Stevens Woke Up the Wrong Team

The Devils were down and desperate, Game 6 bleeding into a Game 7, and a seething Scott Stevens started skating on a search-and-destroy mission. These Mighty Ducks had come back and come back in these Stanley Cup finals and once and for all, the Devils’ captain made sure to test the mettle of the Ducks with a marauding message splattered on the Arrowhead Pond ice.

The most menacing hitter of his time, Stevens could see a hanging curve floating over the middle of the ice, the perfect target -- the Ducks’ captain, Paul Kariya. He had passed the puck near the blue line and made the mistake of keeping his eyes left, when they should’ve shifted right to see the Devil with blood in his eyes, a Stanley Cup on his mind.

Before this 5-2 loss was too far gone Saturday night, hearts stopped, lungs breathed in, and Stevens lowered his shoulder, obliterating Kariya with a hellacious hit to the head. It was completely legal and completely gratuitous. This wasn’t a play on the puck, but a play on the minds and hearts of the Mighty Ducks.

“Hey,” Stevens said later, “it’s a physical game out there.”

Down dropped Kariya, crumpled motionless on the ice like a long list of Stanley Cup playoff victims before him, Eric Lindros to Ron Francis, Shane Willis to Slava Kozlov. These punishing shots in the playoffs always have turned series for the Devils, leaving a film of fear and intimidation hanging over the ice. They go down this way to Stevens and they get up different people, different skaters, different teams.

Kariya had four concussions in his past, and this was scary. For four minutes on his back, all you could see was his breath fogging his face shield.

“I didn’t know if he was alive,” Devil goalie Martin Brodeur said.

The Devils’ captain had destroyed the Ducks’ captain and in the macho psychology of playoff hockey, Stevens was waving that Willie Wonka golden ticket in the air. All these years, all these hits, and the Mighty Ducks’ Petr Sykora never remembered what happened next ever happening. Nobody did. After Kariya climbed to his feet, skated to the bench and underwent the doctor’s tests in the dressing room, he made his way back to the bench and told Duck Coach Mike Babcock he wanted back into the game.

Kariya was going to play again? He wasn’t just going to play, he was going to get a pass along the left wing, the puck on his stick, and blast a shot past Brodeur.

“It woke me up,” Kariya said later.

It woke up the Pond, the Ducks, and elevated Kariya into a hero here. When the Devils had to believe Stevens’ hit had turned this series toward them, Kariya’s courage just might have turned it back to the Mighty Ducks.

Kariya wouldn’t call the hit dirty, but everyone in the Ducks’ dressing room understood Stevens could’ve spared Kariya. He chose to crush him. “That’s Scott’s game,” Kariya said, “very patient with his hits.... He waits for his opportunity. He’s done that throughout his career.”

What he meant was this: Sooner or later, Stevens will hunt you down. The Devils had to be stunned. They had to be speechless. They hadn’t wiped out a Mighty Ducks’ star, they woke him up. They hadn’t intimidated these Stanley Cup Cinderellas, but inspired them. Nobody does this to Scott Stevens. Nobody. They go down and stay down.

“When you see your captain get off the ice and come back, it’s going to give you energy,” Sykora said. “Scottie is known for doing that. A lot of players have been hit by Scottie and changed the momentum of the teams. It was very emotional for us.”

Kariya wouldn’t stay down, just like these Mighty Ducks in these Cup finals. Stevens wanted to find that hellacious hit that always changes everything in a Stanley Cup series.

And maybe he did.

Adrian Wojnarowski can be reached at wojnarowski@northjersey.com.