NHL: Red Wings

Lidstrom leads deep, consistent Red Wings
Motor City again emerges as one of League's elite
by Chris Kober | Hockeytalk.biz

DECEMBER 5, 2010 -- After seriously considering retirement over the summer, at 40-years-old, Detroit Red Wings captain and six-time Norris Trophy winner Nick Lidstrom is on pace for his best offensive season in three years, and continues to be a key to Detroit’s success.

Economical movement is most often analyzed in goaltenders sliding from post to post. However, the efficiency with which Lidstrom executes even the most minute of plays makes dominating the best hockey league in the world look easy.

With one nonchalant flick of the wrist he can swat a puck out of mid air while gliding backwards to diffuse an enemy attack as he showed Wednesday against Dany Heatley in San Jose. While it may not fit on the highlight reel, as spectacular as it was, those are the details that set Lidstrom above the rest.

In addition to his offensive contributions and seemingly effortless defense, Lidstrom’s combination of grace, strength, poise, vision, intelligence and experience makes him a natural leader of a star laden team and makes his mates even better.

“He makes the game easy,” said his current defense partner, Brad Stuart. “You always know where he’s going to be and he usually makes the right play with the puck. So, you can have confidence in that and when you have confidence in your partner it makes a world of difference.”

“It’s been a real pleasure to be able to play with him,” Stuart added. “Obviously it’s one of those things you kind of appreciate … playing beside one of the greatest defensemen of at least our time.”

As great as Lidstrom is, the scary part for his opponents is that he’s not the only one with dazzling skills on both sides of the puck in the Red Wings’ dressing room.

After a 3-2 overtime victory against Detroit, the Los Angeles Kings seemed almost incredulous about the Wings’ lineup. Kings Head Coach Terry Murray called them powerful; right wing Justin Williams said that they are arguably the best team in the league.

Anze Kopitar is most impressed with Pavel Datsyuk. 

“That guy’s unbelievable,' said Kopitar.  "He’s probably the leader in takeaways in the league, and he’s always up for Selke, too. With the firepower and the offensive skill he has, too you’ve got to be real careful playing against him and [Henrik] Zetterberg and those guys. I mean, you just have to make the right decision 100 percent of the time.”

Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Lidstrom lead the team in points; however Zetterberg and Datsyuk only come in third and fourth respectively in goal scoring, behind Dan Cleary and Johan Franzen.

That’s only a small sample of the extraordinary depth this Wings team posesses. Through 24 games the Wings have 11 players with double-digit point totals, including four defensemen. They are tied with Phoenix in that respect for second most in the league, behind only Chicago, Philadelphia and the New York Rangers, who each have 12 players with at least ten points as of Dec. 5.

In their most recent two games, a win at Anaheim and the overtime loss to Los Angeles, nine Red Wings earned points on only six goals. Production is coming from everywhere, and especially at key times. Detroit has gone 9-1-2 in their last 12 games and in that span six different players have scored game winning goals.

“I think that’s been the theme for the whole year,” said Zetterberg. “We can really play with four lines. That’s real nice to have, and I think in the long run it will help us, especially [on] a road trip like this when we play back to back. We could play pretty much four lines the whole game and kept energy on the team.”

Yet another frightening prospect for their opponents is Detroit’s consistency. The team’s record in the first ten games of the season was 7-2-1, and in their next ten it was a 7-2-1 record again. Since then they’ve gone 3-0-1.

“We’re not going to win every single night,” goalie Chris Osgood said, “but I’m more impressed, even when watching it [while injured over the past month] than when playing it. We play the exact same way every game. We’re difficult to play against and we give ourselves an opportunity and that’s how we’re going to win a lot of games.”

Their consistency goes even beyond the night to night grind of the NHL season. Last year was an injury plagued one for the Wings, which ended in a second round playoff defeat to the San Jose Sharks. Prior to that, Detroit had made back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals appearances, the first of which they won, and they fell to the eventual champion Anaheim Ducks in a classic Western Conference final the year before that. The Red Wings either won the West or were beaten by the Western Conference Champion every year from 2002 through 2009. They are as close to a dynasty as they can come in the modern NHL.

Even their disappointing exit from last year’s postseason has made them a better team in Lidstrom’s eyes.

“The good part about losing early,” he claimed is, “that you get a few extra weeks of off-ice work outs, you get your rest and you’re coming back with a bit of a chip on your shoulder. You want to come back and have another solid year but play better in the playoffs. So, I think it gave us a few extra weeks that the team is kind of feeding off [of] right now.”

But how do they maintain that level of consistency?

“I think we’re playing our system real well,” Lidstrom explained. “We’re trying to play within our structure and I think we’re a hard working team. Guys don’t take a night off and we’re working hard and I think it starts with our top players. Looking at Datsyuk and Zetterberg, they’re working hard and I think that spreads throughout the team when you see your best players are working hard every night.”

The buzzwords that surround that system and structure he refers to are “puck possession” and “puck control.” The Red Wings are a smaller team – 11 of their 22 roster players are six feet tall or shorter while 14 are listed less than 200 pounds. They do not employ a designated enforcer a la Anaheim’s George Parros, or John Scott in Chicago or Derek Boogaard of the Rangers.

As such, they rely on controlling the puck, attacking with speed and opportunism, and sound defensive positioning. That isn’t to say that they don’t bring physicality to the table. For reference, see Niklas Kronwall’s highlight reel.

“Everybody likes to play puck possession game if you can,” said veteran defenseman and first year Red Wing, Ruslan Salei. “It’s always easier to play with the puck than chasing it, and it’s obviously more fun.”

It must certainly be fun to be a Red Wing or one of their fans these days, but that shouldn’t be news to anyone.

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