Sporting News, The: Shan's the man to turn paper Wings into champs

When he pulled the sweater with the winged wheel over his head for the first time, Brendan Shanahan let out a sigh of relief. The last time he wore No. 14, Shanahan had helped Canada win its first world championship in 33 years. That was 1994. It's obvious he has that championship feeling again by his choice of numbers with the Red Wings, who have not won the Stanley Cup since 1955.

Though the Whalers did all right in getting promising center Keith Primeau, veteran defenseman Paul Coffey and a first-round pick in a rich 1997 draft, the Red Wings are closer to winning the Cup than they were the past two seasons when they had the best regular season record but came up short of their ultimate goal.

Finally, the Wings have learned that you have to pay the price to get the kind of team that will compete in the playoffs. Championships aren't won on paper, with great regular-season records. In Shanahan, Detroit gets one of the premier power forwards in the league who can provide the team with leadership it didn't have with Primeau or Coffey. And swinging this deal so early in the season will give youngsters Anders Eriksson and Jamie Pushor a chance to develop on defense to fill Coffey's big skates.

Having a prospect such as Eriksson, who filled in admirably for Coffey in the playoffs last spring, makes this deal worth it for the Wings. He already is a better defensive player than Coffey, and his confidence in moving the puck will grow throughout the season. Remember, defense in Detroit means the leftwing lock. That has not changed--and the league's best defense won't suffer without Coffey.

Still, the key to the deal was Shanahan, 27 who had 44 goals for the lowly Whalers last season and is twice a 50-goal scorer. He is a special player, a player who can make Sergei Fedorov and Steve Yzerman better than they already are. Forget the size factor that everyone said the Red Wings needed. After all, Primeau is bigger than Shanahan, even though Primeau often plays like 5-6 instead of 6-5. Shanahan is a talker, a leader--and he wants badly to play on a winner.

"I'm a piece of the puzzle here, but I don't see myself as the missing piece," Shanahan says. "I wanted to come to a team where there is a mandate to win the Stanley Cup. I like the pressure of being in the big games and I like being out there during the big moments of those games."

He'll get plenty of those precious pressure moments in Detroit.

"Shanny gives you those tough minutes in the corners, and there aren't any better players in the game at finishing off a play in front of the net," Blues right winger Brett Hull says. "Detroit just picked up a great player, a great team guy, someone who will help them in the locker room.

"When we played them in the playoffs, they all seemed uptight. Shanty will take care of that; I'll bet my mortgage he'll help them 100 percent He knows the Central Division--and ... he'd like nothing better than to come back and beat the Blues after the way he was treated before he was traded to Hartford."

Never underestimate the revenge factor. Shanahan never wanted to leave St. Louis. Now, he has the opportunity to stick it to Blues G.M./coach Mike Keenan, who made things unpleasant for him in St. Louis. "The Blues were my first choice when the Whalers asked me where I might like to be traded," Shanahan says, "but not with Keenan as coach."

Says Keenan, "Shanahan (who still draws $500,000 of his $3.9 million salary from the Blues) will score more than Primeau, but Primeau was always a competitor against us--and you cannot underestimate the contributions Coffey made to that team. I'm not sure what they're trying to do on defense."

The Avalanche proved championships are not won on paper last year when they moved from Quebec. The previous season, they had the best record in the Eastern Conference but had nothing to show for it with a first-round playoff elimination. G.M. Pierre Lacroix worked on the chemistry of the team, obtaining right winger Claude Lemieux from the Devils for his feistiness, getting defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh from the Sharks to make the defense more mobile and acquiring Patrick Roy in goal.

There's a correlation in Detroit, where Chris Osgood proved last spring he's good enough in goal to win in the playoffs, Nicklas Lidstrom and Vladimir Konstantinov can lead the defense and Shanahan will be the character player Lemieux was for Colorado.

