Detroit Free Press

ATLANTA -- As they say down in Georgia, whooooooeeeeeee, Bubba! It's time for the Olympic Games, where athletes from around the world gather for that one glorious, magical moment when they can be overshadowed by a Charles Barkley news conference.

It turned out the writers, critics, talk show hosts and fans were all worried about the wrong goaltender. The guys in red weren't the problem. It was the guy in blue, a young bearded Russian whose last name -- Khabibulin -- sounds likes something you receive in a blood transfusion. And fittingly, he pumped life into a team that was supposed to be dead, and a nervous shiver into a team that was supposed to be resting this morning."Take the best word you can think of," gushed Winnipeg's Keith Tkachuk, "and that's the word for what Nik did tonight!"

So much has been written, broadcast and debated about Brian Ellerbe -- the job he has done with Michigan basketball, good, bad, whether he should get to keep it -- and over and over, people keep missing the points.First of all, his biggest accomplishment was not winning over his players, it was winning over his assistant coaches.

The sticks played taps. Twenty-three sticks, lightly banging a wooden applause, as the banner began to rise to the rafters. This is how hockey players show respect and admiration. Tap the sticks. Curved wood against frozen ice. Louder now. Tap-tap-tap-tap.

This was the last magic trick, the final yank of the tablecloth. The Red Wings, just hours before the NHL trading deadline, burned up the phone lines, said "deal," "deal," "deal," "deal," and acquired four new players, three of them major personalities, in hopes of finally straightening the wheels on their wagon roll to a third straight Stanley Cup."I went to bed last night with a wish list," general manager Ken Holland said. "We had lots of irons in the fire. We had lots of lines in the lake."

NEW YORK -- The glittering stage above the mosh pit at the MTV Video Awards is a strange place to find a female U.S. Open tennis champion -- especially the night before a big match. But there was Monica Seles at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday, live, in front of millions of viewers, giggling and reading off the cue cards. Seles, in her clipped English, announced the contenders for some award, "Hootie and the Blowfish" and "Michael and Janet Jackson" and then she came to a video with a rather strange name.

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras -- The flight took off Monday morning, before sunrise, with stars still dotting the Detroit sky. Within an hour, there was breakfast served, cheese omelettes, muffins, piping hot coffee. Newspapers were passed around. Conversations were spirited. Nineteen people, including an NBA coach, a local businessman, airline reps, a TV executive, an ambassador and several journalists, had come together to do some good. Or so we thought. We were bringing supplies to a hurricane-ravaged area. We felt excited, maybe even a little bloated in how benevolent a thing this was.

Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. -- long before the other players would arrive -- Mike Ramsey entered the Red Wings' locker room. It was empty, freshly vacuumed, the music playing softly over the stereo. Ramsey went to his locker, grabbed his two pairs of skates, his pads and his helmet. The only other thing he had brought with him three weeks ago were his sticks. He decided to leave them behind.As he headed for the door, he stopped at the blackboard. He picked up the chalk and squeaked out a message."Thanks guys. Good luck, (signed) Rammer."