sudden there were TV cameras on me, and you’re realizing this might not be just another game. There might have been 20,000 fans for warmup. The Detroit fans, they weren’t missing anything. I think they anticipated something was going to happen.

MCCARTY: This goes back to me getting on my knees at the beginning of March and saying to God, “I can’t handle this anymore. Whatever happens, please let me be the messenger.” I think he listened.

BOWMAN: I don’t think it was as much, “They have to get revenge this game.” I think it was circumstance. Lemieux had missed two of the three games before that. That was going to be the last game in the regular season between the teams.

SHANAHAN: It wasn’t planned. I would have no problem telling you right now that Darren and I and Igor had planned the whole thing out. It just happened.

LAPOINTE: There were no meetings. There was no staging. Mac didn’t say anything like, “Well, tonight I’m going to get him.”

Late in the first period, Larionov and Colorado’s Peter Forsberg get tangled up and begin wrestling. Chaos ensues. McCarty hunts down Lemieux and rains punches on him, while Shanahan intercepts charging Avalanche goaltender Patrick Roy in mid-air. Roy and Vernon fight. Shanahan and Adam Foote grapple. Lemieux is left bloodied.

MALTBY: The two culprits that started it were Igor and Forsberg, and it’s Forsberg’s fault because he’s the one that gave Igor the shot to the head that Igor retaliated to.

MCCARTY: Larionov has enough with Forsberg and starts to swat him. I’m like, “Wow, looks like puppies on Christmas morning.” I’m not worried about them hurting each other. I know Lemieux is on the ice and this is my shot.

SHANAHAN: It was almost like everyone else, including Mike Vernon, on our team just instinctively knew the next thing to do as it was happening when Darren broke loose from the crowd and went to Claude. Everything happened in split seconds.

MCCARTY: I’m just trying to get Lemieux and do as much damage to him as I can. I don’t even know what else is going on. So I smash Lemieux’s head into the boards right in front of Drapes and then I knee him in the head.

SHANAHAN: I see Roy already at the top of the circle in full charge. You know exactly where he’s going. He’s going to come to Lemieux’s aid. And I take off after him. I think he’s going to jump at me. I think he’s going to lunge at me. There was just something about it – I don’t know why, but he’s jumping, and I thought: “So am I.”

VERNON: I’m like, “Oh, boy, Patty, just stay in your net and don’t get involved.” But he wanted to stand up for his player and if he goes, I go. There was a bit of a scrum and I had Adam Foote’s left arm. He looked at me and started laughing. Heck, I don’t know! I’ve got to do something. Sure enough, Patrick Roy sort of jumps me and then we square off at center ice and start going.

MCCARTY: I don’t know the goalies are going at it. I’m trying to put my fist through this guy’s skull and rip out his heart or his nose.

VERNON: My brother said, “If you get in a fight, just start throwing punches and don’t stop,” so that’s what I try to do. I bury my head in my armpit after I throw a punch, expecting him to throw one. He hits me a few times on the top of the coconut. I’ve never been so fatigued in my life.

SHANAHAN: Even back then, Mac should’ve been kicked out. He kneed Lemieux in the head. But it was a time when an experienced referee like Paul Devorski felt like, “These two teams need this and I’m not going to kick anybody out on either side.” I’m glad Verny and Roy stayed in the game. I’m glad Darren stayed in the game.

MALTBY: At the end of the day no one really got hurt. And the only one who got a little bit hurt deserved it. And that was Lemieux. He got cut, he was a little woozy or whatever, but it wasn’t about doing to him what happened to Kris Draper. It was just a matter of retribution.

(NOTE: Claude Lemieux politely declined to participate in this story when asked by Daily Faceoff.)

McCarty of all people scores in overtime to give Detroit a 6-5 comeback win. The Wings get their revenge in the trenches and on the scoresheet, and the March 26 game has long-term ripple effects.

MCCARTY: The Colorado game just invigorated the whole Red Wing culture, right? And we would see that moving forward, and self confidence is such a huge thing

SHANAHAN: I didn’t realize that we’d still be talking about that game 25 years later. It’s consistently selected as the most important game in the history of the Detroit Red Wings, including Stanley Cup wins. It turned everything for us. When I look back now I’m just so thankful I was on the ice. I don’t know how I could have watched that from the bench and not been a part of it.

