My Last Fight

by Darren McCarty

  8. 2002

  “Ain’t no party like a Detroit Party cuz a Detroit party don’t stop”

  —Kid Rock

  After I posted a hat trick against Colorado Avalanche goalie Patrick Roy in Game 1 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals, I jokingly told the media they might have just witnessed one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.

  “Get out your bibles because the end of the world must be coming,” I said after our 5–3 victory.

  It was the only time in my career I scored three goals in a game, and it had come against one of the greatest goalies in NHL history.

  Our captain Steve Yzerman told reporters, “I have a better chance of winning the lottery than Mac has of getting a hat trick.”

  Counting the regular season and playoffs, I had played 650 NHL games before I finally netted my first hat trick.

  Maybe I was simply due because I had only scored five goals in 62 games during the regular season and I hadn’t scored a single goal in the first two rounds of the playoffs. I was never a 20-goal scorer at the NHL level, but I was good for 12 to 15 in my prime years in Detroit.

  But the truth is that I always felt like I had Roy’s number during my NHL career. When you’re a pro hockey player, there are always goalies you feel like you can’t beat. These guys always find a way to get a glove, or a stick, or an arm on your shots. They get in your head. You just expect them to stop your shot.

  Then there are goalies that seem to be vulnerable to whatever offensive magic you happen to have on any given night. I always believed I could blast my shot past Roy. I don’t know why. I just did.

  Plus, although I did not boast a staggering number of goals in my career, I did own several important goals. I always felt that I would show up center stage when the spotlight shone brightest.

  Clearly, the Colorado vs. Detroit series qualified as a major event. Many media members wrote that this series was the true Stanley Cup Final. The media expected the winner of this series to coast to the NHL championship. That’s not how we viewed it, but it is what the pundits were saying. The Avalanche were the defending Stanley Cup champion, and we were only four years removed from winning back-to-back titles.

  USA Today offered that our series featured more Hall of Fame players than any NHL playoff series since the New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers played in 1984.

  What made the hat trick sweeter was the fact that Colorado coach Bob Hartley had decided to play Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg together and the Grind Line was on the ice against them quite a bit. It was clear that we won that exchange.

  In the newspaper the next day, Detroit coach Scotty Bowman was quoted as saying, “It was a wonderful effort from a guy who gives his all every game. They were all great goals. There wasn’t anything lucky about any of them.”

  The score was tied 2–2 going into the third period of that game. At 1:18 of the period, I put us ahead by firing a laser shot past Roy from the high slot. I used Colorado defenseman Adam Foote as a screen.

  Just after the halfway mark of the period, I ended up on a 2-on-1 break with Kirk Maltby.

  A 2-on-1 seemed to be a regular occurrence for Maltby and me, and we enjoyed bickering about what should happen when I had the puck in those situations.

  “You always look me off—it’s like I’m not even there,” Maltby would complain.

  “Yeah,” I would say, “but you’re the best decoy duck in the league.”

  Sure enough, in this game, I used Maltby as a decoy and then went high on the glove-side to beat Roy at 12:44. With Roy in the net, I never thought pass.

  My third goal came at 15:15 when I found a rebound and tucked it quickly under the crossbar.

  That game was played on May 18, and I know that because my son Griffin’s birthday was on May 20. He turned six that year. The reason I remember that clearly is that I had asked Griffin the day before the series opened what he wanted for his birthday.

  “Dad,” he said, “I want you to score a goal tomorrow.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  When Game 1 was over, Griffin was in the runway to greet me as I came off the ice.

  “I know you wanted one goal, but I got three. Hope that’s okay,” I said.

  He gave me the biggest hug I ever received from him. There is no greater feeling than making one of your children happy.

  Perhaps this will surprise you, but I had the utmost respect for Roy. I always admired his passion and fiery personality. I liked the way he stood up for his team. I appreciated his gladiator mentality.

