Fresh memories
Unforgettable Cup win in Detroit came 10 years ago
Dan Bylsma works for the Detroit Red Wings these days, so he knows June 12, 2009, still stings around there. He knows that while Wednesday marked one of the greatest moments of his life — the 10-year anniversary of the Penguins’ Game 7 knockout at Joe Louis Arena — it’s a day Detroit would love to forget.
Not that he minds, particularly, even if the Wings were his childhood team. But he knows first-hand because some players from that ‘09 Detroit team (Kris Draper, Dan Cleary) work in the organization, and three others — Niklas Kronwall, Justin Abdelkader and Jonathan Ericsson — still play there, which means Bylsma coached them as a Red Wings assistant this past season.
I mentioned to Bylsma that in speaking with a few former Detroit players over the years, I always got the sense they literally could not believe they lost. That it just never sunk in because it seemed so impossible to conceive.
Do you remember that feeling, too?
After winning the first two games by a combined score of 62, Detroit had taken six of the previous eight Cup final games against the Penguins, dating to the previous year, and the Penguins now needed to beat them four times in five tries. No team, in 21 attempts, had come back from a 2-0 deficit to win the final since the 1971 Montreal Canadiens.
And if the series somehow stretched to Game 7, well, who thought the Penguins could pull that off?
Very few in the hockey world, I can tell you that. And nobody in Detroit.
Ten years later, I’m guessing the Red Wings still can’t believe it.
“I think that’s true — at least having talked to a handful of them, maybe six or so in some capacity,” Bylsma said Tuesday. “They couldn’t believe especially that they lost Game 7 at Joe Louis. And that’s probably a lot of people. Not just the players. Some of the trainers are still around, the equipment people. Some guys had won four, and they’ll say to me, ‘You have my fifth ring.’ They still feel like they have some right to that championship in ‘09.”
I’ll be honest: I still can’t believe the Penguins won, either. Game 7 reminded me of “13-9” (Pitt over West Virginia) in that both sites — Mountaineer Field and Joe Louis Arena — were dripping with an odd mix of dread and mounting astonishment as the game wore on.
This could not be happening.
The Red Wings were aging fast but still dynamic. They could still play keepaway like few others.
“I remember when I was in Nashville, playing against Detroit, you’d finish a game and wonder if you had even touched the puck,” recalls Mark Eaton, a member of the ‘09 Penguins and now the Chicago Blackhawks’ director of player development.
What, precisely, changed from ‘08 to ‘09, besides Marian Hossa’s jersey colors? What changed between Games 2 and 3, and how did the Penguins bounce back from that 5-0 blowout in Game 5 to win the next two?
On the latter question, Marc-Andre Fleury has a short answer: Mario Lemieux. Fleury and others remain convinced that Lemieux’s text message to the team after the Game 5 disaster infused them with confidence.
“I think a huge part of it was Mario sending a group text saying to put Game 5 behind us quickly and move on,” Fleury texted to me [fittingly] late Tuesday. “He believed that we could win, and I think that made us believe, too.”
The coaches’ postgame meeting spot at Joe Louis Arena was not luxurious. It was a large bathroom. Bylsma remembers being in there after Game 5, venting with assistants Mike Yeo and Tom Fitzgerald and general manager Ray Shero.
“Someone may have thrown a beer can,” Bylsma remembers, laughing.
That’s when Lemieux walked in and calmed the waters.
“Shortly after that, he sent a text to Ray and myself — we call it ‘The Braveheart text,’” Bylsma said. “We forwarded it to the team.”
Lemieux’s text read: “We are a family and in this together. We don’t need anyone that is only with us WIN or TIE. I really think this is our year. Let’s forget about tonight. It happens. We will win Tuesday and win the Cup Friday.”
The tenor of the series, however, had already changed. The Penguins actually felt good about themselves after the first two losses. They had outshot the Red Wings in both games. That was new. It just felt different than the previous year, which was why, on the way to the bus after Game 2 and then on the plane, three players — Eaton, Sergei Gonchar and Bill Guerin — walked up to Bylsma separately with the same basic message: We’re gonna beat these guys.
Eaton sensed a radically different vibe in ‘09. In the ‘08 series, Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik recalled the Red Wings basically laughing at the youthful Penguins trying to hunt them for big hits that never came (with the exception of one memorable Orpik shift).
Nobody on the Detroit side was laughing in ‘09.
