Hockey Digest: Still flying high

IN PROVING WE'RE NOT ALWAYS right, our January 2000 issue featured Pavel Bure on the cover. We said he is focused, healthy, and looking to lead the Panthers to a division championship.

Well, the Panthers came close that year. They finished second but lost to the Devils in the first round of the playoffs. As for Bure, he was shipped off to the New York Rangers in 2002, where he hasn't been heard from since.

More intriguing than Bure was a special section on the "Detroit Red Wings at the Crossroads" and bewilderment about the Lightning and whether they would ever strike. This season, Detroit and Tampa Bay fought for the President's Trophy, with Detroit coming out on top after garnering 109 points to Tampa Bay's 106.

If the Red Wings were at a crossroads in 2000, they certainly chose the right path. And in only few seasons the Lightning backed up the words of IHL commissioner Doug Moss, who said: "Within the next couple of years, nobody will be laughing at the Tampa Bay Lightning franchise. You can bet on it."

Picking the Lightning might seem risky, but choosing the Red Wings isn't much of a gamble. Since we wondered if they could recapture their Cup-winning ways of the 1997 and '98 seasons, Detroit won a championship 2002, lost a legendary coach to retirement (Scotty Bowman), lost one of the league's top players (Sergei Fedorov) to the Mighty Ducks, and still finished at-or near the top of the Western Conference each season. Not bad for a team supposedly gambling away its prospects.

Of course, we based part of our story on the opinions of analyst and former coach Barry Melrose, who said: "They've got some good young players, but they're not looking to win five years down the road."

That's partially correct. The Red Wings were not looking to win five years down the road. They look to win every year.