Sometimes coaches discover that all is not right with members of their team in the strangest ways. Take Scotty Bowman, for example.
A rookie National Hockey League coach with the St. Louis Blues, Bowman's squad during that inaugural 1967-68 campaign featured several veteran stars, including Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender Glenn Hall.
Hall was legendary for two things ? his unique butterfly style in net and the butterflies in his stomach, which usually resulted in him only renting his pre-game meal.
Hall's ritual of vomiting before playing became such a superstition that when he didn't throw up, he didn't stop pucks.
"There were games when I hadn't felt as nervous as usual and I found I didn't go after a shot as hard," explained Hall.
It appeared that April 18, 1968, was going to be one of those nights. Hall's stomach wasn't churning, which meant Bowman's suddenly was.
"My first two playoff series went seven games," recalled Bowman, the coach of the Detroit Red Wings, who has guided eight teams to Stanley Cup triumphs.
"That first series in 1968, we were playing Philadelphia and we're up 3-2 and playing Game 6 at home. We ended up losing in double overtime when they scored when a shot deflected into the net off defenseman Ray Fortin's glove."
That meant going to Philadelphia's dreaded Spectrum for Game 7 and Bowman realized he'd need a big game from Hall, who'd played in four Stanley Cup Finals.
Just moments before the game, though, Hall approached Bowman in the hallway outside the dressing room, wearing a concerned look.
Hall hadn't lost his lunch and he wanted his coach to be aware that meant the Blues might lose the game.
"He told me if he didn't have it, I should pull him out of the game early," Bowman recalled. "Well, our other goalie [Seth Martin], he hadn't played a minute in two months.
"I'm just a young guy then, only 33 and I'm starting to panic."
Bowman sought out the sage advice of defenseman Doug Harvey, 43, a six-time Stanley Cup winner. Player-coach of the Blues' farm team in Kansas City, Harvey had been added to the St. Louis roster for the playoff run.
Little did the rookie coach know he was about to discover another player's pre-game ritual.
"I couldn't find him," Bowman said of Harvey. "Eventually, I locate him in the washroom and he's shaving."
Harvey always shaved right before taking the ice for a game.
"Ten minutes before the seventh game of a Stanley Cup series and the guy is shaving," Bowman said. "Talk about ice water in your veins."
Bowman advised Harvey of Hall's fears, but Harvey merely shrugged.
"I asked him to keep an eye on Hall and he says, 'I'll keep both eyes on him, but he'll be fine.'"
As Bowman left the washroom area, he noticed a pair of goal pads jutting out of one of the stalls and was overcome by a sense of relief.
"Hall was throwing up," Bowman said, "and whenever he did that, he always played a supreme game."
Which is exactly what the netminder did, blocking 26 shots in a 3-1 win.
For as long as teams have been competing for the Stanley Cup, trinkets, articles of clothing, anthem singers and ritualistic acts have been as important to their success as skating, stickhandling and scoring on the power play.
At least in the players' minds, these routines are essential. Athletes are a superstitious lot, and it's not likely any of them are going to even consider messing with their mojo during the most important time of year.
If something's working, there must be a reason, even if that reason seems to be beyond reason.
Goaltender Clint Benedict, who backstopped the Ottawa Senators to three Stanley Cup titles and the Montreal Maroons to one title in the 1920s, never guarded his cage without hanging his lucky horseshoe in the mesh. Winger Bun Cook, a member of the New York Rangers' Cup-winning squads in 1928 and 1933, played with a rabbit's foot sewn into his hockey pants.
The game may have changed over the years, but modern players maintain their own superstitious quirks.
"I have little ones, nothing really strange," Dallas Stars forward Brenden Morrow said. "I drive to the rink one way. If we lose, I won't drive that way again. I'll take a different exit or something."
The night before last spring's postseason commenced, Toronto winger Darcy Tucker dined at Mom's Restaurant in Barrie, an establishment operated by his mother-in-law. He scored the next night against Ottawa and not wanting to break the spell, Tucker was back the night before Game 2 for a second helping of the same meal ? meat loaf.
