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2002 Detroit Red Wings

The 2002 Detroit Red Wings Ride The Veterans To The Stanley Cup

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After winning consecutive Stanley Cups in 1997 and 1998, the Detroit Red Wings had failed to advance past the second round of the playoffs for three straight years. The 2002 Detroit Red Wings went for it all, adding notable veterans to a lineup that was already experienced to the core.

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Detroit picked up Brett Hull, a former league MVP, who had been a big contributor to a 1999 Stanley Cup run for the Dallas Stars. The Red Wings added longtime Los Angeles Kings’ great Luc Robatille, and the Red Wings finished their offseason moves by acquiring Dominic Hasek, merely the best goaltender of his time in the NHL.

These players were added to a core that included Brendan Shanahan, Sergei Federov, Steve Yzerman, Igor Larionov, Nicklas Lidstrom and Chris Chelios. All of the aforementioned players were ages 31 to 41.

Detroit produced the best record in the NHL, but the playoffs got off a rocky start. The 8th-seeded Vancouver Canucks hit Hasek with nine goals in the first two games and took a 2-0 series lead. The Red Wings immediately turned it around, as Hasek held the Canucks to three goals over the next three games, all won by Detroit. They finished it off with a 6-4 win in Game 6.

Hasek spun two shutouts in the second round against the St. Louis Blues and Detroit rolled to a series victory in five games. It set up a showdown with the Colorado Avalanche in the conference finals, a rematch of heated battles between the two teams in 1996 and 1997, each winning once. What’s more, the Avalanche were the defending Stanley Cup champions and they had one of the era’s great goaltenders themselves in Patrick Roy.

A heated battle is exactly what hockey fans got, with three of the first five games going to overtime. But Colorado won two of the OT games, and held a 3-2 series lead overall. Then Hasek took over. He turned back all 24 Colorado shots in Game 6, a 2-0 Red Wings win that brought the series back to Joe Louis Arena for a decisive Game 7.

Red Wings-Avalanche in Game 7 at this period of NHL history seemed destined for hockey lore. Instead, it turned into one long Detroit party. Tomas Holmstrom scored two goals. Robatille scored and handed out two assists. On perhaps the worst night of Roy’s professional career, Detroit unloaded for a 7-0 win and reached the Stanley Cup Finals.

Five teams in the Eastern Conference had stronger regular seasons than the Carolina Hurricanes. But it was the Hurricanes who got a strong wind behind them in the playoffs. They ousted the New Jersey Devils, who had been to consecutive Stanley Cup Finals, and whose goaltender Martin Brodeur would have been a worthy opponent for Hasek.

Carolina caught a break when the top-seeded Boston Bruins lost, and the Hurricanes instead beat the Montreal Canadiens in the second round. Carolina then upset the Toronto Maple Leafs, who had the second-best record in the East, to reach the Finals.

The result was that the real Stanley Cup battle for the 2002 Detroit Red Wings had already taken place, in their victory over Colorado. They went on to dispatch Carolina in five games. Lidstrom won the Conn Smythe Award as MVP of the entire postseason, and Detroit was back on top of the hockey world.

2002 Sports: The Rally Monkey & A Dispute In The Desert

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The two most dramatic events of the year that was 2002 sports came towards the end, with the World Series and college football’s national championship game, played that year in the Fiesta Bowl.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
Start reading today. 


The Anaheim Angels won the Series after trailing a must-win Game 6 by five runs in the seventh inning. Aided by “The Rally Monkey”, the Angels won that game, won the next night and made amends to a fan base that had suffered through some tough collapses in the playoffs.
Miami was the defending national champion in college football and looked poised to repeat, entering the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State as a solid favorite. The game proved to be an epic, going double overtime and the Buckeyes winning.
Hurricane fans feel forever jobbed over a controversial pass interference call at the end of the first overtime. Buckeye fans feel like there’s more to the story. But college football fans in a general sense, were the big winners, because this was not just one of the best games ever played, but the storylines remain rich to this day.
Another storyline coming out of the college football season as a whole was the re-emergence of USC. The Trojans had not won the Rose Bowl since 1996 and had not been the clear power of the Pac-10 since 1987-89. In their second year under Pete Carroll, USC lost a couple early games to good teams in Kansas State and Washington State, but then took off.
The Trojans moved their record to 8-2 and then closed on a tear. They beat crosstown rival, #25 UCLA, 52-21. USC then took on traditional rival, #7 Notre Dame and won 44-13. The Trojans finished the job in the Orange Bowl when they hammered third-ranked Iowa 38-17. Quarterback Carson Palmer won the Heisman Trophy and USC would be the dominant force in college football through 2008.
Read more about the 2002 World Series 
Read more about the Miami-Ohio State Fiesta Bowl
The Maryland Terrapins had knocked on the door of a national title in basketball in 2001 and in 2002 they broke it down. Veteran head coach Gary Williams produced an outstanding team, reached the Final Four in Atlanta and then squared off with Indiana, who was in the odd position of being a Cinderella.
After the firing of Bob Knight prior to the 2001 season, the Hoosiers somehow ended up in the Final Four a year later. It proved to be lightning in a bottle, for Knight-haters, it was a magical March, at least in the moment. Indiana gave Maryland a tough game in the NCAA final before the veteran Terps pulled away down the stretch.
Read more about the 2002 Final Four
The Detroit Red Wings already had veteran talent, and they went out and added more of it prior to the 2002 season, including one of the league’s best goalies in Dominic Hasek. The end result was the best record in the NHL and a Stanley Cup, though there were some interesting moments along the way to getting there.
Read more about the 2002 Detroit Red Wings
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a franchise reputation for ineptitude in the cold weather. But they also had an elite defense, and that proved to be enough to get them through a road trip to Philadelphia in January and ultimately a Super Bowl title.
Read more about the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Los Angeles Lakers had won the NBA title in 2000 and 2001 and behind great years from Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, went 58-24 in the 2002 NBA season. They had a worthy challenger in the Sacramento Kings, who went 61-21.
By rights, this should have been Sacramento’s championship. The two teams played in the Western Conference Finals. The Kings led the series 3-2 and were in position to win Game 6. The officiating then took over and put the Lakers on the line 27 times in the fourth quarter, making it all but impossible for Sacramento to win.
Los Angeles won Game 7 on the road and then beat a completely overmatched New Jersey Nets team in four straight. Shaq averaged 36 points/12 rebounds against the Nets to win his third straight Finals MVP.
The Lakers were a very good team in 2002–good enough that asking Sacramento to, in effect, beat them five times in seven games is asking too much. Laker fans who can’t acknowledge the tainted quality of this three-peat should put down the Kool-Aid.
Read more about the 2002 Sacramento Kings