photo: Maureen Landers/Flickr

I’ve read 3 articles today pertaining to Nicklas Lidstrom.  A piece about the Mike Babcock’s philosophy of allowing his players to have fun from the Globe and Mail, in light of their recent curling competition.  An article from the Toronto Star on Dustin Byfuglien’s emergence as a defenseman and the inevitable comparisons to Lidstrom.  And a wonderfully, and rightfully, gushing feature on The Perfect Human from the Calgary Herald.

Two out of those three articles, from national newspapers, committed the same error that made my eyes just cross in irritation.  And so I’m reposting a blog post from a while back that I wrote on this very cause of annoyance.

He goes by many names on the blogosphere and the dressing room, from Swede, to The Perfect Human, Lidas, and more.  But he is not, nor ever will be, ‘Nik.’  That type of misspelling is simply inexcusable, and I’m sick of seeing it.

—Originally posted on Aug 17, 2009—

Dear hockey journalists, bloggers, and everyone else who likes to espouse about hockey as if our opinions really mattered,

The puck will soon drop on the 2009-2010 NHL season.  With the Detroit Red Wings kicking off against  the St. Louis Blues in Sweden, we’ll be certain to see plenty of coverage on both teams, most obviously, the Swedes on each team.

And so in light of that, I beg you all… please spell Nicklas Lidstrom’s name correctly.  I’m not talking about the 2008 Awards gaffe, which led to a kid wearing a jersey that said “Lindstrom.”  No, it’s so much more than that.

It’s Nick.

Not Nik.  That’s Kronwall.  Nik Jr., as it were.

6’2″, #5 as opposed to 6’0″, #55.  But it’s not just a matter of a few inches and the number 5.

He’s played in the league for over 18 seasons for crying out loud—you’d think you’d learn how to spell his name in that time.

Nicklas.  Nick.

It’s not even a difficult name, like Khabibulin, or Ponikarovsky, or Simeon/Semyon Varlamov, who’s already corrected the media on how to spell his name.

It’s just Nick.

There’s probably a kid who lives down the street from you, or goes to school with your kids whose name is Nick.

And yet, season after season, I see reporters, bloggers, twitterers, MSM, and fans calling him ‘Nik’ Lidstrom.

The guy is an ultimate captain, and statesman of the game.  He is the best defenseman of his generation, possibly all time.  He’s won the Norris 3 consecutive times, twice.  He’s a Conn Smythe winner–the first European.  He’s the first European born and trained player to captain a championship team.  He’s an Olympic gold medalist for Team Sweden.  He’s a 9-time First Team All-Star.  And his career is nowhere near done.

I implore you—give the man the respect he deserves and spell his name correctly.

Though when, undoubtedly, someone writes about him at the start of the season and refers to him as ‘Nik,’ I can take comfort in the fact that it’s at least it’s spelled right 4 times* on the Stanley Cup, where it really matters.

*I’ll acquiesce that for the 2001-2002 team he shows up as “N. Lidstrom” on the Cup.

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In a word: unacceptable.  I have nothing good to say about this game.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Niklas Kronwall (Bertuzzi, Hudler)
Dallas: Brad Richards (pp; Niskanen, Ribeiro); Loui Eriksson (Richards, Neal); Brenden Morrow (Ribeiro); James Neal (Richards, Daley)

– The forecheck showed up occasionally, but it wasn’t steady, and I’ve still yet to see strong puck possession from this team, outside of the season opener against a weak Ducks team.  It simply didn’t look like anyone was hungry for the puck.

– The turnovers!  Detroit had 9 giveaways and Dallas took the puck back 12 times.  Even The Perfect Human had a turnover.

– Going into this game we all talked about Osgood’s ridiculously good record against Dallas.  Unfortunately, your career record won’t win the game for you.  Sadly, it felt like that’s how the team treated this game.  You can’t pin the entire game on Osgood.  Yeah, 4 goals in 15 shots.  I see that.  But the skaters up front weren’t doing much to help.  This was a team effort in failure.

