Cup Chronicles: Paul Coffey

Penguins defenseman Paul Coffey couldn't fathom missing significant time in the postseason.

In Game 1 of the Patrick Division finals, a shot from the Capitals' Dmitri Khristich hit Coffey in the jaw, resulting in a hairline fracture. Then Washington's Dale Hunter elbowed him in the jaw in Game 2, causing further damage.

Later that night at the hospital, doctors laid out the surgical options. Still, Coffey thought he could play.

”I said, ‘OK, well just do it, because we have a flight at 2 o'clock,' “ Coffey recalled this week. “The doc sat me down and said, ‘Paul, you're not going anywhere. You can't play.'

The broken jaw sidelined him for the Penguins' next 10 games until he could return in a limited role for Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Minnesota North Stars.

The broken jaw came on the heels of a scratched cornea in his left eye in the first round of the playoffs. Devils defenseman Viacheslav Fetisov high-sticked Coffey in Game 4, causing him to miss two games — including Game 6, in which Frank Pietrangelo made “The Save.”

”I called him at 4 o'clock that afternoon in New Jersey and told him if they win the game, he'll get $500 from me,” he said. “Frankie's like, ‘Oh no, no, no.' I said, ‘Frankie, just go out there and win that game.' And we won that game. And then I played Game 7. And he still laughs about it. He came in, in his locker, he opened the door and he had five $100 bills taped to his locker.”

Coffey had won three Stanley Cups with the Oilers, but winning with the Penguins felt different.

”They're all very special,” he said, “but that one there, if you had a wager on that in Vegas, you would have been a billionaire.”

Quoting Paul Coffey

On the Penguins' Stanley Cup potential:

Without Mario, it's hard to think about Stanley Cup potential, how about the potential of not making the playoffs• We still had a pretty good team, but I think, if I can remember back then, losing a guy like that ... it still gave other guys a chance to step up.

All those young guys had a chance to do what they did best, and got a chance to do it, which was good. Never in your wildest dreams when you're a franchise like Pittsburgh that, we were good. Of course, having Lemieux made you even better, but Stanley Cups were a big dream. It was a big stretch out there.

On Bob Johnson joining the Penguins:

I still tell stories, and I see certain people, I run into Bryan Trottier at different things, and there always is a Bob Johnson story. But I can remember even speaking to Mario over the course of the year and thinking to ourselves, ‘How can a guy be that positive?' He's got to have some kind of angle. It's not true. He's not — well, he's not fake, obviously — it just didn't seem right. But day in and day out, he just kept pushing it on you, the positive attitude. And he was hugely instrumental. The way we all approached the game, I was lucky enough to have won some Cups in Edmonton and played in some great environments. But, you know, the environment in Pittsburgh was what it was, but it was a culture that was constantly changing, trying to get better. Bob was one of those pieces.

On Craig Patrick:

You've got to give Craig Patrick a lot of credit. Any time you're a general manager, it takes a big person to hire a great coach. A lot of guys won't do that because they're afraid of their own job, and I think Craig was comfortable and confident enough in his own skin that he felt the better the coach he got, the easier his job would be. Let's not make any mistakes, Craig was the architect of that team. Eddie Johnston was great in his own right, and Lemieux and all those young guys and I guess bringing me in there in a trade, so Eddie and the passing on to Craig, and him having the stability in his own hockey mind to get a great coach, a guy he felt comfortable with, a guy he felt could take that team to the next level. Bob definitely did it.

On changing the culture in Pittsburgh:

My first year there in 1988 — I don't know if this story's ever been told — but myself, Lemieux, Dan Frawley, Danny Quinn and Randy Cunneyworth took a trip down to Youngstown. It was in April, the last week of April. We were invited down there by the DeBartolos. The Niners flags were flying and we walked into their office, the Super Bowl trophies were there, the footballs, the whole bit, and Eddie Jr. came in and kind of asked us what we thought was wrong with the team. And Mario was still very quiet, and it came to me. He said that, you know, coming from a great franchise like the Oilers, which were somewhat like the Niners of the NFL, what I thought. And I respectfully said to him, we roll into here and this is all about the 49ers, which it should be. It's your flagship franchise. The Penguins, I said, there's not enough pride. There's not enough pride in the locker room. There's not enough pride in the guys who come in, not that the guys don't have pride, but there's just not enough there. Eddie Jr. asked me what we thought we should do. And I said, for starters, we need some spiffiness in the dressing room, in the locker room. Little things like garbage cans, skate machines. Trainers wearing black shorts and white shirts, little things to make us a team. And that was a constant culture change that went on with the Penguins. A lot of that stuff is there today.

On bringing in veterans like Bryan Trottier and Joe Mullen:

There's no (replacement) for winning or experience. You can't teach experience. You've got to have experience to get it. Then the trade we made with Hartford was huge. Johnny Cullen was hugely responsible and Zarley (Zalapski) and those guys for doing an incredible job during the year, but making that trade for (Ron) Francis and Ulf Samuelsson and (Grant) Jennings was pretty big, too. They were three big pieces.

On the trade with Hartford, and other moves by the Penguins:

You get a guy like Francis that played on a team that was good and bad. Some years, Hartford was good, playing Montreal in the playoffs and Quebec. And other years they weren't. There's a guy that had to fight for everything he got. And Ulfie, the same thing. They were just perfect fits, Ronnie playing behind Mario gave us a legitimate second centerman. Bringing Trottier in with five Cups settled everybody down, (Jaromir) Jagr and the whole bit. And Joey Mullen, it's all a part of the puzzle.

