Get In The Ring: Probie, the Wings, and the unforgettable madness of the Norris Division

It seems like an odd thing to say about a franchise that came of age with Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, and Alex Delvecchio, and later went on to 23 straight playoff appearances and four Stanley Cups, but my favorite Red Wings team of all time was the 1988-89 edition.

That was the year a 23-year-old Steve Yzerman made the leap from very good player to unquestioned superstar, posting a remarkable 65 goals and 155 points, both Red Wing records. This was in the middle of the Gretzky/Lemieux era, so Yzerman didn’t even make a postseason all-star team, but his fellow players named him best player in the league.

Gerard Gallant scored 93 points, his best total from a nine-year run in Detroit that ended when he was 29 (even though I could swear he’s in his late thirties in every single memory I have of him in a Wings uniform). Two future NHL coaches, Adam Oates and Paul MacLean, both topped 70 points. The goalies were Greg Stefan and Glen Hanlon, whom I could never tell apart.

It was a good team, good enough to end the regular season in first place in its division with … well, with 80 points. Yes, they won a division title by finishing .500. That’s because the ’88-’89 Red Wings were part of the greatest collection of misfits and madmen the NHL has ever known: the Norris Division.

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It’s hard to explain the Norris to hockey fans who weren’t around to appreciate it. You can try to piece it together with old newspaper clips and YouTube videos, but it doesn’t quite work. You can talk about the brawls and the crazy stories and riffle through the old names, but that takes you only so far.

Or you could just put it this way: For a time, the Norris Division was hockey’s answer to Guns N’ Roses. Stay with me here.

The Norris wasn’t the best division we’d ever seen, just like GNR was never quite the greatest band. Neither won many awards. And with both, there was never any shortage of very earnest people who wanted you to understand that the whole deal was completely ridiculous and maybe even a little bit embarrassing, and those people were almost certainly right.

But the Norris and GNR were fun, dammit. And they offered an element of danger, or at least could give off the illusion of it. And, in both cases, we haven’t seen anything remotely like them since.

So here goes: The St. Louis Blues were Duff, so steady and dependable that you could sometimes forget they were there. The Minnesota North Stars were Steve Adler, hanging around as long as they could until there was no choice but to replace them. The Tampa Bay Lightning were Dizzy Reed, because they joined in the early ’90s and nobody counts them. And the Toronto Maple Leafs were Izzy, the dysfunctional mess and cautionary example that somehow served as the heart and soul of the whole thing.

The Blackhawks were Axl — the loudest and craziest of the bunch, still kicking around to this day. OK, the Blackhawks are still kicking around successfully to this day. I never said the metaphor was perfect. But any team that was built around Eddie Belfour and Mike Keenan and J.R. and the Grim Reaper and a young Dominik Hasek and The Stadium — that team gets to be Axl.

And the Detroit Red Wings? The Red Wings were Slash. They were the cool one.

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A weekend of NHL good-byes

Well, that final NHL weekend was a bit of a dud.

When the Stars shut out the Blues on Friday night to clinch a wild card, it meant that all 16 playoff spots had been wrapped up, with two days remaining. That left Sunday night’s Dallas-Phoenix matchup, which for weeks had seemed destined to serve as a play-in for the West’s final wild-card slot, as just another meaningless game on the weekend schedule.

We did get a handful of games that mattered in terms of the final matchups, most notably the Red Wings’ 3-0 win over St. Louis on Sunday. The loss capped off a disastrous finish to the regular season by the Blues, who dropped six straight in regulation to cough up the Central Division title to the surging Avalanche.

Colorado now gets to face the Minnesota Wild in Round 1, while the Blues get a much tougher matchup with the defending-champion Blackhawks. It’s been a stunning collapse for St. Louis, a team that had been considered a presumptive Stanley Cup favorite ever since it acquired Ryan Miller in a pre-deadline blockbuster. Now the Blues can’t score, half the roster is hurt, and Miller is getting Bronx cheers from St. Louis fans. If it’s possible for a 111-point team to go into the playoffs in disarray, the Blues are that team.

Other than the Central title, there wasn’t much left to play for, and most of the playoff teams took the opportunity to rest up. We did get to see the Ducks finally clinching top seed in the Pacific with a win over the Kings, as well as the Lightning earning home ice in their series against Montreal by beating the Capitals in a Sunday afternoon shootout. And that was about it.

But the lack of meaningful games had an upside, in that it freed us up to focus on a weekend packed with veterans stars making their exits.

