Gave: Wings have tradition of leadership that Tampa still lacks
If anyone can empathize with the Tampa Bay Lightning, a fine young team on the verge of another devastating first-round KO in the postseason, it's the guy who put its talented roster together.
Steve Yzerman's widely favored Lightning must win Game 6 at Joe Louis Arena on Monday (6 p.m. pregame, 7 p.m. face-off on FOX Sports Detroit) in order to have a chance to survive this series and earn a Game 7 back at Tampa on Wednesday. In other words, one more Red Wings victory and the team Yzerman leads now as general manager goes golfing.
Yzerman -- and any Red Wings player with a few miles on the odometer -- has seen this act before. He has assembled his Tampa Bay team in the tradition he helped to build in Detroit. But despite his best intentions, his team seems to be following that blueprint to a fault.
Think about it. How many monumental playoff failures in Detroit did Yzerman endure before he before he finally sipped from the Stanley Cup?
This is not to place blame Yzerman -- then or now -- even though there were times when he seriously questioned himself after the team he captained repeatedly failed to live up to lofty expectations.
It happened often, but none were more memorable than the two years before their first trip to the Stanley Cup finals in 40 years, in 1995.
In 1993, when the Wings finished with 103 points -- their first 100-point season in four decades -- they lost in overtime in Game 7 to Toronto. A goal by Nikolai Borschevsky cost coach Bryan Murray his job.
It got worse the following year, even with Scotty Bowman behind the Detroit bench. His top-seeded team (100 points) lost again in the first round, this time to No. 8 San Jose -- leaving the Wings and their fans wondering what it might take to get on a serious postseason run.
And those Detroit teams -- like Tampa Bay now -- were not without talent. Not with Yzerman in his prime; great young players like Sergei Fedorov, Nick Lidstrom and Vladimir Konstantinov; and Hall of Fame-bound defensemen Paul Coffey and Mark Howe on the roster.
The point here is, it takes time for young teams to learn how to win at this time of year. And despite all of its accomplishments during the past couple of years -- like leading the league in goals and posting the best home record -- this remains a relatively inexperienced Tampa Bay team led by a gifted young captain.
Steven Stamkos might have four 40-goal seasons, including two with 50 goals, but he's gone eight straight postseason games without finding the back of the net. Worse, he's been beating himself up publicly all week, and his team is following his lead.
So the issue now with Tampa Bay seems to be more about leadership than offensive production from one key player. And that's where the Wings hold a decided edge in this series.
After the Lightning staged a late comeback and won Game 4 in overtime, its players went home riding a wave of emotion and, you'd think, momentum. But after a burst in the first few minutes of Game 5 Saturday, they looked listless and rather timid until the game was out of reach late in the third period, when a few Tampa Bay players went headhunting.
The Wings, on the other hand, held the rudder, believing that if they keep playing as they had at home for Games 3-4, they would be just fine.
"Keep believing in yourselves," their leaders told their younger teammates.
They did, and the result is a 3-2 Detroit lead in this best-of-seven series.
Ironically, today's leadership continues in a recent tradition that began on Yzerman's watch. Eventually, he matured into one of the great team captains in Detroit sports history, and his team followed him to three Stanley Cup titles.
What today's Red Wings captains -- Henrik Zetterberg and alternates Niklas Kronwall and Pavel Datsyuk -- know about how to lead a team through difficult times like these, they learned, at least in part, from Yzerman.
"We've been playing with great leaders all our careers, guys like Lidstrom, Yzerman, (Kris) Draper and (Chris) Chelios," Zetterberg said Sunday. "We just try to do the same things they did. As long as you lead by example ... We try to show it on the ice and off the ice, too."
And it doesn't hurt when players see a legendary figure like Ted Lindsay -- one of the greatest leaders in NHL history -- visit the locker room from time to time and offer a few words of wisdom. He might be pushing 90, but players and coaches, alike, listen to every word he shares. In fact, coach Mike Babcock said that Lindsay was a visitor just the other day.
"Mr. Lindsay would know better than anybody," Babcock said of the man who captained the Wings to four Stanley Cup titles in the 1950s. "He's such an inspiration to our guys.
"Those guys, those Original Six guys who have tattoos on them for life, when they talk about their love of the Wings and how to do it right -- especially guys like him who has led every day of his life, it's an example for all of us."
Yzerman, a man we've long admired and respected for all he did for