MCCARTY: I call it the Red Wings’ D-Day, because it’s always a great place to go forward and backward from. It was so pivotal.

The Red Wings get a scare in Round 1 of the playoffs against the St. Louis Blues after losing Game 1 but rally to win in six games. They need three overtime victories in what goes down as a sweep against the Anaheim Ducks on paper. When they meet Colorado in the Western Conference final for a second straight year, the Wings carry a newfound confidence. It’s a back-and-forth series, with each team beating the other 6-0 at one point, but Detroit takes the series in six games, with Vernon outduelling Roy in what becomes a Conn Smythe Trophy-winning playoff run.

SHANAHAN: They were a really good team. We respected them immensely. We also really, truly, disliked them all. And they felt the same way about us, so it was incredible. I don’t know that there have been many rivalries with six to 10 future Hall of Famers on each team.

DRAPER: Verny stepped up and had an unbelievable playoff run. You see the highlights of what he had to do, go back to the fact that he had to outduel Patrick Roy to beat Colorado. That is pretty impressive. That didn’t happen a lot with the success Roy had. For two months, Verny was dialled in. He was focused. What he did throughout the playoffs was make the timely saves.

VERNON: There was no doubt I felt great about my game. I was well rested and Scotty had told me around early February or March, “Get ready to play.” And I worked hard in practice. I kept my mouth shut. I just tried to be a positive player and leader on the team. When it came time, I started to get a few more games. Ozzie and I were splitting a bit. I was feeling good. Sure enough, Scotty before the playoffs said, “I’m going with you, Vernon.” I felt confident and that’s the biggest thing as a goaltender or player, how you’re feeling going into this. Because the playoffs are what, two and a half months long? It’s a grind.

SHANAHAN: I don’t think we were certain we could beat Colorado until we beat them in Game 6 – until the empty net goal in Game 6 which sort of was the end of it. There was a fear in every one of our games, and I’m not talking about being afraid of them. It was a fear of not beating them that gave us, like, an extra desire to backcheck, to do your assignments correctly, to not take our foot off the gas at any moment.

PART 4: The Stanley Cup

The Red Wings enter the 1997 Stanley Cup final as underdogs versus the big, tough Philadelphia Flyers, who are led by the ‘Legion of Doom,’ the dominant, hulking top line of Mikael Renberg, superstar captain Eric Lindros and John LeClair. But Bowman has a plan. It starts with deploying his ‘Grind Line’ – Kirk Maltby at left wing, Draper at center and a rotation of McCarty and Joe Kocur on the right wing – to set the tone in every game.

SHANAHAN: I always remember the first shift, I believe we started the Draper line. The Flyers couldn’t get out of their end. We were just faster and more physical.

MCCARTY: As a Grind Line, we started a lot of the road games because, in the first shift of the game, I would put someone through the end boards. ‘Malts,’ he was going to get a stick or a body on someone. We were going to let them know, “You’re in for a fight.” We weren’t scared.

DRAPER: Most of the time, Mac was playing with Stevie, but in the third period maybe a little bit down the stretch, if Scotty wanted to shorten his bench, Mac (in Kocur’s spot) would end up playing on the right side with Malts and myself. The Grind Line is probably the only line in the history of the game to have four people on it.

MCCARTY: Joey was valuable in so many ways. Especially when you could literally punch people’s faces in and break their faces like Joey Kocur could. The only thing more lethal than a Joey Kocur right hand is Thor’s hammer (laughs). It’s true. He broke my helmet. We got in a fight when he was with the Rangers in my first year, and he threw a punch and took a piece of my helmet off, and we hit our heads off the ice. He looked at me and said, “You alright, kid?” and I said, “Thanks for not killing me, Mr. Kocur.”

DRAPER: We took a lot of pride in thinking that, if we could go out and play against a Mike Modano, a Joe Sakic, a Peter Forsberg, a Joe Nieuwendyk, whoever it might be, and let Stevie’s line or Sergei’s line get a little bit of a mismatch, it’s going to be to our advantage.

Instead of using Konstantinov and Fetisov to stop the Legion of Doom, Bowman goes with brain over brawn.

BOWMAN: We played Lidstrom and Murphy against them most of the series. Everybody thought we were going to play Konstantinov, but I knew we didn’t want to try and play against them in a physical battle – because they were all big! And that wasn’t the right way to play them.

