Detroit Red Wings

What did the Detroit Red Wings ever do to Ron Wilson? Well, they fired his father, Larry Wilson, as coach in 1977. They fired his Uncle Johnny too, in 1973. Then there was the time they told Ron's father he'd be playing in the minors for a few games. "Two weeks of conditioning," Ron remembers, still incredulous. "It ended up being 13 years." And all that was long before the Red Wings beat the Mighty Ducks in the first game in franchise history--smoking the Ducks, 7-2, on Oct.

CHICAGO — It was only a theory, but the thoughts Dean Lombardi expressed a few years ago on how a losing team evolves from pretender to contender made a lot of sense. First, a team hopes it can win — hope being the key word because it lacks the talent and tools to win regularly. As its depth and skill increase, that team progresses to thinking it can win. Finally, as players mature and the roster stabilizes, the team knows it can win and expects to win — and does. The Kings have gone through each of those stages.

DUCKS They must: maintain consistency on their power play, which ranked fourth in the regular season, trailing only Washington, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia; maintain composure, which they failed to do two years ago with spells of undisciplined play in a first-round playoff loss to Nashville; solve Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard, who holds a 9-3-1 career record against the Ducks. RED WINGS They must: get scoring from sources not named Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg - someone like newcomer Damien Brunner, who had 10 goals by Feb. 24 and just two more the rest of the way, or Johan Franzen, who finished strong with seven goals in April; facilitate successful on-the-spot initiations for defensemen Brendan Smith, Jakub Kindl and Danny DeKeyser, who have combined to play a total of zero playoff games - 263 fewer than legendary defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, who retired after last season, played in 20 seasons for Detroit.

Justin Williams looked slightly embarrassed when the suggestion of a nickname was offered by one electronic reporter. Mr. Game 7. "I'm going to have to play a few more Game 7s and have a little more success to get that name," Williams said. For now, custody rests in the eminently capable hands of Williams, who scored twice in the Kings' 2-1 victory over the San Jose Sharks in a taut Game 7 on Tuesday as they won the Western Conference semifinal series, four games to three.

Stanley Cup Final Saturday: at Philadelphia, 5 p.m. June 3: at Philadelphia, 5 p.m. June 5: at Detroit, 5 p.m. June 7: at Detroit, 5 p.m. June 10: at Philadelphia, 5 p.m.-x June 12: at Detroit, 5 p.m.-x June 14: at Philadelphia, 5 p.m.-x x-if necessary * Records: Philadelphia 45-24-12, Detroit 38-26-18. * Home Records: Philadelphia 23-12-6 regular season, 6-2 playoffs; Detroit 20-12-9 regular season, 7-1 playoffs.

DETROIT - Controversy was bound to appear at some stage of this tightly contested playoff series, and it showed up at Joe Louis Arena late in the second period in Game 3. It came in the form of a crushing hit by Detroit forward Justin Abdelkader on Ducks defenseman Toni Lydman, driving a woozy Lydman from the game and leading to Abdelkader's ejection. Talk about the definition of a game changer. BOX SCORE: Ducks 4, Detroit 0 The Ducks' Nick Bonino scored 18 seconds into the five-minute major penalty for charging assessed to Abdelkader, breaking open a scoreless game, and Anaheim did not look back, beating Detroit, 4-0, on Saturday night.

* RED WINGS AT A GLANCE: They haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1955--the NHL's longest drought--and have lost in the finals six times since then, most recently in 1995 to New Jersey. The addition of bigger, grittier players since losing in the conference finals a year ago has paid off. Coach Scotty Bowman split up his Russian Five unit against Colorado but reunites them on power plays.

The Kings seem to have found their lot in NHL life, at least for now. There are teams that make the Stanley Cup playoffs by fattening up on those who don't qualify. To date, the Kings have been the buffet. The Detroit Red Wings added two points to their coffers Monday with a 3-1 victory at Staples Center that extended the Kings' losing streak to three games. The Red Wings received a batch of silver-platter moments, two of which Robert Lang turned into third-period goals.

Marking Orange County's entry into big-time hockey and the Walt Disney Co.'s daring venture into professional sports, the Mighty Ducks took to the ice Friday night in their first official National Hockey League game before 17,174 cheering fans at the Anaheim Arena. In the end, the Detroit Red Wings, who some observers believe will contend for the Stanley Cup this season, overwhelmed the Ducks, 7 to 2.