= So Dallas only got 15 shots on goal, but it makes me wonder if that’s more due to the Stars’ offense more than Detroit’s defense.

– Mule has a concussion after being hit by Mark Fistric.  I don’t know if it was an elbow to the head or what–to be honest, it looked more like a shoulder that jammed upwards from the Dallas feed.  Regardless, this is not good news.

– The power play is just… sterile.

+ I lied, I do have something good to say: Kindl looked good.  He wasn’t too noticeable, but for a rookie that’s always a good thing.  He played quite a bit more than I thought: 19:14, with 4:13 on the power play.  He had 2 shots on net, and finished the game even.  His TOI says a lot about Babcock trusting him with the minutes.  He had a good 3 more minutes than Salei.

= Speaking of TOI, Babcock really rode the workhorses.  Datsyuk played 21:52, Zetterberg 21:35, and Lidstrom played a whole 27:01.  With Franzen out in the first period it makes sense that Pav and Z’s minutes were up, but Nick’s are pretty astounding.  Too bad they ended up -3, -2, and -2, respectively.

– As much as the boys didn’t put in the effort to win for Modano, he wasn’t too fabulous himself, with 0 shots on net.  He did manage to escape with an even +/- in 15:14 TOI, and went 55% in the face-off circle.  I had wondered in the game preview if he was going to look more like a deer in the headlights or a man on the mission.  More the former over the latter, to me.  One thing that stood out to me was twice in one power play he was on the point with Lidstrom and the puck just went sailing between them and out of the zone, forcing everyone to exit and regroup.  A similar thing happened again in a later power play, when one of the other players had to come down and try to corral the puck, but it slide out of reach, past Modano who was hanging out at the boards, and into the neutral zone.  Were some of them errant passes?  Yes, but playing point is more than just cranking bombs from the blueline.

= I also agree with Ted Kulfan that Dallas really could have, and should have done more for their former franchise player.  20 years and all he gets is a minute or so of applause with a little “thank you” on the Jumbotron?  Serven put it best: “I hear no booing. Classy by the Stars fans. VERY classy by the Stars fans. BUT, you get no points for doing the right thing #RedWings”  I know he’s in another uniform now, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t immediately and automatically discount what he’s done for your franchise.

I know it’s only 4 games into the season, which ultimately means nothing, but losing back to back games is not a habit to get into.  The 4-0 season opener win means nothing.  The gutsy 3-2 win against Chicago at their banner raising means nothing.  Two inexcusably awful losses in a row?  That means something.

p.s. as a note on this Saturday’s game, I won’t be around, so no posts from me.  I’ll be in Denver that night to run the Denver half marathon on Sunday.

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In the spirit that is the pre-season, this is just going to be a mish-mash of notes and thoughts, rather than a fully fleshed out game recap.

• First up, Mountain Time sucks.  It’s great for the games on the West coast, sure, but for 7pm ET starts?  I live 5 minutes away from work, and I had to book it so I could get home for the puck drop, which is something I really hate to miss.  I’m seriously thinking about coming into work half an hour early on 7pm game days during the regular season.
• Tomas Tatar looks awesome.  I can’t wait until this kid’s gotten some more experience in the AHL and gets the call up.  He’s slick but not enigmatically so.  And from what the Olczyk and Pat Foley from CSN were saying, he didn’t even take warmups prior to the game?
• Jimmy only faced 8 shots, but he looked good.  And before we all start drawing comparisons to Osgood, can I just put out a plea to take the defense into account?  Osgood saw 27 shots in two periods thanks to what sounded like a lot of poor defense.  I’m not saying that Oz couldn’t have played better, or that Jimmy wasn’t the better looking of the two in terms of play, but still.  Some perspective, please.  Let’s see how he plays behind the full roster, please.
• The Mursak goal was a nice instance of being in the right place, in front of the net, and ready to tap in the rebound.
• I love watching Lidstrom bomb pucks from the point and seeing them go in, with Holmstrom’s ass in the goalie’s face.
• Until he shot the waived off goal, I felt like Kronwall had whiffed on about 4 shots from the point in a row.  Here’s to hoping that playing with Nick drags him up to the level we’ve been looking for.
• Ericsson looked a little… confused.  Saw him fumble the puck unnecessarily a few times.
• It’s so great to see the Pav-Z-Homer line out there again.  I see the argument for trying to spread out the scoring if necessary, but they’re just so effective together.
• I think everyone needs a refresher on the “goaltender interference” rule when it comes to being in the crease.  From the way the refs have called it the past few seasons, to even listening to the Chicago pxp guys, you’d honestly think that simply being in the crease was cause to waive off a goal.  I distinctly recall hearing Versus always harping on about Holmstrom’s skates being on the edge of the blue paint as if that were the deciding factor for goalie interference.

