The Blackhawks are going up against more than the best team in the National Hockey League when they take on the Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference final beginning Thursday night in Joe Louis Arena.
They are battling despised rivals as well.
The Red Wings, who had the league’s best record in the regular season and raced through their first two playoff series, figure to be the favorites, even without center Steve Yzerman, who will miss at least the first four games of the best-of-seven series after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery earlier this week.
The Hawks will be without defenseman Gary Suter for the opener, but hope to have him back for Game 2 on Sunday afternoon.
“Based on their regular season and the easy time they’ve had so far in the playoffs, we’re huge underdogs,” said Blackhawks Coach Darryl Sutter. “But all I know is there are 20 teams who wish they could be playing Detroit Thursday night.”
None would bring to the battle the passion that fuels the Blackhawks, however.
“These are two of the original six teams,” observed the Hawks’ Jeremy Roenick Wednesday. “We’ve known each other for years and have a great hatred for each other. My blood boils even more when we play against these guys. It’s an instinctive thing, like catching a ball when it comes your way. It’s something you can’t help.
“We just don’t like each other. Our teams clash. Our talents clash. Our strengths clash. Even our geographic locations clash.”
When the two teams clashed this year, the Red Wings won four of the five games played. Yzerman played a big role, scoring four goals, the most by any Red Wing.
“He’s like Jeremy Roenick is for us,” said Hawks winger Jim Cummins. “He’s hard to replace, but they’re still a great team without him.”
“He’s been a superstar in this league from day one,” said Roenick. “Any team without a Steve Yzerman is going to be a different team. How they’re going to react to that, I don’t have an answer.”
Even without Yzerman, the Red Wings have a ton of talent, from last year’s most valuable player Sergei Fedorov, to this year’s probable Norris Trophy winner, defenseman Paul Coffey. They’ve even got a fourth-line winger, Ray Sheppard, who scored 30 goals in this shortened season.
But the Blackhawks appear to be at the top of their game as they approach the most important series of the year.
“What more can you ask (of our players)?” wondered Sutter. “They’ve played with a lot of discipline, they’ve played hard, guys played hurt. We held a top offensive team (Vancouver) to six goals in a series. We’ve just got to maintain that. Let’s not be overly concerned with who we’re playing. Let’s just make sure of how we’re playing.”
Roenick could be the wild card for the Blackhawks. The series opener will be the fourth game in his comeback from a knee injury and he is still trying to find his rhythm.
“When you’re off a month and a half, that’s a long time,” he said. “It’s like a summer vacation. It’s very hard to find that median point on the ice, but I’m almost there. I feel good and confident but I have a way to go. I sure want to be back where I was, but nature and your body only let you go so far. I’m fortunate to be playing at all right now.”
To say the same about the Blackhawks would be stretching the truth. They’ve played solid hockey in beating Toronto and Vancouver.
“We’re playing very well defensively and getting great goaltending,” said Roenick. “We just finished off two series and played well in both.”
The last time the Blackhawks and Red Wings met in the playoffs was 1992, when the Hawks swept the Wings in the second round en route to the Stanley Cup Finals.
“Brent Sutter scored the goal that clinched the series for us 1-0 (in Game 4),” remembered Roenick. “That was by far the best game I’ve ever been involved in.
“I know what it’s like, a Detroit-Chicago series. We’ve got a lot of new guys that don’t really know, the young guys like Krivo (Sergei Krivokrasov) and (Eric) Daze, and guys like Murray Craven, Bernie Nicholls and Gerald Diduck.”
They’re all about to find out.
