In the 1994–95 Stanley Cup Finals, the Detroit Red Wings, a bullet train of a hockey team with 70 points in 48 games and arguably the most talented bunch of players in the league, faced off against the utilitarian New Jersey Devils, a John Deere trac- tor in their solid mechanics, steady performance, and reliability. This is not to say the 1995 Devils were a bunch of no-talent rubes, though. The Devils were workers. They were a balanced team, nothing too high and nothing too low. But instead of blowing by every opponent at a breakneck speed, as the Red Wings did, the Devils won a majority of their games with a steady, assembly-line mentality.
When the 1995 finals started the overwhelming consensus was that Detroit would beat the Devils; the belief was based solely on the Red Wings’ astonishing talent level. But games aren’t won by blabbering media wonks. Games are won on the ice, and in playoff games in particular, games are won in the slop in front of the net, behind the plow along the boards, and in the hard ground in the corners. In four games, Detroit coach Scotty Bowman, the winningest coach in NHL history and a man who won thirteen Stanley Cups as a player, coach, or manager, saw the sweep go the other way as the Devils won their first Stanley Cup in franchise his- tory, ending the series with a humiliating, brooms-out beatdown in Game 4.
During the series, Bowman and the Red Wings saw many things: the Devils turning the ice into a swamp, slowing the skilled Detroit forwards to a crawl; a young Devils goalie named Martin Brodeur finding his playoff legs; a gritty team with muscle and size and goals from all four lines; and Devils coach Jacques Lemaire winning with less in a deliberate, numbing shutdown strategy in the neu- tral zone.
There was a largely unheralded factor, though, to New Jersey’s dominance. It was big and surly and belligerent, and it would ironically inspire the Red Wings’ fu- ture turnaround. It was the Devils’ fourth line of Randy McKay, Mike Peluso, and Bobby Holik, which ran over the Red Wings and changed the momentum of entire periods and games. In the end the line played a massive role in the humbling sweep of the more talented Wings.
The Devils’ fourth line was famously nicknamed the Crash Line, because its playing style was like a snub-nose Peterbilt semitruck without brakes. Separately, each player was slightly above average and had his own unique talents, but they were nothing you wouldn’t find on other teams: McKay was a hard-nosed winger with a decent scoring touch; Peluso was a wild man, a lanky and long-haired tough guy whose fighting strategy consisted of swinging as hard as he could as many times as he could until he fell down, hoping to land at least a few punches; and Holik was a minotaur of a centerman, part bull, part man. When Devils coach Jacques Lemaire put the three players together, though, they were considered to be the best fourth line in the league.
The Crash Line was so heavy and abrasive that they changed the flow of the game with their hits and aggression and timely goals (in the 1995 Cup playoffs alone, McKay had two goals in the Boston series and Holik had two in the Pitts- burgh series; they both chipped in points in the finals; and Peluso did his pillaging Viking routine and hit everything in sight), and they were especially effective in the playoffs, when every inch of the ice was precious real estate.
“We were momentum keepers or momentum changers,” McKay says. “We could hit and score a few goals here and there through a campaign, through the playoffs. We were put on the ice after every goal scored for or against. It was to ei- ther keep momentum going or to get some momentum built.”
The Red Wings had the talent to win it all, with danglers and snipers and Hall of Famers aplenty. But it wasn’t always about the big-name players, the stars whom everyone knows and wants, the shiny free-agent pieces added and subtracted every season. A Stanley Cup–winning team also needs to have the dark matter that sur- rounds those stars and blinding lights, the binding agents that tie it all together and give it shape.
But building a hockey team is tricky, a science unto itself. The word chemistry is thrown around a lot in the sports world. Fans and reporters alike love to talk about the symbiotic relationship between teammates and how they form an instinctual and near-magical bond in their scoring and passing and positioning the field of play and in their relationships in the locker room.
In hockey, chemistry can be seen in a variety of ways, but it’s primarily in the line combinations of the three forwards, defensive pairings, power-play units, and penalty-kill tandems. Chemistry can be formed between teammates, like Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri, over years of repetition and playing together, or it can be cre- ated when complementary players instantly gel, like the legendary defensive pairing of Nicklas Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski. Coaches are constantly tinkering with play- er combinations to try to blend different attributes—a crafty passer with a shooter, a defenseman who likes to rush the puck forward and attack with a stay-at-home defenseman who minds the fort—in an attempt to form units that are fluid and cohesive and contribute to the offensive and defensive game plan.
The goal-scoring and point-producing chemistry of the skilled forwards and shutdown defensemen are what produce media coverage. The chemistry used to form the bottom lines, though, the third- and fourth-line combinations of the grinders and irritants like the Crash Line, is the dirty science of hockey, the sort of rogue experimenting that would make Walter White proud. It is in this
underground laboratory, the one where the intangible elements are mixed together, that success is often born. Teams that survive the marathon of the regular season and the slog of the playoffs do so by having a deep roster, and that means having quality third and fourth lines that can play big minutes in the muck, chip in goals, and change the tide of a game with hits and the sort of tire-iron hockey that leaves a mark.
After being plowed under by the Devils, and particularly the Crash Line, Detroit later assembled what would become known as the Grind Line, the infamous combination of Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby, and Joe Kocur (and later Darren Mc- Carty), a forward line of three players with volatile on-ice personalities that the Wings hoped could combat the behemoths of the Eastern Conference, like New Jersey, Boston, and Philadelphia.
The chemistry of Detroit’s Grind Line was nearly instant. Each one of the players had been cast aside at some point by another team. They were random parts, undervalued in other organizations or exiled in a sort of semiretirement, and they finally found the right fit with each other, their different playing styles blending to- gether like a witch’s brew: Maltby was a swift skater and goal-scoring machine turned checker, whose on-ice personality was as pleasant as a screaming can of tear gas; he was acquired as an afterthought in a trade-deadline deal with Edmon- ton. Kocur was pulled out of a beer league hockey team that the Detroit Red Wings describe on their website as an “Industrial Hockey League,” after his decadelong career as one of the most feared fighters in the 1980s had ended. Draper was trad- ed to Detroit by the Winnipeg Jets for future consideration (which was literally one dollar) and was a flame-bearded Chuck Norris on skates, a smack-talking firebrand and speedster. Darren McCarty was added after Kocur’s retirement, a bush- whacking frontiersman who wielded knuckles and a nice scoring touch. When the players were mixed together, the result was highly flammable; it would eventually become the greatest fourth line in the history of the game because of its winning, longevity, and, above all, its relentless pugnaciousness.
“I think the toughest part of playing against us back in the day was that we all
brought different things,” Draper says. “McCarty was a tough guy who loved to fight. But he also scored a hat trick in the 2002 conference finals versus Colorado. Maltby was a really strong skater and loved to hit. Shake Kocur’s hand, see his hand. He’s had over twenty-two surgeries or something like that, and it’s an old beaten-down leather football [from fighting]. We could all skate and finish checks and score big goals.”
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