A big change

Sporting News, The, Feb 20, 1995 by Larry Wigge

For years, we have heard it is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Well, times change. Now, if your feisty mongrel runs into a Doberman, the confrontation can get pretty ugly.

Last season, the Rangers were the mongrel, rolling along with a 41-18-5 record, eight points ahead of their nearest rival, before they lost to the Red Wings, 6-3, on March 7. The Red Wings dominated that game, outmuscling the Rangers along the boards and in front of the net. Coach Mike Keenan had told General Manager Neil Smith in July that the Rangers had to get bigger. But this was the night Smith was convinced of it, too.

At the trading deadline a week later, the Rangers made some daring changes. They traded talented Mike Gartner to the Maple Leafs for Glenn Anderson, dealt promising Todd Marchant to the Oilers for Craig MacTavish, unloaded spare left wing Phil Bourque to the Senators and sent talented but small right wing Tony Amonte to the Blackhawks for hulking forwards Stephane Matteau and Brian Noonan.

Keenan's formula proved correct. The Rangers ended 53 years of frustration by winning the Stanley Cup. And, in the process, proved that bigger is better.

"It's not just a trend, it's reality," says Keenan, who has moved to St. Louis and so far has made the Blues bigger and better. "We had to get bigger and stronger in our approach and our attitude in New York. The in-fighting and the hard-nosed hockey is something we had seen a lot of and had to be able to respond to it. Stephane Matteau and Brian Noonan are over 6 feet, 200 pounds - but they are guys who can contribute by more than just being physical.

"Tony Amonte may go on to score 40 or 50 goals in Chicago on the No. 1 line with Jeremy Roenick this season, but that doesn't diminish what Matteau and Noonan did for us. There's no way we win the Stanley Cup unless we make that trade, because it's a necessity to have big players to overcome the grind and attrition the playoffs."

Driving force: Marty McSorley uses his 40-pound advantage against Craig Johnson.

Everyone knows David slew Goliath with his slingshot. But if you were to put them on skates and give them sticks today, David would not be a factor, and Goliath would be the first pick on everyone's draft list.

I found out about the attrition and hardships you have to overcome when I coached in Philadelphia and we had to play 26 games in 53 days and had to travel from Philadelphia to Edmonton back and forth during a seven-game final series in 1987," Keenan says. "We had great character players who never stopped working, such as Ron Sutter and Rick Tocchet and Brian Propp and Mark Howe and Dave Poulin, but the grind, the attrition, was devastating."

The Oilers teams that won five Stanley Cups in seven seasons were big and strong. The trend continued when the Flames won it all in 1989 with a huge team. The Penguins, often described as a team of linebackers on skates, was on top in 1991 and '92. And it was no coincidence that last spring two of the league's biggest teams - the Rangers and Canucks - battled it out in the finals.

Step across that line and you pay the price - that is the philosophy of many teams, especially the ones with enormous defensemen. The Devils used that mentality to take a three games to two lead in the conference finals and to take 2-0 lead in Game 6 against the Rangers.

The Rangers would step into the Devils' zone and run into Scott Stevens and Ken Daneyko and a group of 6-foot, 200-pound forwards who played a trap defense that had to make the Rangers feel like they were being squeezed to death by a boa constrictor. "We couldn't move," left wing Adam Graves says. "It was like stepping into quicksand."

That's when Mark Messier, the prototypical power forward in the NHL for more than a decade, took over. He not only guaranteed a victory, but delivered, scoring three goals to lead the Rangers to a 4-2 triumph.

"Mark not only won that game, but he came back early in Game 7 and flattened Scott Stevens," Keenan says. "After that hit, you could see the confidence level in our players increase. It was almost like they all became 6-5, 220 pounds."

Hockey will never eliminate the contribution a small but talented player can make. The Canadiens' Henri Richard, after all, was only 5 feet 6, 155 pounds, and no one else has 11 Stanley Cup rings like he does.

We will never grow tired of watching what a Pavel Bure or Wayne Gretzky or Jeremy Roenick or Doug Gilmour or Pat LaFontaine can do on the ice. But those are small players who play big, night after night - they have to. Today's teams are building around power forwards such as Messier, Eric Lindros, Adam Graves, Cam Neely, Gary Roberts, Keith Tkachuk, Brendan Shanahan, Kevin Stevens, Sergei Fedorov and Wendel Clark. All big and talented.

"If you put a good big guy up against a good small guy, the big guy will normally neutralize the smaller player's talent because of the size factor," Stars General Manager-Coach Bob Gainey says. "Of course, the big guy has to play big - or else he is just taking up space."