He never played a game for the Carolina Hurricanes, but four years ago,
Sergei Fedorov nearly became an ex-Detroit Red Wing and said, "See ya'll in
Carolina."
Fedorov had just come back in late February 1998 from the Olympics in
Nagano, Japan. It was his first hockey of the season, following a long free-agent holdout with the Red Wings. Enter Hurricanes Owner Peter Karmanos with a six-year, $38 million offer sheet.
Karmanos and agent Mike Barnett accepted the deal, which gave the Red Wings
seven days to match the offer or lose the restricted free agent.
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Sergei Fedorov helped the Red Wings win their second straight Stanley Cup during his infamous year of 1998.
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One of the interesting twists to this deal is that Karmanos and Red Wings
owner Michael Ilitch have long been enemies in the business and amateur-sports
ranks in the Detroit area. The other was that the offer sheet Fedorov signed
with Carolina was front-loaded in a BIG way ($2 million a season salary, plus
a $14 million signing bonus and another $12 million bonus that would kick in
if Fedorov's team advanced to the Conference finals).
Not going to let Karmanos get the best of him in this deal, Ilitch quickly
decided to match Carolina's offer rather than accept five first-round draft
choices as compensation, even though it turned out that Ilitch did have to
shell out $28 million for just over three months work (21 regular-season
games and 22 playoff games) when the Red Wings advanced beyond the Western
Conference finals and won their second straight Stanley Cup.
"Mentally, I never left the Red Wings," Fedorov remembered recently. "My agent
and I thought signing this offer sheet would get me back on the ice in
Detroit -- and it did."
"When Fedorov returned to Detroit after the Olympics, that gave the Red
Wings a fresh thoroughbred that really made a difference for them," recalls
St. Louis Blues general manager Larry Pleau. "Every line they ran out there against you had speed, skill and a physical presence. I know they were hard for us to
match up against."
It isn't inconceivable that Fedorov could now come back to really haunt the
team that once helped him out of a jam, that once COULD have been his team.
Fedorov showed off his breakaway speed with a goal in Game 4 of the Western
Conference finals against the Colorado Avalanche and he scored another key
goal in the decisive Game 7. He has four goals and 10 assists this postseason in 18 games.
While he hasn't been the key to Detroit's offense, he has logged
more minutes than any other Red Wings forward, a testament to how important
his defensive game and faceoffs have been to Detroit in beating Vancouver,
St. Louis and Colorado to get to the finals.
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Fedorov hasn't spent too much time on the bench these playoffs, leading all Detroit forwards in ice time.
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"His world-class skills, his ability to impact a game on offense and his great defensive ability is what attracted us to him back in 1998 -- and
he's still the same kind of impact player," says Hurricanes general manager Jim
Rutherford.
"That was a long time ago," says Fedorov. "It did happen, it wasn't just a
dream to get me back to the Red Wings. But there are really no feelings for
me one way or another."
This potentially juicy Fedorov/Canes tidbit and the battles between Ilitch
and Karmanos are just two of the reasons you could say there is friction
between these two teams in the Stanley Cup finals.
You can turn the tables on this argument and say that the Red Wings would
like nothing more than to beat Carolina goaltender Arturs Irbe, who almost
singlehandedly orchestrated a stunning first-round upset on Detroit when he
played for the San Jose Sharks in 1994.
It's always great to have a few bitter memories out there to spice up a
series that most experts look at as one-sided in favor of the Red Wings.
Veteran hockey writer Larry Wigge has covered the NHL for over 30 years.
