dirtygames.ca

Jump to Comments

1-0-0. That’s the only record that really matters.

34-23-12? Ugly, by Motown standards, but utterly meaningless.

0-1-0? That would be the record of the only other team we’re watching now.

Sure, the Predators may stumble, and the Avalanche and Kings may choke. But if the Red Wings can finish the next 13 games with a better record than the Flames, then that’s the ballgame.

If that happens, then these last six months of hockey are a footnote. If that happens, they wipe the slate clean.

Doesn’t happen often, and certainly not in many other professional arenas. I don’t get to put out a great newspaper for three months after half-assing it through the previous nine months. Burgers flipped properly in April and May don’t make up for ones that hit the floor in December. Twelve solid weeks of successfully performed surgeries don’t make up for 40 weeks of malpractice suits.

But in the world of professional hockey, where the difference between a No. 8 seed and a No. 1 seed is the location of one game out of seven, three good months is all it takes.

So, the Red Wings are 1-0-0, thanks to an effort that finally saw the team squeak out a close win through defence, grit and goaltending.

It’s happened fewer times that I can count on my fingers during this cursed year, but their best players played like their best players. Skilled scorers fought their way through hits to get into scoring positions. Defencemen sacrificed their body in the corners to get the puck moving up the ice. Even Todd Bertuzzi contributed something constructive. Not a goal, but you know, he looked like he was trying really hard.

I said yesterday that champions shouldn’t flinch. They didn’t. When they were staring disaster in the eye, down 1-0 and facing a penalty shot near the end of the second period, the rookie goalie didn’t flinch, and calmly kicked it aside. It sent a message.

With an opportunity to be the game-changer everyone says he is, Pavel Datsyuk didn’t flinch, stepping around a defenceman so calmly you would have thought he was passing a fat man on a crowded sidewalk and lasering a wrist shot into the top corner.

Those two events happened less than a minute apart. Then the period was over and, yes, it was still 1-1, but it felt like a victory. It had been a long time — way too long — since the bench collectively jumped up and lost its mind over a big play by a teammate on the ice. Then they did it twice in a minute and you knew that they were finally, after six months of trying to care, emotionally engaged.

They didn’t flinch in the third period, either. Not when Miikka Kiprusoff made several game-saving stops. Not when they hit the post. Not when Brian Rafalski took a four-minute high-sticking penalty that sent the home crowd into gleeful spasms. Champions don’t blink, and they killed it off with machine-like efficiency. They used to build lots of machines in Detroit, and maybe there’s still one working model on the line.

The winning goal was, if anything, inevitable. And it’s only fitting that it was a big guy standing where nobody could move him that got it. If you are the sort to indulge in metaphor, Tomas Holmstrom’s ass in front of the net can represent the entire red Wings season. He’s older than he once was, and certainly more prone to injuries. But there’s nowhere else for him to go. So when it comes down to the critical moments, there his ass it, there his ass will remain.

When teachers tell their charges that if they work hard enough success will come, it’s sometimes bullshit. But sports is the one place that rule pretty much holds true. It’s also the one place where six months of foul laziness, ugly injuries and the general stench of malaise can be wiped out in the course of three weeks.

This is a win the Red Wings can build on. And if they keep building with blocks like last night’s win, the team unlucky enough to land the No. 1 seed will be looking at an awfully strong foundation sitting there in the 8 spot, waiting.