Hockey and hate make for strong NHL rivalry
Colorado v. Detroit: Wings, Avalanche set to renew dislike dating back to 1996
By JEREMY SANDLER
National Post
"Let's get ready to rumble" would be a fitting beginning for tonight's game between the Colorado Avalanche and the Detroit Red Wings.
Nobody outside the NHL's head offices would likely bat an eye if boxing announcer Michael Buffer's trademark phrase replaced the national anthem at Joe Louis Arena.
There could be no venue more appropriate for the event than one named for a former heavyweight champion of the world, because over the last seven years, the two teams have squared off for some all-time memorable fisticuffs; battles that all seem to stem from a series of hits made during a memorable playoff series in 1996.
First-year Detroit goalie Curtis Joseph -- who knows a thing or two about rivalries, having experienced Toronto-Montreal first-hand during four seasons with the Maple Leafs and who as an Oiler took part in several editions of the Battle of Alberta -- said after beating Colorado 4-2 in Denver on Jan. 16 that Detroit-Colorado was a special matchup.
"You could tell by the way the game was played and by the intensity that it meant more than two points," Joseph said.
If former NHLer Todd Gill didn't know about the intensity of the rivalry from his days with the Red Wings, he found out about it when he joined the Avalanche in 2001.
"When I moved to Denver ... a neighbour came up to me and asked where I played last year," he said. "I told him Detroit -- and he told me he hated me because I played for the Red Wings."
Fans in both cities covet tickets for the head-to-head duels like they offer eternal life. Players on both teams feel much the same way.
"If you asked any player on either team," said Avalanche captain Joe Sakic last season, "I think you'd find out none of them wanted to miss a minute of this rivalry."
Countless Web pages are dedicated to the enmity between the two teams and each of the next three meetings will be broadcast nationally in the not-so-hockey-mad United States, tonight on cable giant ESPN, with Saturday's rematch and a March 16 date slated to run on network television on ABC.
The ferocity is due in large part to the many important matchups between the big-budget perennial contenders. Since the former Quebec Nordiques franchise transferred to Denver in 1995, the two teams have met in the playoffs five times, with Colorado coming out on top three times and Detroit twice. Included in that total are three conference finals showdowns from which the winner went on to win the Stanley Cup. Combined, the two teams own five of the past seven championships, three for Detroit, two for Colorado.
If either team has a leg up going into tonight's game, it's the Red Wings. They humiliated the Avalanche 7-0 in Game 7 of last year's Western Conference Final en route to their third title in six years. Detroit won the January meeting and entering last night were comfortably ensconced in the fourth playoff position in the West with 65 points, seven clear of the Avalanche, who are battling Anaheim, Chicago and Minnesota for the final three post-season berths.
But momentum means little when the dislike runs so deep.
It dates back to the 1996 playoffs, when Detroit forward Vyacheslav Kozlov rammed Avalanche blueliner Adam Foote's head into the boards. Claude Lemieux, who would be heard from again before the series ended, sought his own retribution from Kozlov and was suspended from Game 4 for his version of vigilante justice, and the fuse was set.
But it was during Game 6 that the animosity was truly born.
During the 4-1 Colorado win that ousted Detroit from the playoffs, Lemieux slammed Red Wing forward Kris Draper from behind into the boards near the Detroit bench. Draper suffered a broken jaw, a broken nose and a 30-stitch cut.
Lemieux was ejected, but added insult to injury by returning from the locker room to partake in the traditional handshake and the rivalry was born.
Afterwards, newspaper photos showed Draper's right cheek to be approximately the size of a softball. The NHL suspended Lemieux from the first two games of Colorado's four-game sweep of Florida in the Stanley Cup finals.
Less than a year later, on March 26, 1997, the Red Wings engaged in retribution with an old-time NHL brawl. Wings forward Darren McCarty used his fists to extract revenge from a turtling Lemieux, while goalies Patrick Roy and Mike Vernon tangled at centre ice in a bloody encounter. Vancouver coach Marc Crawford, then behind the bench for Colorado, engaged former Detroit coach Scotty Bowman in a face-to-face screaming match.
The loathing, born the previous spring, was cemented.
Since then, the names may have changed -- Roy has since tangled with Chris Osgood and came close to duking it out with Dominik Hasek -- but the nastiness has remained.
Lest it be forgotten, some spectacular hockey has also surfaced between hostilities.
But for the foreseeable future, hockey and hate will go hand in hand when the two rivals hit the ice.
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