“Totally different feeling,” Eaton said. “I remember us talking about it being a marathon, not a sprint. The way we were playing, with our tenacious forwards getting in on checks, finishing checks, you could see things start to turn when we got home.
“Some of their defensemen were not as quick going back for pucks knowing that Kuny (Chris Kunitz) or TK (Tyler Kennedy) or a lot of our forwards were going to run through them.”
Gonchar’s winner in Game 3 kicked things off. Jordan Staal’s short-handed goal in Game 4, Sidney Crosby’s tic-tac-toe winner that night, Rob Scuderi’s “save” in Game 6, Kennedy’s wrap-around goal, Max Talbot’s legendary goals in Game 7 and, of course, Fleury’s brilliant play, capped by his “Secret Service Save” on the great Nicklas Lidstrom just before the buzzer in Game 7 all stand out.
Bylsma remembers the Penguins taking a 2-0 lead in Game 7 and the clock barely moving, kind of like those final interminable minutes Team USA experienced during the Miracle On Ice.
And the Penguins did it with Crosby injured on the bench.
“We didn’t even try to score after we went up 2-0,” Bylsma says. “And if it’s possible to hold your breath for 45 minutes, I think that’s what I did for the entire third period.”
I wondered if Fleury had ever spoken to Lidstrom since the two unwittingly walked into hockey history together.
“The only time I spoke with him was during the handshake line at the end of the game,” Fleury said, “But I can’t remember what he said.”
Wednesday morning, 10 years ago, Penguins players woke up to another text from Lemieux, in advance of Game 7.
“This is a chance of a lifetime to realize your childhood dream to win a Stanley Cup. Play without fear and you will be successful! See you at center ice.”
Still, nerves were evident during the morning skate. That is when Bylsma stepped in. He knew the television cameras would invade his locker room before the game, so he figured he would deliver his most heartfelt words in a more private setting.
He also remembered playing for Red Wings coach Mike Babcock in Game 7 of a Cup final — with Anaheim, against New Jersey — and he didn’t want to paraphrase Babcock’s speech (it hadn’t worked too well, anyway; the Ducks lost).
Brilliantly, Bylsma directed his message to the kid within every grown hockey player. He stopped the skate, gathered the team and asked Guerin, “Billy, how many times have you played in Game 7 of the Cup final?”
The answer was none, just as it was for everyone else. Bylsma already knew that. Eaton recalls how Bylsma responded to Guerin.
“He said, ‘Really? I’ve played in thousands of Game 7s. Any time they called me in for dinner, the sun going down, it was always next goal wins, Game 7, right?’ “Eaton said.
“The point was, act like you’ve been there before because we all have, in one way, shape or form. I remember that to this day.”
It sure lightened the mood.
When Bylsma asked Guerin how his “Game 7” had gone, Guerin grinned through missing teeth and said something like, “Two goals, two assists and the winner!”
The Penguins were ready.
A lot can happen in 10 years. Mellon Arena and Joe Louis Arena are but memories. Folks get on with their lives. Time has its way.
Hal Gill, once a giant on defense, calls games for the Nashville Predators. Craig Adams works as a financial adviser in Boston. Ruslan Fedotenko is a real-estate developer in Florida. Kennedy teaches hockey in Pittsburgh. Talbot is a retired family man in Montreal. The list goes on.
But you know what? That old Fred Shero saying is true. Shero, Ray’s late father, wrote the following on the Philadelphia Flyers team chalkboard before Game 6 of the 1974 Cup final: “Win together today, and we walk together forever.”
So when Bylsma sees Miroslav Satan, for example, like he did during the world championships last month (Satan is Slovakia’s GM), they chat for a halfhour about their shared experience.
Fitzgerald was to drop Yeo a text Wednesday, as he does most years on June 12. Bylsma was to hear from Shero. The players will check in on a massive group text.
Texts seem to be the theme here. Thank goodness for modern technology, right? Fitzgerald, now Shero’s assistant GM in New Jersey, returned one the other day asking him what Wednesday means.
“I will never forget 6/12,” he wrote. “It’s a day we are all linked together.”
Bylsma, 48, says he feels a little awkward “every time I put on the winged wheel” logo.
His career has taken some rough and wild turns since June 12, 2009, but that only makes his memories more precious.
He knows as well as anyone what the Penguins gained that day.
And what they took away.