Those guys all wanted to be there. That was the cool thing. We all realized that Pittsburgh was a really great place to play.

On the close-knit locker room:

Well, players don't win Stanley Cups, but teams do. You can have all the talent in the world and you can have the best players, but unless you have a team that comes together, in any championship, you're not going to win. That team was great. I take pride in knowing that when I see any of those guys on the road, whether it be in Pittsburgh or different events in Toronto with kids hockey tournament, it's great. There's just a nice, warm feeling.

On reaching 1,000 career points (300 goals and 700 assists) that season:

Individual records are nice to have. They're not the be-all, end-all. I think any player would trade any of them in for a Stanley Cup. That's the thing what your job is when you're on the ice. If you're a player, for the most part, your job is to entertain; your job is to put numbers up; your job is to win championships. Your job isn't just to get a paycheck. I think that's why that era, when none of us made any money, we drove hard every single night to do those things.

On working out after the games with the Penguins' younger players:

It's something I had learned at an early age. The great Islanders teams of the early ‘80s, I think, were the first team that probably had bikes in their dressing room. Then I did that in Edmonton and continued it in Pittsburgh. There's nothing better than to grab a guy like Scottie (Young) or grab a guy like Kevin (Stevens) or Recchs or Johnny (Cullen), these young guys, (Zarley) Zalapski, and say, ‘Let's go. This will make you a better player.' If you have guys who want to become better like Jagr — nobody worked harder than Jaromir. He worked his (butt) off. When he was an 18-year-old and came to that team, the time he'd spend on and off the ice, he worked hard. He got blessed with talent, but he had nothing given to him.

On going to the All-Star Game with three first-timers (Kevin Stevens, Mark Recchi and John Cullen):

That was in Chicago. It's great. Forget sports society, the youth is what it's all about. Guys that come in and guys who haven't done it before and their excitement, to see those guys play that All-Star Game was pretty great.

On former Penguins defenseman Chris Dahlquist, who recommended the North Stars chop Coffey in the skates, which were several sizes smaller than his foot:

That's all love and war. That's part of winning. Chopping at feet, that's where the toes will hurt, I wouldn't doubt it. But, hey, that's why I loved Dahlie, do whatever it takes to win, man. I tried to skate pretty fast so it didn't matter.

On taking a high stick in the left eye that scratched his cornea, against New Jersey in the playoffs:

It took a few days to get any blurriness out and then we were down, three games to two, and we were flying to Jersey to play Game 6 and, of course, I wanted to play. And they wouldn't let me fly because the altitude could upset, could send your eye into hemorrhaging or something like that. And I'm starting to lose my mind about that.

On watching the Penguins play without him:

I had my wife, she's my wife now, but she was my girlfriend at the time and we had three other guys over, three of the kids who were called up, over for dinner and we're all watching the game on TV. I was sitting at home watching it, and it was probably — I've watched some tough games in my time — but that was probably the toughest one to watch. That and the Bruins series were tough, too, because we ended up coming back and beating them in Game 6.

On what made the Penguins special:

The Boston series was tough. It just seemed that team just everybody, to a man, got better, and there was, all the championships I won, there was always a calmness about that group. I don't know, I'm sure a lot of it had to do with Bob. A lot of it had to do with Bryan and the older leadership. Of course, having a guy like Lemieux on your team doesn't hurt. I think knowing that we were in a place that a lot of people thought we shouldn't be in, we thought we were playing on borrowed time.

There was a calmness. I don't know if it was because we knew we were good, or if we knew we shouldn't be there, and hey, it doesn't matter, we're not favored, so let's just go out and play, let's go have a good time. Kind of like a young Oilers team.

On playing a limited role on the power play early in the Stanley Cup Final:

That was fine. Any time you miss time, and the team does well, and a coach still wants you to come back and play, you should be happy you get any ice time. The last thing you want to do as an injured player coming back to a team that's having success is be a disruption. I was happy just to get a chance to get out there, help any way you could.

On the video of Bryan Trottier and Kevin Stevens heckling Minnesota's Brian Bellows:

Trots was, and Trots was funny. Trots has got a great sense of humor, just dry. I suspect he was probably feeding Kevin, telling him what to say. And Kevin being the great, young brash guy he was, he'd do anything.

On winning the Stanley Cup:

It was unreal. It was just surreal. Minny had a good team. You blink, and all of a sudden, Mario keeps going, and all of a sudden, boys, you're up 6-0. We're looking at each other going, we're going to win the Stanley Cup. It was unbelievable.

People ask me, and I was lucky enough to win four of them, I would have liked to win a couple more, but that's the way it goes. ... Nobody suspected the Penguins to win. It was pretty great and, unfortunately for the Penguins, all three of their Stanley Cups have been on the road. It's always nice to win at home. My three Cups in Edmonton were all at home, so I had never won on the road. It was kind of neat to win on the road and then come back to the city and see the town alive. It was great. It's one of those ones, if we knew it was going to be that much fun, we would have enjoyed it a little more.

On what that Stanley Cup win meant to the city of Pittsburgh:

I think hockey got saved there in ‘84 when Lemieux got drafted. That's when the franchise was saved. Pittsburgh, it's a football town. But my first training camp there, which was in ‘88, I was blown away by the amount of people that came out to watch us. You didn't get that in Canada. I said, this is a hockey town. There's real fans here.