MOTOR CITY MADNESS: MR. T RUBS ‘EM THE WRONG WAY

It’s obvious Rob Tychkowski got under the skin of the fine residents of Detroit leading up to the Edmonton Oilers 6-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena Thursday.

Tychkowski, who seldom passes up a good quip when he writes for the Edmonton Sun, not only pissed off fans of the Red Wings, but drew the ire of former Detroit player Mickey Redmond, now working the broadcast booth, and ended up on at least one local TV station explaining why he had slagged the good name of the Motor City.

The offending passages:

"Welcome to Detroit, where the forecast, as always, is muggy with a chance of murder," Tychkowski wrote, followed by, "They use more white chalk at crime scenes than they ever did in the schools."

Well, they snapped. They lost it. Redmond waded into the fray in both print and on TV, even confronting and apparently lambasting the often-acerbic Mr. T in the press box at The Joe.

Channel 7 in Detroit send a reporter and camera down to The Joe and ran the following report here.

They were not amused.

"I’m a Canadian-American. I hold dual citizenship, and as a Canadian I’m embarrassed at what you wrote in that paper," Redmond told Tychkowski, according to a Fox 2 report.

"It’s completely unnecessary, uncalled for, unrelated to the game of hockey. If it was an attempt to be humorous, it was a lousy attempt at that. It was not necessary. You’re beating up on a city that obviously doesn’t need it."

The public scolding and news story has already bounced around on Twitter. Even Larry Brooks, a long-time scribe in New York, jumped on Mr. T and The Sun for running the derogatory remarks.

Without kicking Detroiters in the civic pride, I’ve got to say, having been to their city 15 or 20 times during my years on the beat, there’s certainly enough historical data to back up Tychkowski’s characterization, even if there’s been a fair amount of urban renewal downtown in recent years.

There’s still places downtown I wouldn’t go unless, ahem, somebody put a gun to my head. Scary place, if you ask me. Raffi Torres and I even got ripped off by an unscrupulous cabbie there during the 2006 playoffs, but that’s a story for another day.

Anyway, even though the Red Wings killed the Oilers Thursday, Mr. T and the team made it safely to New Jersey, where they lost 4-3 tonight, with some offended Motor City citizens, I’m sure, still screaming bloody murder.