Kings Wear Blank Look

The first octopus of the playoffs was tossed from the stands at Joe Louis Arena Thursday, plopping onto the ice in all its slimy glory.

It has been 33 years since NHL teams needed eight victories to claim the Stanley Cup--thanks to frequent expansion, it now takes two octopuses worth of wins to prevail. But Detroit Red Wing fans remain faithful to a tradition that began here in the 1950s. And through the years, they’ve given the arena maintenance crew ample opportunity to polish its octopus clean-and-scoop routine to perfection.

The Red Wings had their playoff routine down to a science Thursday, too. But theirs involved clearing King forwards out of the slot in front of goaltender Chris Osgood.

The octopuses probably put up a bigger fight.

On the rare occasions the Kings went to the net Thursday, they were shoved aside. Red Wing forwards threw their bodies in front of shots, and defensemen consistently beat the Kings to rebounds. Osgood, who at 27 still has a baby face that suggests he should be playing with the purple octopus toys sold at the concession stands instead of playing goal, faced almost no rebounds and few offensive flurries in recording a 2-0 shutout of the Kings in the opener of the teams’ best-of-seven, first-round playoff series.

The Red Wings might have been vulnerable Thursday without center Steve Yzerman, who team officials said became ill after the warmups and couldn’t play. The Red Wings might have become dispirited without their captain and leader, who may also be their best all-around player.

But the Kings did little to test the Red Wings’ defense, depth and resolve. They made Osgood’s job relatively easy by mustering only 19 shots, thereby playing into the Red Wings’ hands.

All eight of them.

“We cleared our area in front of the net real good,” Osgood said. “When our defensemen clear rebounds, I don’t have to scramble. I know where the puck is. The defensemen and myself, we work together, and that’s what happened tonight.

“Things are really starting to come together, but we have to keep doing this. We got the puck out of some areas we needed to. The Kings have two good lines that can score, and we took away the players we had to.”

Osgood’s best save may have been a pad stop he made on Luc Robitaille with less than seven minutes left in the third period and the Red Wings guarding a 1-0 lead.

“They like to have guys shoot from the high slot,” Osgood said. “He just more or less spun around and I made the save and cleared it. . . . I thought we played well defensively.”

It didn’t matter to King Coach Andy Murray that his team was shut out Thursday for only the second time in 83 games. It did matter that his top forwards--Robitaille, Ziggy Palffy, Glen Murray, Jozef Stumpel and Bryan Smolinski--combined for six shots and produced little offensive pressure.

“I’m upset we lost, whether we score a goal or not,” he said. “If we lost, 2-1, I wouldn’t have felt better.”

His players might have, though. The longer the Red Wings can stymie them offensively, the greater Detroit’s psychological edge will be. And the Red Wings have enough other advantages--depth and overall skill being the most noteworthy--that the Kings can’t afford to let the Red Wings create other advantages.

In preparing for this series, the Kings took encouragement from having played the Red Wings evenly during the season and splitting their series, 2-2-1. But the Kings are fooling themselves if they think that means anything now.

“I thought the Red Wings played very solid defensively,” Andy Murray said. “A lot of our games against them have been low-scoring, tight-checking. They had more jump offensively tonight. Our top offensive players need to play better. That’s a credit to the Red Wings, but we need our players to elevate their games, and they will.”

Raising the level of their game a little won’t be nearly enough. Not against the Red Wings, who have been down this playoff road so often and know the physical, mental and tactical strength necessary to survive and thrive.

“I think it was a typical playoff game in that it was a game that could change with one shot, and I think both teams sort of played it that way,” said Dave Lewis, a former King defenseman and one of the Red Wing associate coaches. “There wasn’t an abundance of scoring chances. . . . They had no second chances. We talk about things like that.”

Hockey observers often talk about Osgood being a potentially weak link in an otherwise formidable team, but he was anything but a liability Thursday. He stopped what he saw and, because of his teammates’ superb work in front of him, he saw nearly everything that came his way. No goalie’s job is ever easy, no matter how few shots he faces, and Osgood did what was required Thursday.

Maybe it’s the smooth, boyish face beneath his mask that promotes the illusion he’s somehow immature or unskilled. NHL goalies have to be battle-scarred relics named “Gump” or acrobats like Buffalo’s Dominik Hasek to develop a mystique. Osgood meets neither criteria, but he doesn’t have to.

“Look at his history,” Lewis said. “A couple of years ago, people were asking the same question about him, but he’s got his name on the Stanley Cup.

“He’s got experience, and he knows what it takes this time of year.”

It takes a lot more tenacity than the Kings displayed Thursday.