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The musings of a Detroit-area sportswriter in the digital age.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Red Wings games offered up for 'Hockey Night In Canada' classic

The agony of early-90s Red Wings playoff defeat
New NHL games might be absent from your regular fall viewing lineup, but Fox Sports Detroit and CBC are keeping Red Wings fans happy while living in the past during the NHL lockout.
In particular, though, CBC has been re-airing "Hockey Night in Canada" classics, voted on by fans via its website and Facebook pages.
This weekend's (Nov. 24) HNIC broadcast featured two classic Red Wings games to choose from.
Most notably, the Red Wings' 11-1 win in December 1995 in which they scored nine goals on Patrick Roy in the game's first two periods. That would be Roy's last game in Montreal, as he insisted the Habs coach, with whom Roy had a strained relationship, had left him net despite his obvious struggles that night, in order to humiliate Roy.
The other Red Wings option is not quite as notable around these parts and doesn't serve as much consolation for the absence of the Winter Classic — Detroit's May 1, 1993 overtime playoff elimination at the hands off the Toronto Maple Leafs. This was just another link in the chain of early 90s playoff futility for the Red Wings.
Likely, long forgotten by fans in these parts, the game was the Leafs' first playoff series victory over the Red Wings in nearly 30 years. Toronto then survived a seven-games series with the St. Louis Blues before falling to the Wayne Gretzky-led Los Angeles Kings in a seven-game conference final. That series' Game 6, not Game 7, was another choice for this week's HNIC classic for its infamous no-call on the Great One, which has been called the most controversial play in Leafs history.
The voting has closed and the winner has yet to be announced, but MLive noted early voting favored a 1984 Quebec Nordiques (remember them?)-Montreal Canadiens matchup.
The Red Wings options had far fewer votes, however. So, thanks to YouTube, I'll share some of what you're likely missing on CBC this weekend. As I previously noted, I'll also be missing CBC, permanently, due to my evolving philosophy on television viewing.
So, without further ado, here is that infamous 11-goal outburst that led to Patrick Roy's trade to the Colorado Avalanche:



And that time the underdog Maple Leafs ousted the Red Wings in the first round of the 1993 playoffs: