Can someone give me some specifics on this 'grit' that Detroit had to acquire before the '97 cup? And don't start with Shanahan for Primeau / Coffey. The dude was a perennial 40 goal scorer that took care of business. Coffey and Primeau were absolutely soft as charmin on the ice, but Shanny was no role player that filled the gaps. Brisebois did not make any corresponding move like that mega deal. And that move was Bowman's call anyway. Shanahan was no 'grit' player. Am I to believe that Larionov / Murphy / Brown were somehow smart acquisitions because of their grit? Fetisov, was he the gritty player that took us over the top? All the grit Detroit had in '97 & '98 was drafted or on the team for years save Shanahan. McCarty, Lapointe, Pushor, Konstantinov, Maltby all part of the team for years. I guess it was Bob Rouse and Tomas Sandstrom that provided all this grit we were lacking idk.
That's who the grit was, though, man.
That's why I said you target skill over grit. Shanahan was better than Primeau because he was tougher. Grit doesn't mean "dogshit player who can't do anything but try hard". Grit just means hard to play against. Somewhat physical edge to their game. Datsyuk? Zetterberg? They were gritty. Jason Williams, Mikael Samuelsson, Damien Brunner, etc. they were not. Nyquist was not.
Larionov was sneaky tough, Murphy was an amazing acquisition because he was a literal top pair defenseman we got for free. Brown was secondary scoring we got for cheap. They were great moves because we acquired great players at value prices.
Fetisov was greasy as f***, just wouldn't have looked it compared to Vladdy. Also, I mean, did you watch the Russian Five? They had enough skill that they didn't have to be tough, you just couldn't touch them when they were on their game. They were such a fabulous combination because even though they were skilled enough they didn't have to be tough... Kozlov was kinda dirty, Vladdy was super dirty, Fetisov was kinda dirty. Larionov was smallish and avoided hits and Fedorov just was faster than everyone else.
I originally had a reference to the Shanahan for Primeau and Coffey trade in my last post here. It worked because they targeted a skill player who had a very hard edge to his game AND even though they dealt a Norris caliber offensive D, they had two literal #1s on the team still AND they added Larry Murphy for nothing at the TDL.
The Wings lost in 1995 because they didn't have a Shanahan that could just bullrush if a neutral zone trap team tried shutting them down. Primeau had the size to do it, but that wasn't his game. Coffey had the speed to blow past people, but he wasn't defensively responsible enough for the left wing lock in comparison to TPH and Konstantinov.
This whole thing just shows that some people want to take a buzzword like grit or physical defenseman or character or whatever and not give any thought to what it was. With Shanny they got a big skilled forward who would use his size to his advantage which they didn't have with Primeau. They were able to re-settle the D pairings to have two dynamite shutdown pairings who could also move the puck. Coffey was a great player, but he freelanced too much for the tight-checking possession game that Bowman wanted to play.
