BY SHAWN WINDSOR • DETROIT FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER • May 24, 2008
When Joe Joseph swivels his chair around in his 33rd-floor office in downtown Pittsburgh, a valley of glass and concrete greets him. Some five blocks from his perch, at the other end of that valley, rests a television screen the size of one found at a small drive-in movie theater. It was erected recently just outside Mellon Arena, home of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Last Sunday afternoon, at least 5,000 fans gathered before the screen in this reawakened hockey town to watch the Penguins earn a place in the Stanley Cup finals.
"It's been crazy here," said Joseph, who works as a financial planner.
Tonight, the Penguins play the Red Wings in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals. And the assumption is things will be crazy here, too. After all, if Pittsburgh's hockey history is rich, then Detroit's hockey history is royalty.
The two industrial cities are separated by 280 miles or so, about a 4 1/2 -hour drive by car, but their histories and hockey cultures are linked by relationships large and small -- though the teams have never faced each other in the playoffs.
Joseph, for example, routinely makes the drive to Detroit in the summer to visit one of his closest friends, Tigers manager Jim Leyland. And Leyland, as it happens, has seen games at Mellon Arena and Joe Louis Arena this season.
Leyland, who lives in the Pittsburgh area in the off-season and once managed the Pirates, described the atmospheres as "very similar."
As for similarities in the regions?
"Good groups of people," he said. "Homespun people."
How about whom he wants to see win the Cup?
"That's obviously a no-win situation for me. I have no comment. May the best man win," he said. "The correct political answer is that I'm rooting for the guy (Mike Ilitch) that signs the checks."
Pittsburgh is, at heart, a Steelers town. Who can forget the black-and-gold colors overrunning Detroit two years ago when the Steelers played the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL at Ford Field?
Yet professional hockey in Pittsburgh predates the Steelers by almost 30 years. Although the Penguins aren't an Original Six NHL franchise like the Red Wings, hockey in that region stretches back to the beginning of the 20th Century. In fact, a minor league team called the Hornets won two American Hockey League championships in the 1960s. And who owned them?
The Red Wings, of course.
TWO SAVIORS AND A MASTER COACH
The Penguins came along in 1967, when the NHL expanded from six to 12 teams. That was the end of the Hornets, but the beginning of one of the most tumultuous runs in professional sports.
Twice the team has flirted with bankruptcy and nearly left the city. And twice the franchise has been saved by a transcendent, singular force. First it was Mario Lemieux, who led the Penguins to back-to-back Cups in the early '90s.
That second Cup, by the way, was won with the help of Scotty Bowman, who had been in the front office of the Penguins the year before and took over as coach when Bob Johnson died of cancer. In 1993, Bowman was hired by the Red Wings, with whom he went on to win three more Cups, and with whom his allegiance remains for this series -- of course, it helps that he's still on the payroll as a scouting consultant.
"They are both terrific hockey cities," Bowman said, pointing out that hockey culture as a whole -- from the pros to the beer leagues to the travel teams -- is more ingrained in Detroit. "Being next to the (Canadian) border makes a difference."
So does the fact the Wings own the longest streak of consecutive playoff appearances in sports -- 17; and that the Wings' multiple eras of sustained excellence that goes back to the '30s when they won their first Cup; and that the winged-wheel logo that adorns their uniforms is perhaps the most iconic emblem in hockey in the United States.
Tonight's game marks the fifth time in the last 13 seasons the Wings have played in the finals. The franchise has won 10 Cups. The Penguins, by contrast, are playing in their third Cup finals.
But if the new face of the franchise -- and many would say the new face of hockey -- has any thing to say about it, Pittsburgh will likely compete for a string of Cups in the next decade, which brings us back to the second transcendent star to save the franchise: Sidney Crosby.
Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby, left, leaves Cobo Hall on Friday. Crosby has led the Penguins to the finals in his third season.
(AMY LEANG/Detroit Free Press)
The savior arrived with a fortuitous pingpong bounce.
"I remember I was listening to the NHL draft lottery (in July 2005) on my car radio," said Rob King, an FSN Pittsburgh anchor who has reported on the Penguins. "And the announcers were getting down to 10, then to five, then to three, and I parked in my driveway, I couldn't believe it. And then we won. I was honking my horn. You knew it was that big."
In the three seasons before Crosby arrived, the Penguins were one of the worst teams in hockey. As a small-market team, management couldn't afford to keep its best players, let alone go after high-priced free agents. Meanwhile, the Red Wings were spending like the New York Yankees.
Then the lockout happened. Teams agreed to share revenue and cap spending, evening the playing field. The new system, along with that lucky pingpong ball, allowed the Penguins to avoid insolvency and put together a competitive team again.
In only his third season, Crosby has the team playing for a championship.
He is 20.
"And he has taken over this town," said Paul Steigerwald, the team's television play-by-play announcer who has been with the Penguins for 28 years.
Steigerwald, who has spent his entire life in Pittsburgh, said Crosby was teaching a whole new generation to love the sport. Not too long ago, Steigerwald's two nephews, 5 and 2 at the time, were playing hockey in a room using mini sticks.
"And they were arguing over who gets to be Sidney Crosby," Steigerwald said, recalling the story his brother shared with him. "So the oldest says to the youngest: 'You can't be Sidney Crosby because you don't poop in the toilet.' "
Steve Yzerman may have been one of the most beloved sports figures in Detroit in the last 30 years, but he never crossed over beyond this region. In Pittsburgh, Steigerwald said, Crosby isn't just saving hockey for an old steel town, he may be saving it for the NHL.
A MATCHUP WORTHY OF THE FINALS
Chris Duprey lives in Canton. He graduated from Michigan. He enjoys watching Wings games this time of year. His wife does not. Angela Duprey is from Pittsburgh. And at least once a month, the young couple return to visit her family.
Duprey's allegiance is mixed. On the one hand, his hometown team is close to a championship; on the other hand, he knows how much winning a Cup would mean to his new family in Pittsburgh.
At the risk of sounding like a traitor, he said this: "I wouldn't mind if the Penguins won."
Whatever else, he thinks the two teams -- both blessed with speed, both highly skilled, both a blend of grit and panache, though the Wings are the grittier (relatively) of the two -- will put on a compelling series.
When the Wings broke their 40-year drought and won the Cup in 1997, the title was the quest. The following year, when the team repeated, the theme was about winning for their fallen teammate, Vladimir Konstantinov, who had been injured in a limo crash the year before. The 2002 Cup championship was about a collection of Hall of Famers taking one last ride.
But this quest, this tussle in the finals, is at least partly about reminding Detroit, and, for that matter, the sports world at-large, what hockey can be. It is about what happens when a storied franchise meets the young man who is supposed to save hockey.
In Pittsburgh, fans have been descending into downtown to watch the narrative unfold for a couple of weeks. In Detroit, where hockey no longer rules without competition, the story is beginning to gain momentum again, too.
"I've felt we've been good enough to win the Stanley Cup for the last 15 years," said Jimmy Devallano, the Wings' senior vice president, who is thrilled for hockey to have this matchup. "It's a gigantic statement, I know, but it's truly how I feel."
Soon, we will know whether he is right this year.
Contact SHAWN WINDSOR at 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com.
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