Shan's the man to turn paper Wings into champs

Sporting News, The, Oct 21, 1996 by Larry Wigge

When he pulled the sweater with the winged wheel over his head for the first time, Brendan Shanahan let out a sigh of relief. The last time he wore No. 14, Shanahan had helped Canada win its first world championship in 33 years. That was 1994. It's obvious he has that championship feeling again by his choice of numbers with the Red Wings, who have not won the Stanley Cup since 1955.

Though the Whalers did all right in getting promising center Keith Primeau, veteran defenseman Paul Coffey and a first-round pick in a rich 1997 draft, the Red Wings are closer to winning the Cup than they were the past two seasons when they had the best regular season record but came up short of their ultimate goal.

Finally, the Wings have learned that you have to pay the price to get the kind of team that will compete in the playoffs. Championships aren't won on paper, with great regular-season records. In Shanahan, Detroit gets one of the premier power forwards in the league who can provide the team with leadership it didn't have with Primeau or Coffey. And swinging this deal so early in the season will give youngsters Anders Eriksson and Jamie Pushor a chance to develop on defense to fill Coffey's big skates.

Having a prospect such as Eriksson, who filled in admirably for Coffey in the playoffs last spring, makes this deal worth it for the Wings. He already is a better defensive player than Coffey, and his confidence in moving the puck will grow throughout the season. Remember, defense in Detroit means the leftwing lock. That has not changed--and the league's best defense won't suffer without Coffey.

Still, the key to the deal was Shanahan, 27 who had 44 goals for the lowly Whalers last season and is twice a 50-goal scorer. He is a special player, a player who can make Sergei Fedorov and Steve Yzerman better than they already are. Forget the size factor that everyone said the Red Wings needed. After all, Primeau is bigger than Shanahan, even though Primeau often plays like 5-6 instead of 6-5. Shanahan is a talker, a leader--and he wants badly to play on a winner.

"I'm a piece of the puzzle here, but I don't see myself as the missing piece," Shanahan says. "I wanted to come to a team where there is a mandate to win the Stanley Cup. I like the pressure of being in the big games and I like being out there during the big moments of those games."

He'll get plenty of those precious pressure moments in Detroit.

"Shanny gives you those tough minutes in the corners, and there aren't any better players in the game at finishing off a play in front of the net," Blues right winger Brett Hull says. "Detroit just picked up a great player, a great team guy, someone who will help them in the locker room.

"When we played them in the playoffs, they all seemed uptight. Shanty will take care of that; I'll bet my mortgage he'll help them 100 percent He knows the Central Division--and ... he'd like nothing better than to come back and beat the Blues after the way he was treated before he was traded to Hartford."

Never underestimate the revenge factor. Shanahan never wanted to leave St. Louis. Now, he has the opportunity to stick it to Blues G.M./coach Mike Keenan, who made things unpleasant for him in St. Louis. "The Blues were my first choice when the Whalers asked me where I might like to be traded," Shanahan says, "but not with Keenan as coach."

Says Keenan, "Shanahan (who still draws $500,000 of his $3.9 million salary from the Blues) will score more than Primeau, but Primeau was always a competitor against us--and you cannot underestimate the contributions Coffey made to that team. I'm not sure what they're trying to do on defense."

The Avalanche proved championships are not won on paper last year when they moved from Quebec. The previous season, they had the best record in the Eastern Conference but had nothing to show for it with a first-round playoff elimination. G.M. Pierre Lacroix worked on the chemistry of the team, obtaining right winger Claude Lemieux from the Devils for his feistiness, getting defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh from the Sharks to make the defense more mobile and acquiring Patrick Roy in goal.

There's a correlation in Detroit, where Chris Osgood proved last spring he's good enough in goal to win in the playoffs, Nicklas Lidstrom and Vladimir Konstantinov can lead the defense and Shanahan will be the character player Lemieux was for Colorado.

A lot of people crowned the Red Wings champions after they won an NHL-record 62 games last season, but they didn't have the chemistry--the right pieces in place to win the pressure games. After their playoff failure, unhappy fans in Detroit wanted to play Russian roulette with the team's talented Russian Five, despite their marvelous play all season. Coach Scotty Bowman even had to talk owner Mike Ilitch out of trading the enigmatic Fedorov.

It is said Europeans, especially Russians, can't win the Cup because they don't grow up dreaming of lifting it in celebration the way North American kids do. That's the common copout when a team doesn't win it all. But it was disproved by the Rangers in 1994 and again last season by the Avalanche.