For tonight’s game, Khan has the lineup:

Jordan Owens-Valtteri Filppula-Todd Bertuzzi
Drew Miller-Justin Abdelkader-Francis Pare
Jamie Tardif-Cory Emmerton-Jan Mursak
Tomas Tatar-Joakim Andersson-Aaron Downey

Brad Stuart-Jonathan Ericsson
Doug Janik-Brendan Smith
Jakub Kindl-Logan Pyett

Chris Osgood
Thomas McCollum

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That’s really all I have to say.

Nicole from the Red Wings sent out an email confirming that Nick Lidstrom has signed a contract to return to the Wings for the 2010-2011 season.

detroitredwings.com:

The giant breeze that rolled up the freeway arteries leading out of downtown was the collective exhalation of a Red Wings’ organization relieved to know that one of the best players of this generation will be back.

Nicklas Lidstrom, who is widely considered the world’s best defenseman in hockey, will return for a 19th season, signing a one-year contract, the Red Wings announced Tuesday.

I’m just so relieved.

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#3: Jimmy Howard
You gotta hand it to the kid. His first ever playoff series, and it goes to Game 7, and he walks away a winner.  Sure, he let up some softies at some bad times.  Sure, he didn’t stand on his head every single game, or really steal a win at any point.  But he also didn’t completely lose a game, and that’s the most important part.  He got the benefit of the doubt from me this time.  He also bounced back in a huge way after flopping in Game 3 with the shutout in Game 4.

#2: Nicklas Lidstrom
Nick showed us in Game 7 that he’s not done yet, in which he doubled his points for the post-season thus far.  But what the stats don’t show is that he’s still an amazing shutdown defenseman, and still better than a Norris Trophy candidate this year *cough*mikgreen*ahem*.  He got his job done, played big minutes, and took zero penalty minutes.

#1: Henrik Zetterberg
If you ask me, Henrik Zetterberg was just made for the playoffs.  He only scored 23 goals in 74 games for a 31% scoring rate.  This round he had 6 goals in 7 games, with 2 GWGs.  That’s absurd.  Hank lifts his game to a completely different level this time of year, and it shows offensively.  Not to mention, he’s also still a defensive force, the only player other player along with Stuart who is +6.  He’s looked like the Conn Smythe winner of 2008.

Honorable Mentions:
Pavel Datsyuk (5-3-8, +2), Valtteri Filppula (3-4-7, +4), Brad Stuart (2-4-6, +6)

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Now that’s what I’m talking about.  I had faith in this team that they would bring it.  And boy did they ever, dismantling the Coyotes 6-1.

