Detroit – In the Detroit Red Wings’ newly designed dressing room, plenty of familiar nameplates adorned the stalls. After the Red Wings’ morning skate on a preseason game day with the Avalanche, Kris Draper and Brendan Shanahan mingled casually, while others such as Steve Yzerman, Chris Osgood and Kirk Maltby passed by.
In the Avalanche dressing room, only two players – Dan Hinote and David Aebischer – were with the Avs the most recent time Colorado met Detroit in the NHL playoffs, in 2002. Most of the Avs’ regulars, including Joe Sakic, Rob Blake and Alex Tanguay, stayed home for Wednesday’s exhibition at Joe Louis Arena, won by Detroit 3-2 in overtime.
Draper has been part of the Avalanche-Detroit rivalry – considered the league’s best of the past 10 years – since the beginning. He found it hard to believe he is considered an elder statesman of the rivalry.
“A lot of players have changed,” Draper said. “I know (Colorado) doesn’t have a lot of players left from the ’90s teams. A lot of what happened was a long time ago. I guess it’s a little different now.”
With the NHL using a more weighted schedule emphasizing divisional rivalries, and with the Avs undergoing almost a complete transformation of personnel since their inaugural season in Denver, it is possible fans may have seen the last of the bitter Colorado-Detroit rivalry for a while.
Draper isn’t so sure.
“It’s still two high-skill teams going at it,” he said. “That’s still the fun of it, and you want to be part of those games. They’re always fun to play in. Let’s face it, they play with a lot of pride and so do we. They are still one of the teams that you look at to win the Western Conference. Back in the late ’90s, there was obviously a lot of excitement and a lot of hatred in the air. But I think that’s changed over the years.
“The bottom line now is, you look at their team, you look at our team, there’s still a lot of skill out there. It always makes for entertaining hockey games.”
Avs coach Joel Quenneville was an assistant with the team when the rivalry ignited in 1996.
“It was intense when we played, and it’s probably the biggest rivalry in the NHL, maybe in all of pro sports,” Quenne- ville said.
Many would argue the Vancouver Canucks – with Todd Bertuzzi, Marc Crawford, et al. – is a more heated rival now than the Red Wings.
“I think maybe there’s more bad blood now between us and Vancouver than with Detroit,” Hinote said. “I think now with us and Detroit, it’s just a rivalry between two good teams. Most of that bad blood was a long time ago. We didn’t have anybody out there tonight who was a part of it in ’96.”
Compared with the star-studded Avs of the past, the team that skated Wednesday in Detroit was a cast of virtual unknowns. The Wings dressed most regulars from previous years, including Draper, Yzerman, Shanahan, Maltby and Nicklas Lidstrom. Avalanche nemesis Darren McCarty is gone, but Detroit has made it more of a priority over the years than the Avs to keep the veteran core intact. Some critics say that philosophy has made for an aging team that hasn’t sufficiently restocked, but Detroit is adjusting to the new NHL salary cap.
“We lost some guys from last year, but I think they did a good job of keeping this team intact, and we think we’ve got another good shot at a Cup here,” Shanahan said. “With Colorado, it’s always going to a special game for both teams. There’s been such a great history of great hockey between us.”
Wednesday, the Avs got great goaltending from Vitaly Kolesnik and Aebischer in nearly stealing a victory. Antti Laaksonen’s fancy backhander over the shoulder of Wings goalie Manny Legace midway through the third period broke a 1-1 tie, but the Wings tied it in the waning minutes of regulation on Jason Williams’ goal and got the winner in OT from Lidstrom.
Staff writer Adrian Dater can be reached at 303-820-5454 or adater@denverpost.com.