  The Avalanche had won the Stanley Cup the season before, and we didn’t expect them to fold up after losing Game 1. We were correct in that assessment. As we had anticipated, the series was angry, physical, and tight. Three of the first five games went to overtime and we were down 3–2 in the best-of-seven series going into Game 6 in Denver.

  It seemed as if all the breaks had gone against us in that series, but we got a big one in Game 6 when Patrick Roy dropped the puck after making a big save against Yzerman. Shanahan was there to poke the puck over the goal line to give us a 1–0 lead.

  In the second period, I had a 2-on-1 shorthanded break with Malts and of course I was thinking shot all of the way. I looked far side against Roy, and saw nothing. So I blasted it short-side and it zipped past Roy.

  “When I’m on a 2-on-1 with DMac I just look for the rebound,” Maltby said.

  What I remember most about Game 7 was getting a 4–0 first-period lead and feeling as if it was the scariest four-goal lead an NHL team had ever owned.

  During the intermission between the first and second periods, you could have heard a pin drop in our dressing room. It was as quiet as a library, and that was unusual. There was always chatter in our room between periods.

  We were a confident team, but we were shocked to be ahead 4–0 in that game. Tomas Holmstrom had scored on our first shot, 1:57 into the game, and then Fedorov put us ahead 2–0 80 seconds later. Robitaille added a goal midway through the period, and then Homer added his second off a Robitaille rebound. We had four goals on 10 shots against a goalie who had already won two Game 7s in that postseason.

  At that point, Roy had played 240 playoff games and had never before given up four goals in the first period of a postseason game. Hockey players are generally superstitious, and no one wanted to jinx our lead by talking about it.

  It was like being in a baseball dugout when a pitcher has a perfect game going and no one is saying a word about it.

  Honestly, that four-goal lead was probably one of the most stressful situations of my life. The Detroit roster in 2001–02 included Yzerman, Hasek, Robitaille, Nick Lidstrom, Chris Chelios, Sergei Fedorov, Brett Hull, Igor Larionov, and Brendan Shanahan. We were a Hall of Fame team. We had nine guys on that team who were 35 and older and 17 guys who were 30 or older. We were supposed to win it all.

  Sometimes, the fear of losing can be a catalyst for success. We weren’t mentally prepared to have a big lead. It was like we didn’t know how to act. Suddenly, the four-goal lead seemed like the worst lead in hockey. In our minds, we started worrying about the Avalanche chipping away at our lead. They certainly had the explosiveness to score five goals over the final 40 minutes.

  Our objective for the second period was not to give up an early goal that would allow the Avalanche to regain some momentum.

  We really didn’t start to breathe easy until Hull scored less than five minutes into the second. Then Fredrik Olausson scored and Roy was pulled from the game. The final score was 7–0.

  Yzerman said after the game, “We thought it would be a 1–0 game, or go into overtime, or be a 2–0 game. We were thinking after the first period—This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Hasek posted back-to-back shutouts in Game 6 and Game 7. Dom had his quirkiness, but you won’t find a goalie who competed any harder than he did. />
  It was not out of the ordinary for him to spend the night in the dressing room if he wasn’t happy with the way he played in a game. He didn’t want to take his anger home. I was always one of the first players to practice, always showing up about two hours before start time. Dom would always be there, sometimes curled up on the couch with a towel draped over him as a blanket.

  The Detroit vs. Colorado rivalry was as intense as it gets, and the animosity was real. We hated those fuckers and they hated us. But the truth is that we brought out the best in each other.

  I respected how the Avalanche played. Foote was such a ruthless competitor that he forced me to be a better player. When I was sitting on the bench, I found myself always watching how Joe Sakic played.

  I thought Forsberg was a great player. He was the first player I ever saw use the reverse shoulder check that current Red Wings player Pavel Datsyuk is famous for today. Forsberg hit harder when he had the puck than when he didn’t. If you tried to hit him when he possessed the puck, he would lower his shoulder and drive it into you. It felt like you were being hit by a bag of cement.

