Hot Coffey Tees Off Over TV Analysts

If Paul Coffey can go to war against the New Jersey Devils as well as he’s battling a couple of TV guys, the Red Wings still have a good chance of winning the Stanley Cup.

The Devils limited Detroit to its fewest shots on goal all season, 17, en route to a 2-1 victory in the opening game Saturday night of their best-of-seven series.

Coffey, obviously tired of hearing about the Devils’ boring but very effective defensive system, took issue with those who say it’s destroying the game. He specifically mentioned ESPN analysts Mike Milbury, the former Boston player and coach, and Barry Melrose, the former Los Angeles coach who played a few games with Detroit but spent most of his career as a player and coach at Adirondack.

“The bottom line is winning and losing. If I’m (coach) Jacques Lemaire and the New Jersey Devils, I’m laughing,” Coffey said. “Who cares about how they’re doing it? I see Melrose and, what’s that other guy … Milbury? They’re supposed to be the big experts who know it all. Neither one of those two could carry the puck from the goal line to the red line without the thing falling apart in a thousand pieces. . . .

“If you’ve got Bobby Orr on ESPN doing the analysis, I’ll listen to him.”

That got a chuckle out of Milbury, along with this insightful analysis: “At least we’re two guys who went into the corners a little bit. That’s something that he doesn’t do,” he said. “What he did last night was a large bail-out job that everybody in the building saw.”

There is truth in what both Coffey and Milbury had to say. The so-called neutral zone trap is getting more attention than it deserves, and Detroit’s stars - namely Coffey, Sergei Fedorov and Steve Yzerman - have to start playing like stars for the Wings to have a prayer.

The difference in Game 1 was that New Jersey’s stars led the way, whereas Detroit’s didn’t. Stephane Richer and Claude Lemieux, their two offensive leaders, scored the goals. Defenseman Scott Stevens anchored the defense and laid the hit on Keith Primeau that might have sidelined the big centerman for the series with an injured stomach muscle. Martin Brodeur made all the saves his team needed for a one-goal victory in a tight defensive game.

The only Detroit star who lived up to his billing Saturday was goaltender Mike Vernon, who played well enough to win with 26 saves.

Other than that, the game summary reveals some glaring problems for the Wings. The big-money players came up empty. Yzerman and Fedorov each recorded just one shot on goal (though each had one ring off the post). Ray Sheppard, the only player besides St. Louis’ Brett Hull to score 50 goals or the pro-rated equivalent over the past two seasons, had no shots on goal. Nicklas Lidstrom, Slava Fetisov and Mark Howe each failed to register a shot on goal. And Coffey, despite having four of the six shots by Wings’ defensemen and an assist on the Detroit goal, had trouble all night getting up a head of steam and moving the puck through traffic.

What is frightening is that Saturday’s game continued a trend that began in the Chicago series, when Detroit was carried by its supporting cast because its big guns were silent.

Dino Ciccarelli scored Detroit’s goal Saturday, his second in seven games; Coffey has one goal among five points in his last six games; Fedorov is goal-less with five assists in his last six games; Slava Kozlov has one goal, albeit the series-winning goal against Chicago, in six games; Primeau, before his injury, had just two goals in 12 games; Sheppard has one goal in his last seven games; and Yzerman has one goal in his last five games.

These are the Stanley Cup finals. These are the guys who have to step it up. The good news is they seem to understand that.

“Whatever we did, it wasn’t enough,” Coffey said. “We’ve got to play a lot better than we did the other night. We just have to fight through it. Part of it is having a little desire and a little attitude.”

Yzerman seemed to have the attitude after practice Sunday.

“We played tough games like that in the last series against Chicago,” he said. “We came from behind every game we won. We didn’t do it in this game, but I don’t think it’s the end of the world. We’ll play a lot better next game.

“We didn’t expect an easy series. Now we’re down, 1-0. This is no time to panic… . I can’t say we’re frustrated. It was a 2-1 hockey game.”

And the Wings came within inches on a couple of shots that might have reversed the outcome. “They hit two posts, and that made the difference,” Brodeur said.

Shawn Burr, still looking for his first goal of these playoffs, might have described the Wings’ performance best by saying: “It’s frustrating because we didn’t play smart. We were playing right into it. It’s like if you see a mouse trap. You walk around it. We were sticking our finger right into the middle of the thing.”

Whatever you call it, mouse trap, neutral zone trap or just good hard-nosed defensive hockey, it’s working for the Devils. And the Wings as well as the rest of the NHL ought to be concerned about it, Milbury said.

“If guys like Coffey and everybody else in the league want to make the big bucks, the league has to do something about it,” Milbury said, “because there’s little entertainment value in what you saw last night. There aren’t that many hockey purists around who will sit and watch that stuff.”