Wherever Coffey Plays Goal Stays Same: Winning

There are few greater pleasures in hockey than watching Red Wing defenseman Paul Coffey skate.

The quickness of his turns, the fluidity of his stride and the way he seems to skim the ice instead of touching it has always distinguished him from his peers, and those qualities remain undiminished after 15 NHL seasons.

“Paul Coffey, for whatever reason, has played the best hockey he has played since he was in Edmonton,” said Jimmy Devellano, Detroit’s senior vice president. “We had no hesitation giving him a four-year contract at 33 because of the way he skates. He’s got jets.”

Those jets flamed out Saturday, when the Red Wings disappointed their octopus-throwing fans by losing the opener of the Stanley Cup finals to the New Jersey Devils, 2-1.

The Devils held Detroit to a season-low 17 shots, four by Coffey. He was blunt about his team’s need to generate more offense tonight in Game 2, and he believes the Red Wings’ best hope of breaking New Jersey’s neutral-zone trap lies in making rapid, crisp passes as they skate up ice, instead of carrying the puck and trying to break through four defenders.

The Devils like to force the puck carrier to the boards to limit his options, but Coffey’s precise passing skills could help Detroit foil that strategy.

“The wrong way to beat that team is lone rushes, myself trying to beat five guys after picking the puck up in our end,” said Coffey, who on May 27 became the NHL’s playoff scoring leader among defensemen and has 171 points in 154 postseason games. “You’ve got to have guys with you and make their defensemen come to you. We’ve got to skate.

“We know we absolutely stunk out the joint [Saturday] night. You can’t candy-coat that. If we play well and lose, you can handle that. But we didn’t play well. If there’s any positive thing we can take out of the whole thing, it’s that all 20 guys were rotten, not 15. We know we can play better.”

New Jersey Coach Jacques Lemaire expects more from the Red Wings’ offense tonight, but he doesn’t plan to change his tactics.

“They will take more shots,” Lemaire said. “As soon as they get inside the blue line, they will try to shoot at the net.”

Lemaire makes sure his team is always aware when Coffey has the puck.

“He has a lot of speed,” Lemaire said. “You have to be careful when he winds up. You’ve got to have one guy ready to go on him and don’t give him too much space. You have to take the man on a guy like that every time he moves up the ice. If he wants to move up, he’s got to be able to take the punishment.”

Coffey has taken his share of hits and has a sore back to remind him of the pounding he took during Detroit’s Western Conference final series against the Chicago Blackhawks. But it’s a price he willingly pays for a chance to become only the seventh player to win the Cup with three teams. He didn’t get that chance with the Kings, who traded him to Detroit in January, 1993, for Jimmy Carson, Gary Shuchuk and Marc Potvin in one of their many bad deals.

“Things were kind of mixed up there, but it was fun,” said Coffey, who won three Cups in Edmonton and one in Pittsburgh. “I enjoyed playing with Wayne [Gretzky] and [Jari] Kurri, but winning is what it’s all about. . . .

“You’ve got to play through it, but I don’t think any of us were [Saturday]. Adversity is good for a team and good for a player. You see what everybody’s made of. Granted, they do a great job checking, but we’ve got to find a way to play through it.”

Coffey conveyed that to his teammates in a meeting Sunday.

“How can you not listen to him?” forward Keith Primeau said. “He’s got all those Stanley Cup rings. It’s one thing to hear it from somebody else, but it doesn’t have the effect Paul Coffey does.”

Said Devellano: “One thing we’ve had trouble developing over the years is camaraderie in the locker room. We had cliques and infighting, but a lot of that has dissipated and that has a lot to do with Paul Coffey. . . . He’s a very, very focused guy.”

Coffey is so focused on hockey that as his wife, Stephanie, went into labor three weeks ago, his mind wasn’t on names for his first child or what she might grow up to be. His mind was on the Blackhawks.

“Labor was a few hours long, so I’d be in and out, thinking about different things, and one was how we were going to play Chicago,” he said. “When the actual baby was born I was thinking about the baby.”

Today, he will be thinking only about how to tie the series.

“They can check us for part of the time, but if we work hard enough they can’t do it for the whole series,” he said. “As players, we’ve got to work through it. It’s not enough just to go to the finals. If you’re happy just to be here, you might as well lose in the first round and take a vacation.”

Stanley Cup Notes

The two-day break between Games 1 and 2 may provide Detroit forward Keith Primeau time to recover from the muscle pull he suffered Saturday. Although soreness on his right side “where your love handles would be” forced him off the ice after 10 minutes Monday, he said he hopes to play today. However, he may not be able to take faceoffs, and winning draws is one of his strengths. “We’re going to try and play a game without faceoffs and whistles,” Coach Scotty Bowman joked. Said Primeau: “If the game were [Monday] I couldn’t play. I’m hoping it will continue to improve as much in the next 24 hours as it did in the last 24 hours.”

Detroit defenseman Mark Howe is likely to retire after the playoffs. “If you can’t play on a high level all the time, it’s frustrating,” said Howe, who was born six weeks after his father, Gordie, scored the Cup-winning goal in the Red Wings’ last championship in 1955. Gordie played until he was 50 and said Mark is too young to quit. “What’s the matter with the kid?” he said. Gordie, who predicted the Red Wings will rebound to win the Cup, said Mark’s 9-year-old son, Nolan, will someday star in the NHL. “Nolan challenged me, one on one, in roller hockey,” said Gordie, 66. “I won. I ran over him.”