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The hit man Devils' Scott Stevens doing his talking on the ice
Posted: Tuesday June 06, 2000 09:43 AM
Scott Stevens knows he's the center of a great deal of attention these days. He also knows it won't keep him from being the player he's always been. "It's always just been the way I played," said the New Jersey Devils defenseman, who suddenly is very much a part of the media wave in these Stanley Cup finals. "I've always been a hitter." He might have added that he's always been a devastating hitter and that the hits just keep on coming. That crushing blow on Eric Lindros -- a potential career-ending hit in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final last week -- being just the latest in a long line of rock 'em, sock 'em snippets that have so finely illustrated at least a portion of Stevens' lengthy career. But then Stevens isn't much for words. He prefers to do his talking on the ice. When Toronto coach and general manager Pat Quinn singled him out as a dirty player in round two of this marathon hockey playoff run, Stevens didn't respond in the media. He simply went out on to the ice, skated past the Toronto bench and invited all comers. The same thing happened during this series in New Jersey. Dallas Stars coach Ken Hitchcock singled out Stevens with a warning that if Stevens took out one of his players the Stars would not only respond in kind, but they would double the ante. "One of ours, two of yours," went the refrain. Once again, Stevens wouldn't take the verbal bait. Which is all part of the game within a game in this series. Hitchcock knows some of his players likely fear Stevens. In revisiting his remarks the next day, he denied that it was an attempt to focus attention on a player, and a style of play, that referees often overlook this time of year. But it was difficult to read it otherwise. "Hitting is a part of the game," Hitchcock said, "but what I don't want to see is a player make a play and while resting [immediately after the play] suddenly have to worry about waking up on the fifth floor of a hospital somewhere." That's the kind of remark that a coach usually reserves for a player who generally plays over the edge and Stevens has, at times, gone there. But it would be wrong to label the 36-year-old Stevens as a one-dimensional hit man, a goon who hits high, low or anywhere the opposing player isn't looking. In that regard, Stevens is closer to a player like Doug Gilmour than, say, a player like Bryan Marchment . As Mark Tinordi once said of Gilmour, "If he wasn't so good, they would probably call him dirty." But they normally don't make flat-out dirty players captains in this league. Stevens may have a history of "lay-them-out" hits -- not unlike Gilmour and Michael Peca -- but he also has garnered a certain amount of respect. It might be the kind of respect a gladiator would have received after finding himself the last man standing, but in the sometimes unfathomable world of NHL thinking it is very real. "You get a guy with a cheap elbow, or you go after a guy's knee, that's awful and there's no place in hockey for it," says Devils rookie John Madden , himself a victim of a vicious after-the-play elbow from Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Dan McGillis in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final. "Anyone who's spent any time watching the way Scott plays knows he can knock you on your butt, but he does it the way it's supposed to be done. No questions asked." And no quarter given. In the 1995 finals with Detroit, Stevens KO'd Slava Kozlov in Game 1 in Detroit. It was the kind of clean hit that took down Lindros, but it had the Red Wings bench up in arms. Stevens didn't blink, actually skating over to the bench and telling scoring star Dino Ciccarelli that he was next. No one would go so far as to say that was the reason the Devils swept the heavily favored Wings that spring. But that was the year Wings coach Scott Bowman said his team "didn't compete." And in the book "Crunch" by Kevin Allen , a history of big hits in the NHL, Los Angeles Kings defenseman Rob Blake said he saw that particular hit on television and knew right then the complexion of the series had been altered. Big hits do that. Players see a teammate go down and not get up. In the macho posturing that follows, words are often exchanged, but in the unspoken moments every player knows that the downed player could have just as easily been him. It has an impact, both ways. "It marks a change in the way you see the game," said Madden. "You go along and everyone is playing and everyone looks the same and everyone is doing the same thing. Then all of a sudden you see someone just really paste somebody with a good hit and it's like, whoa. It just kind of gives you a shock to your system. "If it's your guy who hits the guy, it's obviously a good shock. But, vice versa, if someone else gets hammered, it's like 'Whoa, that could be me.' It just makes you think a little bit more when you're out there or it makes you play harder." It also earns you some respect. Stevens has that respect. Players fear him and he knows it. He also knows that he is a force in the game, a force that every coach would love to have and one that the ones who don't often try to defuse. "They are all ploys this time of year, that's the bottom line," Stevens said when asked about remarks from Hitchcock, Quinn and others. "If you are in every locker room before a game whether it is regular season or playoffs, one of the things that is going on, going up on the board, is finishing checks and hitting key people. "That is playoff hockey. Every team has those players and they want to get all 20 of then doing that. That's what wins hockey games." And that's what Scott Stevens does.
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