Detroit Free Press

He looks like that guy who played Baretta on TV -- Robert Blake, his name was, a squat, muscular punk with a short ...

Paul Coffey was on his knees, his left leg throbbing, his head slamming the ice in frustration. No. No. No. No. Seconds before, he had watched a bullet go through the lungs of Detroit's Stanley Cup hopes, and he was helpless to stop it, like some ill-fated soldier in the movies, who reaches, reaches, but just can't pull his friend into the foxhole."Get up! Someone get him up!" you could almost hear the Joe Louis Arena crowd scream Tuesday night, seconds before the goal that gave New Jersey a commanding 2-0 lead in these finals. "Somebody blow a whistle! Somebody do something!"

Each day, the door opens, and the reporters charge inside. They fan across the locker room and surround the biggest stars. Sergei Fedorov gets a big group. Paul Coffey gets a big group. Steve Yzerman gets a big group.Nicklas Lidstrom gets the two guys from Sweden. Day after day. Game after game. They sit by his locker and converse slowly, as if having a cup of coffee. They are there for one reason: to write about Nick. Nick at night. Nick in the morning.Just Nick."What about tonight's game, Nick?" they will ask today.

Well, here we are, the climax of the playoffs, the Stanley Cup Finals, and I have the good news and the bad.The ...

The woman was murdered, stabbed 22 times, the knife left ghoulishly in her mouth. Police investigated. They arrested the boyfriend. A dental "expert" said the boyfriend's teeth matched a bite mark on the woman's face.The accused was put in jail. The door was shut. The light disappeared. At a quick glance, it seemed that justice was done.

First of all, Mike -- and I assume that's your real name, and not something you made up to hide the fact that you ...

Scotty Bowman loses it. Not his temper, his ring. He had been playing with it, rolling it around, and it flew out of his hand and rolled under an orange seat in the Tiger Stadium mezzanine. Next thing you know, the 61-year-old coach of the Red Wings -- the man some call a genius, others call a dictator, but none, absolutely none, calls warm and fuzzy -- is poking under the seats like a kid, amidst the peanut shells and hot dog wrappers, trying to get his ring back."It went over here," he tells some fans, who quickly join the search. "You see it? . . ."

Philadelphia, we could hate. Philadelphia, we could make fun of. We could start with its soggy soft pretzels, move quickly to the "Rocky" movies, Legionnaires' disease -- then hit 'em with Mitch (Wild Thing) Williams, who served up the mushball that ended the World Series.Pow! Philly would have been easy. Had the Flyers made the Stanley Cup finals, the war between Detroit and Philadelphia would have been a beautiful thing, two great blue-collar sports towns hurling insults up and down the Pennsylvania Turnpike.