Ted Garvin, head coach of the Detroit Red Wings for 11 games in 1973, died in Sarnia, Canada, at 72 after a long illness.

The last minutes felt like hours, pulling fans at Staples Center out of their seats to moan and beseech the hockey gods for one more save by Jonathan Quick, one more win for the Kings over the San Jose Sharks in the seventh game of an agonizingly close Western Conference semifinal series. "Yeah, they put a lot of pressure on us," Kings captain Dustin Brown said. "Quickie had to make three or four huge saves for us. I guess that's normal for him. " The spectacular is again the norm for Quick, just as it was last spring when he deservedly was voted the most valuable player in their improbably swift romp to the Stanley Cup. But so much else has changed that Quick's exploits are among the few constants they can rely on this season.

SAN JOSE - Darryl Sutter wasn't in a philosophical mood Sunday night, and he surely wasn't inclined to appreciate the finer points of the Kings' playoff history after what felt like their 20th 2-1 playoff loss this spring. Who could blame the coach? A win Sunday at HP Pavilion would have launched the Kings to the Western Conference finals. Their third 2-1 defeat in this series and fifth by that score in two rounds, all coming on the road, sent them back to Staples Center for a decisive seventh game on Tuesday.

They rallied from a non-playoff team to the No. 2 seeding in the Western Conference, set a team record for consecutive home wins, displayed an exciting comeback nature, surprisingly emerged with dueling goalies, and locked up their two pending star free agents. Yet, the Ducks bowed out to the seventh-seeded Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. So following Sunday's 3-2, Game 7 loss that deprived Southern California of the first Ducks-Kings playoff series, the season assessments were: "Disappointment.

For hockey players, Game 7s have a particular resonance - sort of like Christmas morning wrapped up with a trip to the dentist. Something to anticipate, something to dread, in other words. Two years ago, the Boston Bruins needed to win a seventh game, on home ice, to escape the first round against Montreal - and ended up winning the Stanley Cup. The Bruins won three Game 7s that year, being able to win when it mattered most. That's what Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau wants from his team in Sunday's one-game, winner-take-all showdown with the playoff-tested Detroit Red Wings.

A great beginning turned into a sorry end for the Ducks, who burned up the NHL in the early weeks of this lockout-shortened season but were too burned out Sunday to put up much of a consistent challenge to the inspired Detroit Red Wings. What should have been a memory for the ages - a Game 7, a defining moment every NHL player craves - evolved into a dispirited 3-2 loss for the second-seeded Ducks, who were a step slower and a split-second behind the seventh-seeded Red Wings most of the night.

Ducks defenseman Toni Lydman, who was injured from a hit by the now-suspended Justin Abdelkader of the Detroit Red Wings in Game 3 of their playoff series, is improving but is still not close to returning to the lineup. “He's still got headaches, and he wasn't on the ice today,” Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau said after Wednesday's morning skate. “Talking to him this morning, he says he's feeling a lot better. Boudreau added that the headaches “are nowhere near as intense as they were.

Defenseman Niklas Lidstrom, who led Sweden to the World Hockey Championship this month, signed a three-year contract with the Detroit Red Wings.

The puck slipped away from Ducks defenseman Ben Lovejoy, but he had the presence, savvy and, well, luck to get it back and go around the Red Wings' Gustav Nyquist and Brian Lashoff and set up teammate Nick Bonino for the overtime game-winner. Lost and found. All this unfolded in a matter of seconds, and with the goal the Ducks find themselves one game away from advancing out of the Western Conference quarterfinals. The Ducks' 3-2 overtime victory over the Detroit Red Wings on Wednesday night at Honda Center in Game 5 gave them a 3-2 edge in this series.

DETROIT - As expected, the Detroit Red Wings' Justin Abdelkader will have a hearing with the league later Sunday, according to the NHL's department of player safety. The hearing, scheduled for 4 p.m. EST, comes after Abdelkader's hit on Ducks defenseman Toni Lydman late in the second period of Game 3 on Saturday. Abdelkader received a five-minute major penalty for charging and an automatic game misconduct at 15:11. A woozy Lydman left the game and did not return. Anaheim scored 18 seconds into the ensuing power play in what had been a scoreless game and then used the momentum of captain Ryan Getzlaf's shorthanded goal in the third period to seize a 4-0 victory over the Red Wings in Game 3. The Ducks lead the series, two games to one. Abdelkader is facing the possibility of a multigame suspension, and if the hit was a game-changer on Saturday, it could greatly change the outlook of the series.