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Grab bag: Kerry Fraser works the mic

In the grab bag:
- The three comedy stars of the week
- Should star players sit out to avoid injuries?
- Y2K Sr.
- NHL.com needs a loser letter
- And a YouTube breakdown of a young Kerry Fraser yelling at everyone

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My thoughts on the Brendan Shanahan hire

This morning, the Toronto Maple Leafs officially confirmed the rumor that’s been the talk of hockey for the past 48 hours: Hall of Famer Brendan Shanahan is leaving his post as the head of the NHL’s department of player safety to take a senior role in the Leafs’ front office.

As an objective hockey journalist who doubles as a raving Maple Leafs homer, I was asked what I thought about the story on a Toronto radio station Thursday morning when it was still an unconfirmed rumor. My answer then was that I was cautiously optimistic. Now that the deal is official and I’ve had a few hours to mull it over, I’m sticking with that.

Here’s where the caution comes in: We don’t yet know exactly what the role will involve. Shanahan has been named president of the entire team, not just of the hockey ops department, but that still leaves some room for interpretation.

If the idea is for Shanahan to be some sort of PR figurehead, there to smile for the cameras and act as a shield against mounting fan anger, then it’s no good. It would be just one more attempt at deflection from an organization that seems to excel at it. But that sort of career move wouldn’t make any sense for Shanahan, so that option seems unlikely.

If he’s expected to roll up his sleeves and start making decisions as a de facto GM, that’s also an issue, because he has no experience in the front office of an NHL team. But that wouldn’t make sense for the Maple Leafs, so it’s … well, this is the Maple Leafs we’re talking about, so “unlikely” doesn’t really fit. But it would be a surprise.

That leaves us with something in the middle ground, where Shanahan becomes the face of the franchise and drives the hockey side from a high level while leaving the day-to-day work in the hands of a GM (whether that ends up being Dave Nonis or someone else). And that’s where the optimism comes in, because that’s a scenario that could work.

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Handing out some regular season hardware

The NHL regular season wraps up this weekend. In theory, that would be the time to post a “season in review” piece. But let’s face it, we’ll all be 100 percent focused on watching our teams head toward the playoffs and the two-month battle for the Stanley Cup. Or, failing that, hoping they fire everyone they’ve ever employed. Definitely one of those two.

In either case, let’s get a head start on things by wrapping up some of 2013-14’s loose ends now, with these awards honoring regular-season excellence, or lack thereof.

Most Entertaining Train Wreck: Toronto Maple Leafs

Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images

With all due (dis)respect to the Canucks, Oilers, and Capitals, this one isn’t an especially tough call. We pegged the Leafs’ season as a de facto referendum on hockey analytics way back in October, but it ended up being so much more.

From a CEO who arrived and immediately started planning a Stanley Cup parade to a front office that handed out the worst contract of the salary-cap era to a coaching staff that has resorted to just making stuff up and hoping nobody notices, the Leafs have spent the season aggressively assuring everyone that they know what they’re doing. Now, thanks to yet another late-season collapse, they’re going to miss the playoffs again, and fans are screaming for the whole thing to be blown up. Except it probably won’t be. After all, re-signing Dave Bolland will solve everything.

If you’re a fan, it’s been painful. But if you’re not, then you never want this show to end. This entire Leafs season has been like spending eight months getting lectured by the self-professed smartest guy in the room while waiting to see when he’ll notice his fly is wide open. He still hasn’t.

Least Entertaining Train Wreck: New York Islanders

Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

“If you don’t want something good to happen to New York Islander fans, you are a legitimately horrible person and your parents did a bad job raising you.” I wrote that heading into last year’s playoffs, and I stand by it. The franchise hasn’t won a playoff round in more than 20 years, and has spent most of that time as the league’s go-to punch line. Mike Milbury, Alexei Yashin’s buyout, Rick DiPietro, terrible ownership … if something terrible could happen to the Islanders, it would.

So when they went into this season clinging to some small strand of optimism, it was hard not to root for them. They’d made the playoffs last year, and their roster featured some real live talent like John Tavares and Kyle Okposo. None of it played goal, which turned out to be sort of a problem, but it was better than nothing. And a month into the season, they even pulled off an old-fashioned blockbuster, acquiring Thomas Vanek from the Sabres in a pricey deal meant to solidify their status as playoff contenders.

We all know how that turned out. The season was a disaster, Tavares got hurt at the Olympics, the Islanders will finish dead last in the Metro, and they ended up having to flip Vanek to Montreal for a fraction of what they paid for him. Islanders fans are sick of hearing about that one. Let’s never speak of it again.

It’s been awful. And if your parents did a good job, you’ve hated every second of it.

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