But Jacques Demers, head coach of the Canadiens, notices something. During a break in the action, with 1:45 left in regulation, he asks to speak to the referee. He asks them to measure the curve of the stick used by Kings defenseman Marty McSorley.
In the 1960s, players such as Bobby Hull used what became known as the "banana blade," a stick whose blade curved by up to 3 inches. These curves made the puck faster and more erratic. Since most goaltenders didn't yet use facemasks, this scared them. By 1967, most were using masks, but shots off the banana blade were still dangerous. So the NHL made a rule, limiting stick blade curves to 3/4 of an inch.
McSorley was a part of the Edmonton Oilers' dynasty of the 1980s, led by Wayne Gretzky. At this point, Gretzky was leading the Kings. In addition to McSorley, he was joined by fellow ex-Oilers Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey.
McSorley's stick is measured, and is found to have too great a curve. He is given a 2-minut minor penalty for "unsportsmanlike conduct." The Canadiens will have a power play for the rest of regulation. So Demers pulls goalie Patrick Roy, to give the Habs a 6-on-4 advantage.
And defenseman Eric Desjardins, who had already scored, scores again, to force overtime. And just 51 seconds into overtime, Desjardins scores again, to give the Canadiens a 3-2 win. This made him the 1st defenseman ever to score a hat trick in a Stanley Cup Finals game. He remains the only one.
It was all Canadiens from that point on. They blew a 3-0 lead in Game 3, but won on an overtime goal by John LeClair. Game 4 was similar: Montreal blew a 2-0 lead, but LeClair won it with another overtime goal. Game 5 was back in Montreal, and this one did not go to overtime: The Canadiens won 4-1, and clinched their 24th Stanley Cup on home ice.
If McSorley had simply obeyed the rules, the Kings would have been up 2-0 and been in great position to win the Cup. He blew it for them. They didn't win the franchise's 1st Cup until 2012.
McSorley can't be blamed for the Kings' failure to win until 2012. But he can certainly be blamed for blowing their 1st Finals in 1993, right?
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Marty McSorley for the Los Angeles Kings Losing the 1993 Stanley Cup
5. Bobby Hull. True, the Golden Jet had been retired since 1980, and had never been involved with the Kings franchise. But he's the one who made the curved blade popular.
Even in this picture, with his Chicago Blackhawks teammate Stan Mikita at the left, you can see that Hull's stick blade is curved much more than its modern counterparts. And when the World Hockey Association was founded in 1972, and Hull was its 1st big signing -- he even became a part-owner of the team, and it was kind of named for him, the Winnipeg Jets -- they didn't have a rule against the curve, and he restored it, and feasted off the WHA's lesser goalies.
Before Hull, the most popular U.S.-based player
was Gordie Howe of Detroit. Here, he contemplates the banana blade,
and you can really see the difference.
If Hull hadn't popularized the banana blade, and hadn't scored so many goals with it, it wouldn't have been banned. McSorley wouldn't have broken the rule. Not just because the rule wouldn't have existed, but because no one would have considered it. McSorley wouldn't have taken an advantage that he didn't know existed.
4. Barry Melrose. A head coach is supposed to keep his team disciplined. If he sees a player breaking a rule, he has to take him aside and tell him to stop, lest he get caught and it hurts the team.
Melrose, now a familiar NHL studio pundit, but then head coach of the Kings, either didn't notice that McSorley was in violation of the rule, or did, and didn't care. Either he was incompetent or, worse, complicit.
The man. The pose. The mullet.
The goatee would come later.
President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk reading, "The buck stops here." Meaning, "I'm the boss, therefore, I'm the one responsible, and I can't pass the buck. If something goes wrong, blame me." Melrose either passed the buck, or didn't see the buck.
3. Kelly Hrudey. The former New York Islander goalie had been decent in getting the Kings this far, but he had been kind of shaky in the Conference Finals against the Toronto Maple Leafs -- a series the Leafs probably should have won, and another for the "Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame" file.
2. The Kings choked. They led 2-1 in Montreal in Game 2, having already won Game 1 in Montreal. They had overtime and home-ice advantage in Game 3. They had overtime and home-ice advantage in Game 4. If they win any one of those games, the series at least goes back to Inglewood for a Game 6. They had their chances, even after McSorley got busted. But they blew it.
Or maybe, just maybe, this series wasn't blown. Maybe it was taken, by the better team:
1. The Canadiens were better. Yes, the Kings had Gretzky, Kurri and Coffey, as well as Dave Taylor, Luc Robitaille, Darryl Sydor, Rob Blake and Tony Granato.
But the Canadiens had lots of players with Playoff experience. Roy and Guy Carbonneau were holdovers from the Canadiens team that won the 1986 Stanley Cup. They, and also Desjardins, LeClair, Donald Dufresne, Benoit Brunet, Lyle Odelein, Mike Keane, Ed Ronan, Mathieu Schneider, Sean Hill and Stephan Lebeau were members of their 1989 team that reached the Finals before losing to the Calgary Flames.
Rob Ramage was a member of those '89 Flames that beat the Canadiens, and the '86 Flames that the Habs beat in the Finals. Denis Savard was a Playoff perennial with the Chicago Blackhawks. Kirk Muller was the Captain of the New Jersey Devils team that reached the 1988 Conference Finals. (And, yes, we called him "Captain Kirk.") Others, such as Vincent Damphousse, Mathieu Schneider, Patrice Brisebois and Jean-Jacques Daigneault would go on to prove themselves to be among the game's best players.
Maybe the Canadiens couldn't match the Kings for star power -- except for Roy, who might have been the greatest goalie in hockey history, and certainly outplayed Hrudey -- but, top-to-bottom, they were a better team.
June 9, 1993, Montreal Forum: Patrick Roy lifts the Stanley Cup.
VERDICT: Not Guilty. McSorley was a thug, and, on this occasion, he was a fool. And, yes, the series was a lot closer than its 5-game result would suggest. But he was not the sole reason the Kings lost the Finals. He wasn't even the biggest reason.
No comments:
Post a Comment