Kris Draper got into the passenger seat. Darren McCarty was driving. They stopped for coffee at a Tim Horton’s, and then headed to The Joe.
Draper already was wired. He hadn’t slept that afternoon, hadn’t gotten in his usual pre-game routine. It wasn’t just any day: It was the last of four games in the 1996-97 season against the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, who had beaten the Wings the first three times. It was also the Claude Lemieux’s first visit to Joe Louis Arena since his hit from behind in the 1996 Western Conference finals sent Draper to the hospital with a broken jaw and shattered cheek.
“It was interesting when I walked into The Joe, I opened up the door and there were cameras right on me,” Draper told the Free Press this week. “Then you realize, OK, this isn’t just a normal game.”
It has been 25 years since the Wings and Avs met on March 26, 1997, in a game that became part of franchise lore as the Free Press dubbed it “Fight Night at The Joe.” The Wings viewed the Avs as “having everything we wanted,” Draper said, and winning that March night propelled the Wings to what they wanted: Ending a 42-year Stanley Cup drought.
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“It was so important for us to win that game, and how we won it elevated the importance of winning it,” Draper said. “That was something we needed mentally for our group. We needed to find a way to beat the Colorado Avalanche, because they had had our number all year, they were the defending Stanley Cup champions. It was a huge night for our team.”
Three days before the game, Wings forward Brendan Shanahan told reporters, “we should step it up.” There were 10 games left in the season, and the Wings had gone 3-4-3 in their previous 10 outings. The Captain, Steve Yzerman, said his team, ‘can improve pretty much in every area.” The expectations for the Wings were tremendous: They had ben eliminated in the 1996 playoffs by the Avs in six games, and had been swept by the New Jersey Devils in the 1995 Stanley Cup Final. Shanahan was brought in via a blockbuster trade at the start of the 1996-97 season, and future Hall of Fame defenseman Larry Murphy was added at the trade deadline. It was the season that “Hockeytown” became a logo and an official slogan, that Sergei Fedorov scored five times in a 5-4 victory on Dec. 26, and that Scotty Bowman won his 1,000th game, on Feb. 8.
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Those were memorable events, but the March 26 game became an instant classic.
The first to fight were Jamie Pushor and Brent Severyn, about five minutes into the game. Kirk Maltby and Rene Corbet dropped their gloves midway through the first period.
Then two of the least likely players jumpstarted the main event. Igor Larionov, a Russian known to teammates as “The Professor” for his cerebral play, got into it with Peter Forsberg, a quiet Swede with incredible skill. Nicklas Lidstrom passed the puck along the boards to Larionov, who Forsberg checked. Larionov threw his left arm around Forsberg’s neck. It was more of a wrestling match than a fight, but as teammates rushed to help, that pileup drew the attention of referee Paul Devorsky and linesmen Ray Scapinello and Dan Schachte.
That gave McCarty the opening he wanted. He went after Lemieux, who immediately turtled. McCarty held Lemieux by the neck with one hand and punched him with the other, dragging him to the front of the Wings bench, where Draper sat.
“Mac, to this one day one of my best friends, he answered,” Draper said. “That was something that meant a lot, not only to me but to all of his teammates.”
(Draper and Lemieux have had two face-to-face interactions in the time since: Right after the 2015 draft, when Lemieux approached Draper in a hotel lobby to discuss a Swiss goalie — Joren van Pottelberghe — whom the Wings had just drafted and who Lemieux represented, and in 2016, when Lemieux stepped onto the same elevator as Draper and his family during the alumni game of the Stadium Series matchup in Colorado. The ’96 hit wasn’t discussed either time.)
As McCarty pummeled Lemieux, Patrick Roy left his crease only to be intercepted by Shanahan, who took a flying leap at Roy.
“When I was three feet in the air, I was thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ ” Shanahan said afterwards. “When I was five feet in the air, I said, ‘What am I really doing here?’ ”
What he — and the Wings were doing — was exorcising all the demons of doubt that threatened their quest for Lord Stanley’s chalice. The highlight bout was Roy and Mike Vernon going at it, slugging away despite their heavy goalie equipment. Shanahan fought Adam Foote, Vladimir Konstantinov fought Adam Deadmarsh, Tomas Holmstrom fought Mike Keane, and McCarty also battled Deadmarsh. In all, Devorsky handed out 18 major penalties for fighting. While players fought, Wings coach Scotty Bowman and Avalanche coach Marc Crawford jawed at one another from their respective benches.
“Marc Crawford blamed me for all this,” Draper said. “He was yelling at me and Scotty grabbed me and asked, ‘What did he say to you?’ So I told Scotty, and that’s when Scotty and Crawford started getting into it. It was Scotty sticking up for his team, as well.”
After the game, Crawford said the Wings had “no heart” and was accused of elbowing Aaron Ward and trying to barge into the officials’ dressing room.
The game lasted 3½ hours. The Wings trailed, 4-2, with 19.1 seconds left in the second period when Lidstrom scored. The Avs made it 5-3 early in the third period, but goals from Martin Lapointe and Shanahan tied it by midway through the period.
Then, 39 seconds into overtime, McCarty slapped in the winning goal, settling the score at 6-5.
“We needed it,” Draper said. “A lot of people doubted the toughness of the Detroit Red Wings — we had too many Europeans, we weren’t tough enough. That night we proved to a lot of people we were, but more importantly proved to ourselves that we were. We knew then we had a team that could do this.”
Six weeks later, the Wings once again faced the Avalanche, this time in the Western Conference Finals. The series began in Denver on May 15.
“I remember going to Colorado and playing them in Game 1 of the Western Conference final,” Maltby said. “We lost by a goal. I remember we deserved to win, it was as good a game as we could have played.
“We used that game from March as a reminder we had beaten these guys. We leaned on that game, and in Game 2, we played another great game and got the victory. And I know we didn’t just walk away with it after that second game, but it was when we knew we could win the series. That game in March was unbelievable. An instant classic.”
In the basement of his house, treasured among the memorabilia of a four-Cup career, Draper has framed pictures of McCarty’s, Shanahan’s and Vernon’s fights. A quarter of a century after the game, those pictures are still a must-see when friends come over.
“I had Vernie, Mac and Shanny sign them for me,” Draper said. “When friends come over, it’s something people come down and see. It was a big moment for our team.
“I’ve never downplayed the importance of winning that March 26 game. The retribution, that was incredible, but I truly believe that if we would have lost that game, they would have had the swagger, not us. The emotions of that night rallied our team, our dressing room.”
The swagger earned that night lasted into June, until, on the night of June 7, McCarty scored another game-winning goal – and the Wings celebrated with the Stanley Cup.
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter. Her book, The Big 50: The Detroit Red Wings is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies available via her e-mail.