| Friday, November 3
By George Johnson
Special to ESPN.com |
|
About 25 minutes after the traditional morning skate at the Saddledome this past
Tuesday, most players are showered, changed and on the bus. The ice is shaven,
chippy from the beating it's already taken, but the Zamboni is made to wait as
two solitary figures continue a ritual.
One barking orders. One skating, skating, constantly skating.
"C'mon, Al!" exhorts TV color commentator John
Garrett, a happily malicious spectator standing on the bench, teasing St. Louis
Blues All-Star defenseman Al MacInnis. "Uncollapse that lung!"
|  | | Injuries to MacInnis and Pierre Turgeon haven't slowed the Blues down |
MacInnis is being skated into the ground, or ice, by assistant coach Mike Kitchen -- the one doing the barking. Up. Down. Back. Forth. Stop. Start. Move. Shoot. And
over again.
MacInnis finally glides to the boards, hunched over, dripping sweat.
"Forget the collapsed lung," he puffs. "How about an iron lung?"
But the Norris Trophy winner is at least trying to smile through his fatigue.
His return is imminent, far ahead of schedule. Perhaps even by Thursday, when the Blues are in Vancouver. That'd be only 12 days after a procedure to reinflate his right
lung. Wouldn't it be wiser, he is asked, to maybe wait until after the All-Star
break and give his recovery a few extra days, with only one more game lost in
the bargain?
"The doctor I dealt with is a chest surgeon, a specialist, and he
says there's no sense giving it anymore time. There's no risk," argues
MacInnis. "There was no puncturing of the lung by a rib.
"It was scary there,
for sure. When you see the x-rays and that 90 percent of a lung had collapsed ... it
was never life-threatening, but it shakes you up a little."
A hard check by
Anaheim's Mike Leclerc did the initial damage to his right lung and then, like a
tire with a slow leak that completely deflates when the car is driven, a Bob
Probert hit against Chicago did the rest.
The procedure to reinflate the lung
went like this: A tube was inserted into his chest cavity and the lung inflated.
MacInnis then took a deep breath, holding his nose, and air came out of the
tube.
"That's how I inflated it," he said. "Manually."
Perhaps, one of the reasons MacInnis is back so quick is that no city has been home
to both a Super Bowl and Stanley Cup champion in the same year. And there's
only one town remaining that can change that.
And it's shaping up as not a
bad wager to make, with the right odds.
MacInnis has been hurt much of the
season. Leading scorer and MVP candidate Pierre Turgeon has just undergone
wrist/thumb surgery and is expected to miss two months. Yet the Blues continue
to sail along, vying with Detroit and New Jersey for the best record in hockey.
"Obviously, losing Turgeon is huge," sighs coach Joel Quenneville. "He was
having an MVP-type season. And Al ... well, Al's only one of the best defensemen
in the game. Getting him back soon is going to be a big boost for our team,
especially in light of what happened to Turgeon."
"That's the biggest
difference," says MacInnis. "Depth. People just focus on Turgeon, myself and
Pronger. But that Slovakian line" -- Pavol Demitra, Lubos Bartecko and Michal
Handzus -- "has been absolutely outstanding. That Handzus is a horse out there.
When we have lines of Turgeon-Stephane Richer-Scott Young and then the Slovaks, that's two pretty dangerous lines.
"And look at a guy like Mike Eastwood, having
a career year with something like 15 goals."
As the All-Star break approached,
the Blues had (temporarily, at least) moved past Detroit into the Western
Conference lead and to within a point of the league-leading Devils.
The Blues felt so confident in their chemistry that management threw out
a lure and reeled in the enigmatic Stephane Richer. Undoubtedly skilled,
indubitably maddening, Richer brings with him to St. Louis a lot of baggage --
and not all of it filled with shirts, socks and ties, either.
Why, everyone
wondered, risk upsetting something so good, so together, on someone so erratic?
"If you look, we didn't disrupt the team to get him," points out MacInnis. "We
didn't give up anyone that played a lot of minutes off the roster. If you want
to call it a 'gamble,' okay, but it's a good one. From the blueline in, he's
still as good as there is in this league.
"We feel there's an exceptional
atmosphere in this dressing room. Everyone who comes here feels it and wants to
be a part of it. We don't think he'll be any different."
In Tampa, the St.
Louis thinking went, Richer was a veteran, and a skilled (if flawed) veteran at
that. No one dared to stand up within the room and make him accountable. In St.
