Former Detroit News scribe Cynthia Lambert spoke with Michigan Radio’s Stateside program on Monday, taking part in a 17-minute interview that highlights her adventures covering the team:
On the wide range of personalities she worked with
Former head coach Scotty Bowman, she said, was complex.
“One minute you think that you’ve got a great relationship, and that he’s being honest, and you’re having a great dialogue, and you had a great interview,” she said. “And the next day, he won’t look at you. Or the next day he tells you ‘Oh, Chris Osgood’s gonna be in goal,’ and then Mike Vernon comes out as the goalie. So there was a constant off balance with Scotty.”
Steve Yzerman, former team captain, she said, was unusually pleasant to work with as a reporter.
“I never had a bad experience with Steve Yzerman,” she said. “Interviewing him, if he had an issue with something I wrote, he would walk up to me, look me in the eye, speak his piece very respectfully, open it up for dialogue. We could agree, we could disagree, he could persuade me, I could persuade him, but there was never any lingering animosity or passive aggressiveness. He was just complete class.”
She’s written a book called Power Play: My Life Inside the Red Wings’ Locker Room, and it’s out on Amazon.com now.
What are the chances the Red Wings buy out Howard’s contract next year if they can’t trade him?
Probably not that high. At this point, the $5.29 million he’s owed isn’t a burden on the cap figure, and buying him out would just spread the final year over 2.