Head-of-the-class
Hall-of-Fame inductees Lidstrom and Fedorov helped expand the game globally.
The NHL has been transformed from a North American sport to a truly international game over the last couple of decades.
Sweden’s Nicklas Lidstrom and Russia’s Sergei Fedorov had a lot to do with that.
“Those guys were in the first wave,” Dallas Stars president Jim Lites said. “Twenty-five years ago, Europeans were extras in the league. Those guys were once-in-a-generation superstars. And, the NHL hasn’t been the same since because every team has players from all over the world.”
Two-plus decades after the duo arrived in Detroit — in much different ways — they are set to be inducted Monday into the Hockey Hall of Fame along with Phil Housley, Chris Pronger, Angela Ruggiero, Bill Hay and Peter Karmanos.
The Red Wings drafted Lidstrom in the third round and Fedorov in the fourth in 1989.
Lites, who was a Red Wings executive back then, recalled how tricky it was to get Fedorov away from the Soviet national team while it was playing in Portland, Oregon, to prepare for the Goodwill Games.
After Fedorov got off the team bus, he saw Lites in the hotel lobby — reading a newspaper as planned — and they slipped out of a side door, into a limousine and onto the Red Wings’ private plane.
“It was nerve-wracking,” Lites recalled. “The biggest worry is that he would change his mind. The Soviet military wasn’t with the team, so it wasn’t like they had guns.”
He also helped Lidstrom negotiate to get out of the last year of his contract in Sweden to play in Detroit two years later, which was less dramatic.
Lidstrom was subtly spectacular, positioning his body to be in the right place at the right time on defence and putting the puck on a teammates’ stick or in the net at the other end of the rink.
He won four Stanley Cups, becoming the first European-born captain to win an NHL title in 2008, six years after being the first from Europe to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as the league’s post-season MVP.
With his signature slap shot, he scored the gold-medal-winning goal for Sweden against Finland at the 2006 Olympics. He won seven Norris Trophies as the NHL’s best defenceman and trailed only Bobby Orr’s record total of eight.
These days, his main job includes driving his boys to and from school in Sweden and he doesn’t regret his decision to retire from a sport the Red Wings were willing to keep paying him millions to play.
“I still miss playing and still watch the NHL, but I was ready to leave,” Lidstrom said.