  One memory I have of Forsberg is a slashing episode we had during a faceoff in a playoff game. We were at center ice, and we slashed each other with such force that we both had the wind knocked out of us.

  I remember thinking, Holy Jesus, this guy is solid as a rock.

  What people don’t understand about Swedish players is that, even though they aren’t fighters, they are as tough as Canadian players. They can take a beating and they won’t ever go away. They will use their stick and they will stand up for themselves. I learned that from playing with, and against, Swedish players.

  The rivalry pushed both the Avalanche and Red Wings to be the best teams we could be. Without us, there is no them—and without them, there is no us. It felt like war when we played the Avalanche, but we respected their warrior mentality.

  We also respected the Carolina Hurricanes, who were our Stanley Cup Final opponent in 2002. The media believed it would be a walkover because the Hurricanes had finished with 25 fewer points than us in the regular season. But the Hurricanes had also been underdogs in their three previous series, and yet somehow had found a way to win.

  Before the Stanley Cup Final began, Carolina coach Paul Maurice even joked that he was applying for “underdog status” because he believed his team played better when critics didn’t give them much of a chance. He lovingly referred to his players as “mongrels.”

  We didn’t take the Hurricanes lightly, and they showed us in Game 1 why we shouldn’t. Ron Francis scored 58 seconds into overtime to give Carolina a 3–2 win in the opener in Detroit. Twice, we had a lead in that game and could not hold it.

  Game 2 was a different story. We won 3–1 to tie the series heading to Raleigh, North Carolina, for Games 3 and 4. It was Game 3 that decided the series, and honestly we almost lost that game.

  Hullie scored with 1:14 remaining in regulation to tie the game, and we didn’t win it until Igor Larionov scored at 14:47 of the third overtime.

  There was plenty of angst for our team in overtime because the Hurricanes were a confident bunch. At that point, they were 7–1 in overtime games on the season. Their goaltender Arturs Irbe was 7–0 in overtime games. Meanwhile, we had lost four out of five overtime games, including the first game of that series.

  At the time, the game ended up being the third-longest Stanley Cup Final game ever played. Again, Hasek was terrific in net, making 41 saves, including 22 in overtime.

  Larionov, who was 41 then, had scored earlier in the game to become the oldest player ever to score in a Stanley Cup Final.

  We ended up winning Game 4 by a score of 3–0 to take charge of the series. But it would have been a completely different series had Carolina been able to win Game 3. That building was as loud as it gets. They would have been overflowing with momentum in Game 4 had they beat us in Game 3.

  That’s why I say that series was closer than people realize, even though we won it in five games.

  We won the clinching game by a score of 3–1. Scotty announced his retirement on the ice while we were celebrating.

  When I look back at that championship, what I think about is how we came back from a 2–0 deficit to win the opening round series against Vancouver. The media thought we were dead at that point.

  Before Game 3 in that series, Yzerman addressed the team. It wasn’t a fiery oration. It wasn’t like Herb Brooks addressing his American players before the game against the Soviets in 1980. It was Stevie being Stevie. He said that we were better than the way we had been playing. He said we needed to relax and play the way we know how to play. He said we needed to take charge.

  The reason why Yzerman’s address was important was because he decided to address us. I can only remember him making about three major captain’s speeches. So when he spoke, we listened. We went out and won four consecutive games against the Canucks.

  But we were more inspired by Yzerman’s actions than his words. He led us to that championship while playing on one leg. The cartilage in his right knee was shredded. He couldn’t practice. Not long after winning in 2002, Steve had to have an osteotomy, a surgical procedure where a bone is cut to realign the knee. A shim was inserted underneath the knee to remove pressure from the hinge. That surgery is usually done on senior citizens to give them mobility in their later years.

