Detroit in an Unfamiliar Position

Blues fans have been saying it for years…..”Detroit’s too old, this is the year they’ll struggle to make the playoffs”. I’ve tended to think the same way over the past couple years, but this year I finally accepted the fact that they might just be good forever. I’m sure glad i was wrong.

Watching Detroit play this year, you can clearly see they are missing aspects of their game that they’ve had in years past. Opponents are no longer in awe, just watching them throw the puck around at will. Opponents now take runs at Red Wing players. They see that a strong physical presence can really affect the way they play.

All of this was a plain as day to anyone who has watched the Blues play the Wings this year. In Sweden, the Blues went through stretches where they physically dominated the Wings. I haven’t seen any team do that to the Wings in a long time. The first period against the Wings from a couple weeks back was the most dominant stretch against Detroit that I’ve seen this decade.

All of this is extremely enjoyable to fans of the Bluenote, who’ve sat through many years of watching Detroit dominate the NHL, always putting together very strong teams that controlled the pace of the game at will.

There are many reasons for there step back, they’ve dealth with injuries, Johan Franzen is a big loss for any team. They’ve lost players due to the Salary Cap, losing Hossa, Samuelson and Kopecky was a big chunk to lose from their offence. Both of these reason are valid reasons for this team to struggle. But they aren’t the biggest.

I’ve had lots of respect for Detroit’s GM Ken Holland over the past number of years, and always commended how he put his teams together. Everyone points to them losing players like Yzerman, Shanahan, Federov, Hull and a host of other, yet they keep on winning. I was always impressed with that. His late round draft gems in Datysuk and Zetterberg certainly don’t hurt his reputation.

However, there was always an asterisk next to Holland’s emaculate resume. That asterisk is Niklas Lidstrom. Having Lidstrom on your team for that long can make any GM look brilliant. Lidstrom, over the last decade and some, has been the most dominant and consistent player in the league. He, in my eyes, and many “experts” eyes, is the second best defenceman of all time, behind Bobby Orr. His quiet demeanour and cerebral approach to the game made him less noticeable than he probably should have been.

I’ve always felt that I wouldn’t really judge Holland’s talent as a GM until he put a team together without Lidstrom. Lidstrom is still playing, but he seems to be a very large step from the player he was just a short while ago. He seems to make positional errors that he never did make, and his perfect outlet passes now miss the tape much more often than they did in the past.

You can point to the injuries, the player departures, Datysuk and Zetterberg’s less than spectacular seasons as reasons for Detroit’s struggles, and all do have an impact. However, I don’t think that any have the same effect that Lidstrom not being the Lidstrom of old does.

When you have a player of that calibre, player at a level as high as he was in the past, it settles everyone on the team down and instills a certain amount of confidence in each and every player. Being that comfortable every time that Lidstrom is on the ice, knowing that he will hardly ever, if ever, make a mistake is a feeling that the current players probably do not have.

Lidstrom in his prime was pretty close to a guaranteed win for 30 minutes of every game. If you could play even with the opponent when Lidstrom wasn’t on the ice, your chances for winning were incredibly good. Lidstrom was a huge reason why Holland was confident in just have goalies like Legace, Vernon, and Osgood as their main goaltenders.

Because Lidstrom had this effect, Holland was free to spend the money he didn’t have to spend on goaltending, on another quality player that would further bolster an already potent offence.

Once Lidstrom retires, or even starting now with his drop in play, I don’t think we’ll ever see Detroit get on a run like they’ve been on (not that many teams do). He really is irreplaceable.

All of this is good news for fans of the BlueNote.