SHANAHAN: None of us ever predicted that the coaching staff, Scotty, would have decided to play Murphy and Lidstrom against the Legion of Doom instead of Vladdy and Fetisov. Because Vladdy was our Russian Scott Stevens. At that time, it was always warrior vs. warrior. It was never surgeon vs. warrior, and Scotty put two surgeons up against a line of warriors, and they just dismantled them and took them apart and never let them get into the series. Larry and Nick might not have thrown a body check during the entire final, but they completely neutralized the Legion of Doom.

The Red Wings steamroll the stunned Flyers by a combined 14-5 margin to win Games 1, 2 and 3. They have a chance to capture their first Stanley Cup in 42 years and do it on home ice, with Game 4 at Joe Louis Arena. Midway through the second period, with Detroit up 1-0, the impossible happens. McCarty delivers one of the most spectacular goals in playoff history, weaving through Flyers’ defenseman Janne Niinimaa and undressing goaltender Ron Hextall to score what turns out to be the Cup-clinching goal.

SHANAHAN: As he skated by, the whole bench was screaming for him to get it deep. So when he first started go 1-on-1 we were: “NO, DEEP!”

MCCARTY: ‘Darren McCarty’ is thinking dump it in, but the big fella, (God), he decides I’m going to be Mario Lemieux. Next thing I know, I’m like, “Oh my god, I’ve got this guy beat.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see this slash of orange. Then I pan to the middle, I’m like two feet away and I go, “Please don’t miss the net.”

SHANAHAN: The reaction on the bench was, obviously you celebrate a goal, but it was mixed with laughter.

MCCARTY: Stevie is someone I’ve watched since I was 10 years old. Since he got drafted to this team. And he’s looking at me, and his eyes are the size of dinner saucers, and he says, “What the fuck was that? Thank God you don’t have to do it again.”

DRAPER: Mac is a guy that went through the draft a couple times. He just kept finding a way to play. He came into training camp in ’93-94 and basically fought everybody, ended up making the team. It’s just unreal with a guy like Darren McCarty, how nothing was given to him and he just continued to get better on the ice. For him to be able to score that goal is well deserved. I’m glad that it’s Darren McCarty who scored that goal, for so many reasons.

SHANAHAN: Rick Middleton had descended into his body. Because it had that kind of feel. Rick Middleton used to go through an entire team and each deke looked like he was losing the puck and making it up as he went along, and that was Darren. It was just an incredible goal. We knew he was talented and a great athlete. He’s a great golfer. He’s a great softball player. I bet you he’s great at every sport he does.

The Flyers narrow the score to 2-1 with 15 seconds left in the third period, but it’s not enough. The Red Wings’ wait is over. They are the 1997 Stanley Cup champs.

SHANAHAN: I remember reading an article once that said race car drivers are the most mentally fit athletes and it’s because they have to be so focused for a three-, four-hour race and any lapse in their focus could kill them. I remember those two months felt like, obviously there’s physical tolls and exhaustion, but to play all those games from round 1 to that last faceoff with six seconds left, and have that kind of mental focus, was heavily taxing. So when I saw Vernon throw his arms in the air, it was just an incredible wave of relief and joy. It wasn’t until I watched him do that and Steve Yzerman throw his stick in the air that I felt OK to celebrate.

LAPOINTE: Seeing Stevie holding that Cup, that made me proud. That guy went through bad, bad times with the Red Wings and finally he can hoist that Cup and be proud of it and he was a big part of it.

DRAPER: I remember watching Bryan Trottier, Denis Potvin, Mike Bossy, the great Islanders carrying the Stanley Cup, and then into the Edmonton Oilers, carrying the Stanley Cup when I grew up, just watching and thinking, “Imagine one day…” Joe Kocur had the Stanley Cup. He took a lap. And you’re just waiting for your turn. And all of a sudden Joey says, “Drapes, it’s all yours, big boy.” And he handed me the Cup. You get the Stanley Cup and you’re just like, “Wow.” It’s absolutely the greatest feeling a hockey player can have.

DEVELLANO: I can tell you how I felt in one word: fucking relief. When Mike and Marian Ilitch hired me in 1982 to be the general manager of the Detroit Red Wings, I arrived as a cocky young man. Cocky in a good way. I promised the Ilitchs, the media and the fans that we would win the Cup in eight years. Well now it’s year 15. So when we won it, everyone was joyous. I wasn’t joyous, I was relieved. We finally delivered. I shouldn’t talk for the Ilitchs but I think they were relieved, too. We had been there together for 15 years and we thought we would do it much sooner. That’s how hard it was.