  Even we didn’t know the extent of Yzerman’s knee damage during the 2002 playoffs. We just knew that he looked like he was in more pain than anyone we had seen.

  He never complained. He just showed up every day, took a needle to deaden the pain, and then went out and played.

  Yzerman basically refused to even acknowledge that there was a problem.

  “How’re you doing, Steve?” I would ask.

  “I’m fine,” he’d say.

  Sometimes he’d change it up and just say “Good” when you asked him how he was feeling. To Steve, that was a comprehensive medical report.

  Doctors would try to time the administering of the needle to give Yzerman the maximum amount of relief during a game. But if the game went to overtime, the relief would wear off.

  It didn’t truly hit me how debilitating his injury was until I watched him try to pull himself off the ice during the Stanley Cup Final. He had gotten hit in the corner, and had to use his stick to support his weight to will himself back to his feet. It was painful to watch how long it took him to get back on his skates.

  Another powerful memory of that playoff run centers on how amazing Hasek was. He played 23 games and posted six shutouts. At one point in the Stanley Cup Final, Hasek went 166 minutes without allowing Carolina to score a goal.

  The first Stanley Cup was special because it ended a 42-year drought in Detroit. And it was special because I scored the clinching goals. The second championship was special because we won it for Vladimir Konstantinov and Sergei Mnatsakanov.

  But the 2002 championship was important for a variety of reasons. It was memorable because we helped Robitaille, Hasek, Fredrik Olausson, and Steve Duchesne win their first Cups.

  People tend to forget that Olausson and Duchesne played a big role on that team. In Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, Duchesne lost a handful of teeth when he was struck in the face with a shot. When I saw the aftermath of that injury, Duchesne looked like the famous old photo of Bobby Clarke smiling without any fucking front teeth. Duchesne wasn’t even fazed by his need for dentistry. He was quickly back in the game, and his pass triggered the rush that led to Larionov’s winning goal.

  The win in 2002 was also extra meaningful because it had been four years since our last Stanley Cup championship.

  That gave us three championships in a six-year span, which certainly helped us make a case for being one of the great NHL teams. It was also memorable because it was Bowman’s ninth Stanley Cup championship, breaking a tie with his mentor
, Toe Blake, for most NHL coaching championships.

  One of the best moments of my NHL career came while I was celebrating that 2002 championship. Red Wings owners Mike and Marian Ilitch threw a party at their home, and I was standing near one of the buffet tables, munching on shrimp, when Scotty unexpectedly walked up to me and started talking.

  Scotty wasn’t the easiest coach to play for because he was demanding. But I enjoyed playing for him because he made me feel wanted. Plus, I felt he cared about my well-being.

  That was made clear to me one night playing St. Louis when Tony Twist was trying to goad me into a second fight. I really didn’t want to fight Twist. Nobody really wanted to fight Twist, because we all understood that he could hurt you.

  Seeing that both of us were jawing before a faceoff, Scotty stood on the bench and screamed, “If you fight Twist again, you will never play another minute for me.”

  I turned to Twist and said, “Sorry Twister, but I want to play. Can’t fight you.”

  Thank you Scotty for saving my ass. He knew exactly what he was doing when he yelled me. He was helping me save face.

  When Scotty talks, words fly out of his mouth like quick machine gun bursts, and you can never be sure of his aim.

  “One thing I never did in my career is tell my players how much I appreciated them,” Bowman said to me that night at the Ilitches’.

  Now that Bowman was retired, he was totally comfortable talking to his players.

  “I just want you to know that you’re my second-favorite right wing next to Guy Lafleur,” Bowman blurted out. “I hope you aren’t mad.”

  The greatest coach in NHL history just told me that he liked no right winger better than me except 560-goal scorer Lafluer.

  No, I’m not mad at taking a backseat to Lafleur. That was a pretty fucking amazing moment in my career. I’m not a Hall of Famer, but that was my Hall of Fame moment.