While NHL players obviously buy into the theory that you are what you eat, they also are of the opinion that clothes make the man, even when such clothing often leaves teammates in stitches.
With Dallas down 3-1 in last spring's Stanley Cup Final, winger Mike Keane reached into the back of his closet to uncover an ugly red sport coat he reserved for special occasions.
The coat's magic spell had never failed Keane in the postseason and it came through again when Dallas took a 1-0 double-overtime decision in Game 5. That left Keane's sport jacket with a 13-0 record, but 13 proved to be bad luck, for the Devils beat Keane's coat and the Stars on Jason Arnott's OT goal to win the title in Game 6.
Detroit goalie Tim Cheveldae was another who employed outlandish threads to pull his team together. The heavily favored Red Wings trailed the Minnesota North Stars 3-1 in the opening round of the 1992 playoffs when Cheveldae showed up at the rink wearing a garish mustard-colored sport coat which in the past had resulted in much abuse being heaped on his fashion sense.
It worked, and when Cheveldae posted a shutout in Game 5, he donned the coat for Game 6, hanging up another zero. A 5-2 victory in Game 7 completed a hat trick of wins for Cheveldae's haberdashery, but the mustard-colored coat couldn't cut the mustard in the second round against Chicago, where the Blackhawks posted a four-game sweep of Detroit.
Goaltender Ron Tugnutt of the Columbus Blue Jackets also believes in dressing for success. "When I'm on a winning streak, I wear the same clothing to each game, right down to socks and underwear," Tugnutt said. "It's nothing disgusting, though. I wash them."
Hall of Fame coach Punch Imlach was another whose clothing superstition suited him just fine. When his Toronto Maple Leafs absorbed a 6-2 whipping at Montreal in Game 1 of the 1967 Final, Imlach set out in search of a lucky suit.
He walked to a Montreal tailor's shop the next day and commissioned its proprietor to make him a new garment.
"It has to be something special, because I want to wear it on the night we win the Stanley Cup," Imlach told the tailor, a Montreal fan who suggested he would have a long wait before being adorned by his flashy garb. But come Game 6, with Toronto ahead 3-2 in the set, there was Imlach, resplendent in his green check jacket ("I figured it would look good on color television," he later explained) as Toronto captured its most recent title with a 3-1 victory.
A decade later, Red Kelly, a player on that 1967 Toronto Cup winner, relied on pyramid power as coach of the Leafs in their quarterfinal series with Philadelphia, placing pyramids in the dressing room and under the team's bench, insisting the points of the pyramid gave off positive energy.
He almost made believers out of everyone when the Leafs took the defending Cup champs to Game 7 before succumbing.
The Flyers relied on their own ritual ? Kate Smith singing "God Bless America." Over the years, Philadelphia has proven virtually indestructible when opening the game with Smith's rendition of the patriotic ditty.
With the Flyers on the brink of their first Stanley Cup win, up 3-2 on the Boston Bruins, Smith appeared in person at the Spectrum on May 19, 1974, for Game 6 to perform her signature song. Boston stars Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito tried to counter the karma by presenting Smith with a bouquet of roses, but the flowers and the Bruins wilted, as the Flyers won 1-0.
In pursuit of victory, players and teams will resort to any means they feel necessary to keep good luck rolling, or to alter a bad situation.
Consider the actions of Dallas winger Pat Verbeek. On Nov. 13, 1998 ? Friday the 13th, to be exact ? the Stars arrived in Detroit on a 1-17-2 skid at Joe Louis Arena.
Verbeek invited Sister Eileen Marie Hunter of the Sisters of Saint Joseph Holy Rosary Convent in Windsor, Ont., his old high school teacher, to the rink the morning of the game, "to perform an exorcism on the demons which possessed [Dallas] at Joe Louis Arena.
"I figured she had a better connection to The Big Guy than I did," Verbeek said.
Dallas scored four first-period goals en route to a 5-1 win, although Sister Eileen downplayed her role. "I leave the exorcisms to the priests," she said. "All I did was say an extra prayer for them.
"Besides, if I could have given them a 5-1 win, I would have saved it for the playoffs."
