Did you ever get the sense, going into the 1990-91 season, that there was still enough optimism amongst the fans & the organization, that Carson could be seen as the #2 center, even with Fedorov coming on board?
I can't locate the article, but I remember an early '90s article with Jimmy Carson in Sports Illustrated, where the did the interview in his basement (pics), and he was talking about his family, returning home, etc.
I don't really think so, honestly. I was real young at the time and so perhaps there are better firsthand witnesses who have a different take (but I don't know if we have many regulars who were Wings fans before the mid nineties here, we only have a few now on the Wings board itself it seems).
From what I'm able to gather mostly reading up on all the stuff after the fact, Carson was always tabbed as the third guy, because Fedorov sort of had a lot of mystique around him as did Mogilny and Bure, and he made an instant impact in 1990-1991, whereas Carson that year was more of the same from 1989-1990, and really got comfortable in 1991-1992 (in the beginning of that year you could say that Carson was the Wings best center for the early goings, and even though Yzerman was slumping, Fedorov wasn't, which is a testament to how well Carson finally got going).
That being said, I do think the stature of Jimmy Carson nowadays has diminished from what it was back then. The idea that Carson was a legit star center if not the future superstar Fedorov was expected to be was part of the reason why in the early nineties, it was Yzerman who was rumored for all the trades (he's the oldest, his name was most marquee, the Wings already have Fedorov AND Carson), although it's come out since then that from the many rumors in the early nineties, the only ones that were legit was the aforementioned Yzerman for LaFontaine swap, as well as the Wings offer for Lindros which included Yzerman.
I think the Sports Illustrated article you mention attests to that, Jimmy Carson was still a pretty big name back then to get a feature like that.
I appreciate your shedding some light on his circumstances. In general, I like Al Arbour's approach, to making him earn his spot, insulating him, making sure that he doesn't pick up a bunch of bad habits early on his career. On the other hand, I wonder why he went another route with Trottier and Bossy, when they were promoted quickly in their careers. I understand that Trottier is blocking him from the 1st line, but I'm surprised Arbour didn't move him up to that 2nd line somewhere in his 2nd, certainly by his 3rd season. Are they playing Trottier and Bossy the full 2 minutes of the power play?
If the Islanders were still in their dynastic-mode, it makes more sense having Brent Sutter as the 2nd line center, with LaFontaine being a luxury piece that you can stash away (as they sort of did). But outside of Bossy (until 1986-87), Trottier and Potvin were already declining; though they were still good players at the time.
Al Arbour is my favorite coach, but it's awfully hard ignoring LaFontaine's 13 goals in his first 15 games of his career.
I'll defer to more of the specifics to Islanders fans around that time, I'm just sort of going by what I've heard and read about LaFontaine's early years, as well as what (very) little I've seen of LaFontaine from that time.
Just sort of wanted to call out that while yes, LaFontaine's numbers weren't as good as Yzerman's in the early year, it seems to be basically all chalked up to top line/powerplay opportunities.
Maybe with Trottier and Bossy, they came in when the team was still on the come up, with not much beyond Denis Potvin, so they could be stars from the get go, whereas by the time LaFontaine rolled in, they literally were a dynasty, with a well oiled machine of a superstar core, as well as depth that was the envy of the league at the time.
This is enlightening. I'm taking your word for it.
I thought of both one of them being slippery type of centers (in the late '80s/early '90s) that could occasionally go through a half a team in order to get a goal (deke/dangle). If you're a Wings fan, and Yzerman fan saying this, I would have to think that this is true. I had assumed that even though Yzerman had back-to-back 60 goal seasons, I thought of him being just as much of a facilitator in the first half of his career, and slightly more proficient at it than LaFontaine was.
Yes, so Yzerman's arc was a bit weird like that. He came in as a playmaking center obviously, and his best trait was making the plays, and even when he became a superstar and shooting and scoring a lot more he was still a great playmaker as well (so think how Probert had his career year in 1987-1988, and how Paul MacClean who we can see after the fact was in serious decline by the late eighties from what he must have been with Hawerchuk in the mid eighties, was just propped up by Yzerman in 1988-1989, and then Adam Oates the year after).
As an aside, perhaps you being in Winnipeg at the time can tell me more about MacClean back when he scored 100 playing with Hawerchuk? In Detroit, he initially started off well enough with Yzerman and Gallant, but by the halfway point, his play really tailed off, to the point that he was even benched a game during the playoffs, he was playing that bad. He got like a A in the midyear season grades in the Detroit Free Press only to get a D at the end of the year lol
But by 1989-1990, and especially 1990-1991, Yzerman's quality of Wings suffered massively. Joey Kocur enjoyed his career year on, but he had the opposite of soft hands obviously (in both ways lol), and the other guy on the right was Daniel Shank. I kind of understand why Yzerman started playing far more individualistically at that time. 1990-1991 was even worse because Gerard Gallant massively declined due to his back issues, and so Yzerman's wingers were always changing and not often very good players.
