Red Wing-King Series: Haves Versus Have-Nots

Darren McCarty is from just north of grunge country, near Vancouver, so by his reckoning it’s an adage.

Farther south, it’s a line in a country song.

“When you win the Stanley Cup, it’s great,” McCarty, a Detroit winger for six seasons, said Wednesday. “And when people say you can’t repeat and you do, that’s even better.

“Then, when you don’t win, you appreciate winning even more.

“You don’t know what you had till it’s gone.”

Red Wing teammate Pat Verbeek understands.

“Once you reach that goal, nothing less ever satisfies you again,” he said.

That’s why the Red Wings are hungry going into tonight’s opening game of the first-round playoff series against the Kings. After winning the Cup twice in a row, they were eliminated by Colorado in the second round last season.

But if you want hungry, talk to Ziggy Palffy.

Every time Palffy has stepped on the ice as a King, it has been with one goal in mind: reach the playoffs. He never did with the New York Islanders, who traded him to the Kings last June, and he spoke of his new team affording an opportunity for postseason play even before he went to training camp in September.

Then he scored 27 goals and had 66 points to help assure it. Three of those goals and five of those points came in four games against Detroit.

“I’m very excited,” he said Wednesday. “I’ve been waiting a very long time for this. . . . The first game is very important, and I want to do well.”

Tonight’s Game 1 will be Palffy’s first game of any kind since March 15, when he suffered a shoulder injury against the Mighty Ducks.

Since then, he has spent more time on a bike than Greg LeMond, trying to stay in shape while his shoulder healed. All of that was done with one aim.

“It was very hard for me, those three weeks,” he said. “I was watching the games on TV and saying to myself, ‘I have to get ready for the playoffs.’ ”

He would have liked one more regular-season game, but King medical officials decided he could better benefit by the extra rest. So he has to shake off the rust while playing the most significant game of his life.

“I have to handle it,” he said. “It’s an important game. Starting from today, from tomorrow morning, it doesn’t matter. Things have to go our way.”

He wears No. 33, but might as well have concentric rings on his sweater. Palffy, slightly built, was a target all season, and the Red Wings will test him, understanding that without him, the King offense is crippled. Detroit knows about such things, hammering the Ducks’ Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne mercilessly in a four-game sweep in the first round last season.

“If they do that, I have to react on the ice,” said Palffy, who will doubtless get help in his, uh, reaction. “If they play a physical game, I can play a physical game. If they hit me, I hit them back.”

It’s a middleweight in his first fight punching a heavyweight who has worn a couple of championship belts.

“I don’t think experience is a big thing,” Palffy insisted. “I think work ethic is. If you’re going to work hard, you can win any game.

“Now you have to work harder than in the regular season. There you can have an off game, but not here. You have to play every shift hard. . . . There are no easy shifts right now.”

In that, he has the playoff idea down.

“This is the most exciting thing to be a part of,” McCarty said. “It’s a grind, a war. The season is all about setting yourself up for just this.

“I’m excited.”

He’s excited? Tonight will be his 97th playoff game.

The Kings are more used to splitting up at this time of year and folding themselves into various national teams to play in the world championships. This year’s tournament, at St. Petersburg, Russia, can go on without them, thank you very much.

“This is better,” said Palffy, whose Slovakian team can forge on in his absence, as far as he’s concerned. “We’ve worked hard to get into the playoffs. Now we have something to play for.”

It’s something the Red Wings once had, and they know better now what it’s worth.