A lot of people crowned the Red Wings champions after they won an NHL-record 62 games last season, but they didn't have the chemistry--the right pieces in place to win the pressure games. After their playoff failure, unhappy fans in Detroit wanted to play Russian roulette with the team's talented Russian Five, despite their marvelous play all season. Coach Scotty Bowman even had to talk owner Mike Ilitch out of trading the enigmatic Fedorov.

It is said Europeans, especially Russians, can't win the Cup because they don't grow up dreaming of lifting it in celebration the way North American kids do. That's the common copout when a team doesn't win it all. But it was disproved by the Rangers in 1994 and again last season by the Avalanche.

"I know people think that way," says Colorado center Peter Forsberg, who surprised some skeptics by playing at an even higher level in the playoffs. "Look at how well our Russians--Valeri Kamensky, Alexei Gusarov and Sandis Ozolinsh--played. Having Patrick Roy and Claude Lemieux around to show us how to win made the difference.

"I did things even I didn't know I could do because Claudie pushed me to do them. Everyone calls him a jerk, but he's a character player. The Stanley Cups he's won are no accident--and I think Brendan Shanahan can do the same thing for Sergei Fedorov and Slava Kozlov and Steve Yzerman."

When we talked with Forsberg about Shanahan, his acquisition was hypothetical. But it's very real now. And when the playoffs come around, don't be surprised to see a better Fedorov and Kozlov and Lidstrom and Konstantinov because of this trade.

Dollars and sense?

Three years ago, 74 players were making a million dollars or more. In 1994-95, there were 106, last year 147. This season? A whopping 170 of 614 make that kind of money.

That said, it's no surprise Jeremy Roenick and Alexei Zhamnov are still free agents, even after being traded for one another in August.

"I'd take Jeremy Roenick on my team in a minute," Lightning G.M. Phil Esposito says. "But the highest I could go is about $3.6 million--and I'd still be $1 million short. That's how crazy this business has gotten."

We still contend Roenick will wind up playing for Mike Keenan, his old Chicago coach, in St. Louis. And though the Blackhawks are offering Zhamnov $1.8 million and he's asking for $3.5 million, Chicago's lack of scoring will eventually force the team to get Zhamnov into camp.

Icy bits

Nashville of officials weren't pleased to read our item on the NHL's delaying expansion one season until the 1998-99 season. Insiders in that city tell us they have been assured they will get the word December 12 at the league's board of governors meeting in Phoenix that they and Atlanta will be the NHL's 27th and 28th teams. We're told the opening faceoffs in each city were delayed because commissioner Gary Bettman insists on no repeats of Ottawa and Tampa Bay, which were granted franchises with substandard arenas. Atlanta's new building won't be in place until '98-99. ... The Mighty Ducks felt better when the results of an MRI of Paul Kariya's abdomen and back showed he may be able to play fairly soon.... The Penguins reportedly were asking for Blackhawks defenseman Erie Weinrich in a trade for holdout forward Bryan Smolinski, which would be a huge price to pay for a one-dimensional player such as Smolinski. ... Avalanche tough guy Chris Simon is holding out for the second consecutive year, which must mean he has been hit in the head once too often to think he's worth more than $1 million a year. He won't be back in Denver.

Coach Scotty Bowman was booed loudly by Red Wings fans for his treatment of Paul Coffey before trading him to Hartford. Bowman sent Coffey home from New Jersey before the season opener, with Coffey having to pick up the cost of the ticket. Not exactly the treatment you would expect for one of the league's best all-time defensemen. "He said, 'Find your own way home ... just find your own way out of here,'" Coffey says.... Montreal's Brian Savage is scoring more because of assistant coach Steve Shutt's suggestion that he spend more time in the slot. ... Most of the credit for the Oilers' 3-0 start goes to goalie Curtis Joseph, who was in a long contract dispute last year. "Last year at this time I was looking for a warm climate in the IHL," Joseph says laughing. "Now, I don't want to hear about Las Vegas again, unless it's plans for a vacation."