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how ABOUT them Red Wings?
So, last night I did for the first time something I really ought to have done earlier in life: I went to a Red Wings game. And not just any game; they were playing the Blues, division rivals (math indicates that unless something really horrendous happens to the Blues, they'll take the division title from us when they've played all their games) and team of our former goalie, Chris Osgood.
His first NHL season - during which he turned 21 - was played with the Red Wings. He played about half the games, which is incredible for such a young goalie, mostly due to the weird goalie shuffle the team was doing at the time. Ozzie wound up playing in the playoffs, as well, and the first series went all seven games before the Wings lost to San Jose. Ozzie was reported to have spent three or four hours crying in the locker room afterward.
He was ours, okay? Our baby underdog goalie. He went three more seasons, not really trusted, backing up another goalie, and then we won the Cup in 97 and our #1 goalie retired. Ozzie stepped into his shoes, as he should, and we won another Cup in 98. 99, 2000, 2001, eh, okay, you can only win so many Cups. Ozzie was our goalie.
And then Dominic Hasek decided he'd like to win a Cup himself, and did a deal with the Wings. Obviously they had to get rid of Ozzie, but they didn't manage it until well into training camp, sending him out to the Islanders, where he played well, but, let's face it: they're the Islanders.
Now Ozzie's with the Blues, and we have yet more goalie drama (because Dom wants to keep playing, or win another Cup, or avoid prosecution in his home country for that pesky assault charge...) and Ozzie is playing well behind a rival team that's a serious contender. And so you say, Hey, way to go Ozzie, but also, Dammit, Ozzie, could you not be quite so good?
What you do not do, dammit, people, is chant his name - Ooooozzie - in 'airball' cadence. Sure, he let in two goals. We needed him to, or we wouldn't have won the game. But it wasn't a blowout, and he was standing on his head out there to keep it that way. So just shut up. Or maybe chant your own goalie's name, in a Hey-buddy-we-know-you're-getting-traded-but-we-still-like-you-because-we-can-be-cool-like-that way.
My conclusion: Wings fans still love him. They know he never wanted to leave Detroit. They want him back. (I mean, when you see people wearing Red Wings Osgood jerseys at the game, that's gotta tell you something...)
Er. Right. Anyway. The thing I really wanted to talk about wasn't actually the game, although that was cool - there's no commentary at the arena, so there was something oddly like reverent silence through the game. It wasn't silence, of course. People were talking, telling each other what had just happened, yelling at various players or telling them what to do. But the crowd, as a whole, was as close to silent as crowds get, much of the time, just. Watching. Listening to the shuss of skates on ice and the slap of the puck - sharp against the boards, muffled against a goalies pads - waiting for the crunch and rattle of a solid hit against the glass.
But before that, before the game, while the PA was still tossing out random pop tunes interspersed with Christmas carols, while people were still filing into their seats with their Little Caesars pizzas and seven dollar beers, there was the warm-up skate.
You catch a glimpse of it on TV sometimes, the guys skating in circles while one or two outliers stretch out on the ice, but the real thing was... wow. Twenty-two red jerseys on the ice, wheeling and circling in a familiar pattern, taking leisurely-looking shots at their buddy in the goal, and you realize: this is a team. Not a collection of five-man squads, three-man offensive lines and two-man defensive pairings, not a line of guys sitting on the bench waiting to be tapped, intent on the action. A team. Lining up for one drill, crashing the net together for another, playing a game together, all of them. This must be what hockey is, for them, most of the time. Games are what we see, but for the team, there's much more time spent drilling and training and practicing, and they do it like this, together, as a team, and that is so unutterably cool.
I'm so glad I could see it.
His first NHL season - during which he turned 21 - was played with the Red Wings. He played about half the games, which is incredible for such a young goalie, mostly due to the weird goalie shuffle the team was doing at the time. Ozzie wound up playing in the playoffs, as well, and the first series went all seven games before the Wings lost to San Jose. Ozzie was reported to have spent three or four hours crying in the locker room afterward.
He was ours, okay? Our baby underdog goalie. He went three more seasons, not really trusted, backing up another goalie, and then we won the Cup in 97 and our #1 goalie retired. Ozzie stepped into his shoes, as he should, and we won another Cup in 98. 99, 2000, 2001, eh, okay, you can only win so many Cups. Ozzie was our goalie.
And then Dominic Hasek decided he'd like to win a Cup himself, and did a deal with the Wings. Obviously they had to get rid of Ozzie, but they didn't manage it until well into training camp, sending him out to the Islanders, where he played well, but, let's face it: they're the Islanders.
Now Ozzie's with the Blues, and we have yet more goalie drama (because Dom wants to keep playing, or win another Cup, or avoid prosecution in his home country for that pesky assault charge...) and Ozzie is playing well behind a rival team that's a serious contender. And so you say, Hey, way to go Ozzie, but also, Dammit, Ozzie, could you not be quite so good?
What you do not do, dammit, people, is chant his name - Ooooozzie - in 'airball' cadence. Sure, he let in two goals. We needed him to, or we wouldn't have won the game. But it wasn't a blowout, and he was standing on his head out there to keep it that way. So just shut up. Or maybe chant your own goalie's name, in a Hey-buddy-we-know-you're-getting-traded-but-we-still-like-you-because-we-can-be-cool-like-that way.
My conclusion: Wings fans still love him. They know he never wanted to leave Detroit. They want him back. (I mean, when you see people wearing Red Wings Osgood jerseys at the game, that's gotta tell you something...)
Er. Right. Anyway. The thing I really wanted to talk about wasn't actually the game, although that was cool - there's no commentary at the arena, so there was something oddly like reverent silence through the game. It wasn't silence, of course. People were talking, telling each other what had just happened, yelling at various players or telling them what to do. But the crowd, as a whole, was as close to silent as crowds get, much of the time, just. Watching. Listening to the shuss of skates on ice and the slap of the puck - sharp against the boards, muffled against a goalies pads - waiting for the crunch and rattle of a solid hit against the glass.
But before that, before the game, while the PA was still tossing out random pop tunes interspersed with Christmas carols, while people were still filing into their seats with their Little Caesars pizzas and seven dollar beers, there was the warm-up skate.
You catch a glimpse of it on TV sometimes, the guys skating in circles while one or two outliers stretch out on the ice, but the real thing was... wow. Twenty-two red jerseys on the ice, wheeling and circling in a familiar pattern, taking leisurely-looking shots at their buddy in the goal, and you realize: this is a team. Not a collection of five-man squads, three-man offensive lines and two-man defensive pairings, not a line of guys sitting on the bench waiting to be tapped, intent on the action. A team. Lining up for one drill, crashing the net together for another, playing a game together, all of them. This must be what hockey is, for them, most of the time. Games are what we see, but for the team, there's much more time spent drilling and training and practicing, and they do it like this, together, as a team, and that is so unutterably cool.
I'm so glad I could see it.