So that year Yzerman gets on the cover of The Hockey News as the NHL's most exciting player, and he's doing all these dangles and toe drags more than ever that fill up the highlight reels at the time. Even though the only player who could match Yzerman back then one on one was Mario Lemieux himself (even LaFontaine himself while he had all the finesse skills in the world, was easier to play the body against and rub out when he tried to do that over Yzerman), playing like this isn't the right thing to do in all situations. It's too much pressure being put on himself. Unfortunately for Yzerman, it carried over a bit into 1991-1992, where he did have better options on his wings (like Ray Sheppard), but didn't utilize them as much as he should. He did snap out of it fairly quickly of course, and that's why after the initial part of 1991-1992, Yzerman played some of his best hockey (I'd argue this was probably his absolute best hockey) for the next couple years.
BTW, any thoughts on guys like Par Djoos and Johan Garpenlov? Also, what did you think of Sean Burr and Joe Murphy, with the Red Wings? I was most interested in those Detroit teams from 1990-1995 or so, more than when they were winning Cups.
This warmed my heart to see! I also absolutely adore the early nineties era of the Wings, it's my favorite time, even though my childhood time was the Wings glory years when they were a powerhouse winning all the cups and all. I was too young to appreciate the early nineties Wings at the time, and now I have to go and scrounge up all the old games from the hockey tape trading lists, but it's been totally worth it, because I simply enjoy early nineties hockey more than late nineties hockey anyway. Both in general, and for the Wings in particular, it's the perfect blend of skill and toughness at that time, it's just super enjoyable to watch.
I feel like a weirdo because most people who aren't all about the cup winning powerhouse Wings of the dead puck era, harken back to the late eighties Demers era Wings, where the teams weren't that talented but were super tough with Probert and Kocur and all that. For me the Bryan Murray years from 1990 to 1993 (1994 if you wanna include the first Bowman year where Murray still was GM) are my absolute favorite Wings teams. So nice to hear I'm not the only one who looks fondly back at these years.
Really feel that they could have won it all in 1993, just got super unlucky with injuries during the playoffs, Cheveldae who played great in 1992 sucked BADLY, and Toronto was always going to be the worst matchup for them. Still they lost in game 7 OT, had they pulled that off, Yzerman and Coffey got healthy enough, Cheveldae got it together even just a bit, I feel confident with that team matching up with any other left in the playoffs, just like so many in the media at the time did as they picked the Wings to win it all that year... sigh...
Per Djoos I don't have too much to say about except he has one of the coolest names ever in hockey lol, he didn't last here very long, and at least from what I've seen, he seemed unremarkable beyond the name.
Garpenlov though, there was more there, I spoke a bit about him in the past:
What are you guys memories of this player? What did he bring to the ice? Played for Florida, Sharks, Wings and Atalanta.
forums.hfboards.com
Murphy was like Graves in that it was a bummer to see what they would eventually become after the left the Wings, but they weren't really working out in their time here during the Demers years. I think it made enough sense for the Wings to move on from them given their underperformance (not like a case with Oates who literally improved year after year immensely and the Wings dished him out lol).
I absolutely adored Shawn Burr, one of the unsung Wings who is so forgotten now. In the early Bowman years, it was just Yzerman and Burr who were leftovers from the Demers days. The 1989 draft, and then Bryan Murray did a lot of the turnover in the early nineties, and Scotty Bowman put the finishing touches on the team in the mid nineties. Burr was a guy who was so important in the doldrum years of 1989-1990 and 1990-1991, though it seemed that by 1992-1993, he sort of took a backseat to all the glut of talented forwards the Wings had bought in. He was absolutely treated like shit by Bowman for reasons I still can't figure out beyond Scotty being Scotty, but at the very least, he had the best clapback EVER to Bowman:
"Burr recalls his lengthiest conversation with coach Scotty Bowman after the coach scratched him for several games. In a rare, candid and complimentary moment, Bowman called Burr "an honest guy" and asked him what he thought of his coach."
"Scotty, you're 60 years old. You play with toy trains. You use a duck call to make line changes. People call you a genius. I think there's something wrong with you. I think you're [a joke]." - this is likely an edited quote as the other way this has been reported is as a slur.
"A week later, Burr recalled, he got back into the lineup and scored his last hat trick for the Red Wings. He was scratched the next game and traded when the season ended."
I have a team signed Yzerman jersey from early in the 1991-1992 season, it's sad to think that there are already four players on it that have passed (Chiasson, Probert, McCrimmon, Burr) as well as Bryan Murray himself...