Louis, with MacInnis, Chris Pronger, Turgeon, Scott Young et al around,
Richer won't be allowed to slack off or pout.
"You always measure your room," Quenneville says, discreetly, "before making any kind of trade.
"We were looking
for someone who could upgrade our scoring, who can play a high-tempo game. Who
knows? He could be the wild card in our deck."
There is concern, however, that
down the line goalie Roman Turek's lack of playoff experience will show through;
and that the Blues haven't replaced the dramatic postseason flare lost when Geoff Courtnall was forced to retire due to repeated concussions.
Then again,
no one in Detroit, Dallas or the swamplands of Jersey figure their teams are
invincible, either.
As Flame general manager Al Coates said, after watching the
Bluenotes hand his club its first overtime loss in months: "When those guys get
MacInnis and Turgeon back, they're going to be a force."
Well, shooter Al's
ready to go, and sneaky Pierre should be back in form by mid-April, when the
orchestra strikes up for the beginning of the big dance.
"I haven't," says MacInnis, "felt this excited about a team's chances since I was here (with
Calgary) in 1989."
And history shows what happened that year with that team.
The Rest of the West
His right eye, laced with seven stitches, nearly swollen
shut, and complaining of a massive headache, Peter Forsberg looked a sight on
Wednesday, less than 24 hours after being knocked out of the All-Star Game by a Todd Bertuzzi hit.
"I don't think he meant to bang my head against the boards,"
said the Swedish star. "You know when you go out there that they'll try and hit
you."
Veteran Dave Reid, among others, was blaming the severity of Forberg's
injury on the seamless glass at the brand spanking new Pepsi Center.
"It may be
fan friendly," he said, "but it's like running into cement. It used to be only
the Canadian rinks that had the hard boards and glass. American rinks had good
give in theirs. But now they're changing over to the seamless style. And you're
going to see a lot more head injuries."
Meanwhile, Avalanche coach Bob Hartley
called on the league to do a better job of protecting its main assets -- its
stars, such as Forsberg.
"For the first time since I've been coaching Peter, I
can feel frustration in him," said Hartley. "Sometimes it looks like he wants
to take his stick and break it over somebody's head.
"I look at it like this: I
just bought tickets to see Bruce Springsteen (one of two shows at the Pepsi
Center that sold out in half an hour). If in the first part of the show, he gets
cross-checked by his trumpeter, and they come back 10 minutes later and say
they're going to carry on the rest of the show without him, I'd feel like I'd
lost a big part of the reason I went there in the first place."
The frightening incident involving Montreal centerman Trent McCleary -- hit in the
throat by a slap shot that nearly killed him -- has sparked calls for neck
protection for NHLers.
But Calgary Flames' physiotherapist Terry Kane, calling
what happened a "freak accident" and an "isolated incident" warns against the
customary over-reaction.
"To take a slap shot like that, in the bone he took it
... I don't think there's a device to withstand that sort of force," said Kane. "Neck guards certainly have a place in minor hockey, especially, and help
against skate cuts and errant sticks and things of that nature.
"But the neck guards you're talking about are fitted so that they wouldn't have been any help in this case, regardless. It's one thing to say use a hanging-type Patrick Roy
neck protector on all players, but then they can't turn their heads properly.
"Bottom line: Professional athletes assume risks you or I will never have to.
There isn't a downhill skiier on earth that doesn't realize if he misses a turn
that he's going to be in a wheelchair for the next three months. Every hockey
player that goes to block a shot has to be thinking 'Oh, oh where's this
going to hit me?' But these kids understand. They accept the responsibility.
They park their fears."
Quick hits:
Contrary to many reports, Mark Messier cannot receive 3 percent ownership of the Canucks should the team decide to pick up the option on his contract. He can, however, earn a cash bonus if the franchise is worth more at the time he signs than it was when he arrived in Vancouver.
From the Odds 'N Ends Department: During the regular season, the Oilers are
just 1-12-1 in Dallas since the Stars relocated; the Chicago Blackhawks are on a
12-1-3 run at Edmonton Coliseum/Skyreach Centre.
Oiler tough guy Georges Laraque
doesn't think much of Vancouver counterpart Donald Brashear. "I have no respect
for the guy," Laraque told the Edmonton Sun. "He's not a tough guy anymore.
He's had about five fights this year. You can't call yourself the champ when
you've only had five fights."
George Johnson covers the NHL for the Calgary Sun. His Western Conference column appears every week during the season on ESPN.com. |  |
