It's amazing the little things you sometimes see when an important play is slowed down on a replay. For instance, on Fernando Pisani's unassisted, shorthanded, game-winning, goal 3:31 into overtime to give the Edmonton Oilers a 4-3 victory and send the Stanley Cup finals back to Carolina for Saturday night's Game 6.
If you watch closely, you can see Oilers winger Ethan Moreau made the play when he chopped at Cory Stillman's stick as the winger attempted to hit Eric Staal with a pass leaving the zone. Staal then tried to poke the puck out of the zone, but it deflected right off Pisani and onto his stick.
There are certain players you don't judge by the goals or assists. These players are kind of road graders, digging and making a pathway to finish a project.
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
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That kind of describes Ethan Moreau to a tee. This former first-round pick, 12th overall, by the Chicago Blackhawks in the 1994 Entry Draft, is a throwback. It doesn't matter whether a game is wide open or dreadfully boring with checkers up and down the ice, Moreau will endear himself to his teammates. And opponents' as well.
"He's big and strong (6-foot-2, 220 pounds). He's never been flashy, just an honest, hard-working, disciplined player who is in your face if you wear an enemy jersey," Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios said after Moreau scored one of his two playoff goals in a big situation in Edmonton's first-round upset of Detroit. "I remember when he came into Chicago as a first-round draft choice and I was thinking to myself; 'Here's a young Bob Gainey type of player, who gets in there on the forecheck with a fury, a hunger, and never misses a defensive assignment.' Even now, he's still a presence without being a big goal-scorer."
The line on the score sheet for Moreau in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals showed 19 shifts, 13:59 minutes, three shots, two hits, one blocked shot and a plus-1.
"Ethan is one of those guys who flies under the radar," said Pisani. "He bumps and checks and if you are looking for his name on the score sheet you won't normally find it in the goals and assists. But that's OK, the guys in this dressing room know his thing is hard work and wins."
Maybe that's why the Oilers' players voted Moreau team Most Valuable Player in 2003-04. Forget the fact that he had a career-high 20 goals that season.
"If it's a big game, you're going to see Ethan Moreau step up ... and do something to make an impact on the game," said Oilers defenseman Steve Staios. "He's got a nose for making something happen in a big game."
I remember a game a couple years ago when Edmonton was playing in St. Louis and then-Blues veteran Scott Mellanby went in hard on an Oilers defender, working him over pretty good. In came Moreau to stand up for his young teammate. Fists were flying. But maybe not as much as you might normally see from Mellanby and Moreau.
Afterward, Mellanby said, "In this instance maybe I deserved to take a punch or two for what I did. ... And maybe the scuffle would have been even more physical with Ethan. But there's a respect you have to play certain players who have paid their dues. Here's a guy who just missed a couple of months with both shoulders hurt, but he's game enough to stand up for his teammate. If I held back a little, it was out of respect for that guy."
You sort of get the gist of what accountability means to the players in the trenches, don't you?
The youngest of two boys raised by Ab, a retired principal, and Esther, a retired teacher, in Huntsville, Ontario, Moreau played junior hockey in Niagara Falls, was drafted by the Blackhawks and then landed in Edmonton in a large deadline deal in 1999 in which the Oilers acquired Daniel Cleary, Chad Kilger, Christian Laflamme and Moreau for Boris Mironov, Dean McAmmond and prospect Jonas Elofsson.
"He's the ultimate teammate, the ultimate warrior," left winger Ryan Smyth said. "You kind of wind him up before the game and get the same kind of effort, the same kind of grit, the same kind of passion every night."
Oilers teammate Steve Staios comments on Ethan Moreau:
"If it's a big game, you're going to see Ethan Moreau step up ... and do something to make an impact on the game. He's got a nose for making something happen in a big game."
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The Oilers weren't quite sure about that ultimate teammate thing in late January, when Moreau and teammate Shawn Horcoff were playing basketball at a fitness club when the team was in Phoenix for a little R & R in late January and Moreau rolled his ankle after going up for a layup and landing on Horcoff's foot. Moreau missed some key games, when his team was fighting for its playoff life. It turned out Horcoff was OK.
"In retrospect, it was pretty stupid, but you never think that way," Moreau remembered. "I've done it a bunch of times. You think you're invincible sometimes. When something happens away from the rink, it's frustrating because you feel you're ultimately going to let your teammates down. It wasn't in the course of battle. It was doing something that could've been prevented."
There's that team player sort of thinking again ... and a big smile that shows four of his front teeth missing. More than 15 years ago those missing teeth were sort of a red badge of courage for Moreau.
"That's a funny story," Moreau said. "I was playing in Niagara Falls and went down to block a shot ... all I got was a stick in the mouth on the follow-through. One tooth popped out and I picked it up and took it back to the bench. I'm carrying this tooth around in milk and my mouth was out to here (he points about three inches in front of his face). I'm bleeding and spitting in a cup. The cup is full of blood.
"This goes on long after the game is over, because we couldn't find a dentist. It turned out there was a dental convention in town and I guess all the dentists had their beepers off because they were in meetings, so I had to go to the emergency room at the local hospital. Finally, we got a hold of a dentist, who said he answered his beeper because he thought it was his wife who was pregnant and due any time. Instead, he got me. When the dentist arrived at the ER, he first said he was going to have to take out six teeth, because there was so much damage to my gums. I guess he took pity on me and my eye teeth were saved."
Another smile.
If you kind of get the picture that this isn't one of those glamorous goal-scorer's lives, you're right. No goals. No assists. Just a great effect ... a great example.
"He's what every coach is looking for in terms of commitment, work ethic, character, toughness and focus," Oilers coach Craig MacTavish said. "It's professionalism, it's being prepared, it's being fit, it's having intensity. Defensemen don't want to engage him because sometimes they're going to get bruised ... and other times they're going to get run over."
After Moreau scored his second goal of the playoffs in the clinching game of the Western Conference finals against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. He was smiling again.
Forget the goal. Chalk up the win. That's 30-year-old Moreau's motto.
"My motivation has always been to play well and win," Moreau said. "I've had over 15 goals just twice in the NHL (17 goals in 1999-2000 and 20 in 2003-04) and I realized a long time ago that winning ugly is my game. It's the only way I'm going to be successful. It's not a fear to fail and feeling sorry for myself because I can't score a lot of goals, more a motivation to succeed.
"To succeed you have to be willing to do the things necessary to be a success and for me, that's to make sure my work ethic is consistent every day."
And it doesn't matter to Ethan Moreau that sometimes you have to slow down the replay to figure out just what he did to make an impact in another big game.