MALTBY: At the glass at the Joe, especially on the boards by the benches on the penalty box side where it’s super low, people there had their heads on their arms. They were sobbing. They were teared up with joy just because… It’s probably what Toronto is going through right now. They didn’t know if they would ever win a Cup in their, in maybe their dad’s lifetime, their mother’s, their grandfather’s.

VERNON: Some guy from the crowd threw me a cigar. I don’t know if he knew that the odd time I’d have a cigar. But I put it in my mouth. I’m like, “This is great.” You have a newborn child, you have a cigar. You win the Stanley Cup, you have to have a cigar. To celebrate.

MCCARTY: There’s nothing like when you have a 1-on-1 with the Cup at the end of the night when you’ve got to get all the booze and stickiness off it and you take a shower with it. You can sit there and just go, “This is the one that goes all around,” because it’s got ugly imperfections and all the names and the Xs out, and you can read different names.

PART 5: For Vladdy and Sergei

The jubilation stops in an instant June 13, 1997, when Konstantinov, Fetisov, team masseur Sergei Mnatsakanov and driver Richard Gnida are involved in a devastating limousine crash. Fetisov escapes with relatively minor injuries, but Konstantinov suffers major head trauma and paralysis and ends up in a coma for two months. Mnatsakanov is paralyzed from the waist down. Gnida, who fell asleep at the wheel, is charged with driving with a suspended license.

SHANAHAN: We were literally at our final team function. Everyone was coming in from a day of golf and we were going to have a dinner, play cards and run around the town one more time with a bunch of limos and the Cup and just go from place to place to place and share it with the people from Detroit. And then Sergei Fedorov got a call and he came over to our table. Sergei looked pale, and he gave the phone to Steve, and we could see by Steve’s reaction – everyone just went silent…We just stopped and went to the hospital.

BOWMAN: You’re in the euphoria of winning the Cup for the first time and everyone wants to celebrate and all of a sudden this terrible accident happens and it kind of creates a closure.

SHANAHAN: We spoke with Fetisov that night, he was able to speak with us, and we all thought, OK well, Vladdy will be back. He might not start the season, it might take him a while, but he’s going to recover. It wasn’t until way down the road that you realize, no, this is permanent. That summer there was still lack of understanding that this was permanent.

The following season, the Red Wings wear patches on their jerseys for Konstantinov and Mnatsakanov. With them in their hearts, the team is powerfully motivated to repeat as Stanley Cup champions.

BOWMAN: The team had a lot of belief that, “We’re going to be missing this player so much that everybody has to pick it up. Nobody’s going to be able to replace him but everybody as a team will have to pick up the slack.”

LAPOINTE: There’s no doubt about it. The next season his stall still had all his equipment. Vladdy was a fierce competitor. He was a big part of that team that won in ’97, so deep down for sure, it was a thing that we wanted to do for him.

SHANAHAN: It was a rallying point for the team. It was also putting an exclamation mark on who we were, that it wasn’t a one-off, that it wasn’t a fluke. When people would sometimes say, “Do you think after you win that teams relax a little bit?” It’s actually the opposite. Once you’ve won, it’s like a bear who’s only eaten berries suddenly eating meat, and thinking, “Nothing makes me satisfied anymore other than meat.”

MALTBY: They were in the back of our minds the entire time. Scotty made a point of the team going to see Vladdy down in Florida when we were on a road trip. We went and saw Vladdy near where he was doing therapy. It was special that we were able to keep such a great bond with him. I think if you ask anybody, we win two or three more if Vladdy’s still on the team and doesn’t have that accident. He might even win a Norris or two in there along the way. That’s how good Vladdy was and how big of a piece he was. And to be able to win it back-to-back goes to show you the love everyone had for him.

MCCARTY: In Game 2 of the 1998 Stanley Cup final, the Washington Capitals were were up 4-2 and they show Vladdy in the stands. We all look at each other on the bench and say, “They just screwed themselves now. There’s no way we’re going to lose.”

The Wings rally to win Game 2 – and sweep the Capitals to make it back-to-back championships.

The first person on the ice to receive the Cup handoff from Yzerman: Vladimir Konstantinov.

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