Pavel had 2 goals, Zata had 3 assists, and Nick had 2 power play goals and an assist.  They were, rightfully, 1-3, the stars of the game.  The big boys stepped it up and brought their A game when the team needed it.  Rafalski and Filppula also had 2 assists apiece.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Pavel Datsyuk (pp; Lidstrom, Rafalski); Pavel Datsyuk (Zetterberg, Rafalski);  Nicklas Lidstrom (pp; Filppula, Zetterberg), Brad Stuart (unassisted); Todd Bertuzzi (Filppula, Zetterberg); Nicklas Lidstrom (Rafalski, Franzen)
Phoenix: Vernon Fiddler (unassisted)

+ Detroit tore out of the gate.  This was an outstanding exhibition of classic Red Wings hockey.  Puck possession, defense jumping up, solid forecheck, and crashing the net.  A perfect penalty kill, including a 3-on-5.  A 3/7 power play conversion rate.  50 shots on goal to 33.  5 takeaways to Phoenix’s 9 giveaways.  Talk about finally putting the skate to the throat.  This was utter domination by the Wings.  This was them saying “if you think we’re done, go fuck yourself.”

+ What a relief to see the special teams all back to normal.  The first power play unit got cranking, and the PK was functioning like it should, rather than that weird anomaly from Games 1 and 6.

– Jimmy really probably should have been more prepared for that faceoff in which Vernon Fiddler just slid the puck between his legs right off the draw.  There’s just really no excuse for that.

+ Happy Birthday to Nick Lidstrom.  2 power play goals and some seriously ridiculous defensive play just reinforced the fact that he’s probably actually part android, because there’s no way he played anything like a 40 year old.  He had 7 SOG (plus 5 missed shots for 12 total), played 23:59, and looked like The Perfect Human he is.

+ Nicole from the Red Wings set up a very cool video chat, drawing on the #redwingscommune get-togethers that have been happening in Detroit.  Lots of fun, and a great way for us out of staters to join in.  With this, however, came the revelation of my secret identity.

See, I’m actually Pavel Datsyuk.  And Nick Lidstrom.  And Brad Stuart.  And… well, maybe not Todd Bertuzzi.  Every single time I got knocked off the #redwingscommune video chat, the Red Wings scored.  Every.  Freaking.  Goal.  All six of them.  Which of course led to jokes that I’m actually running off to score for the Wings.

Yep.  That’d be me.  Goal scorer extraordinair.

+ Speaking of goals, those Pavel Datsyuk goals were just beautiful.  Sublime, as my dad likes to call Pavel.  1:41 apart, and 2 minutes into the period, Datsyuk took control and set the tone early in the second.  That pass from Z to spring him and then the curl-and-drag by Pavel… what a thing of wonder.  I know this is kind of mean, but I can’t deny that I enjoyed seeing Bryzgalov just sitting there and look utterly defeated after Pavel’s second.

- Helloooo penalties!  I don’t understand how Darren Helm gets called for Diving, when right before that Keith Yandle got a nice 8.5 for his dive on the Drew Miller “trip.”  It’s the playoffs.  Referees need to learn to let the two teams play.  Cue the tinfoil hat accusations, which I don’t necessarily agree with, but you have to admit they were a little whistle-happy in the 2nd period, overall.

+ One good thing that came from said penalties?  Brad Stuart zipping out of the box to pick up the loose puck and flip it home.

= Weirdly, Zetterberg didn’t have a great night in the faceoff circle.  He went 7 and 11.  Conversely, Datsyuk went pretty much the opposite, at 12 and 7.  Wings barely held the advantage, 37 to 31.

– Where, oh where have Mule and Cleary gone?  Moving into the second round, the Wings are going to need scoring from everyone.  And against the Sharks, having a physical presence will be important again.  These guys need to step it up.

+ Congrats to the Coyotes though, for having a great season, and (now that it’s over) for putting up a good fight and giving us great hockey.

+ I knew they would do it.  Thanks, boys.

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+ Firstly, the Wings had a pretty strong 1st period.  20 shots on goal, it was a virtual shooting gallery out there.  The downside is that Bryzgalov was doing his best impression of a brick wall, but I felt like the Wings took the play for most of it.  Yes, it was a bit more scrambly than I would have liked to see, but they seemed alive.

Brian made a valid point that Phoenix was a team that has had a lot of off-ice issues with ownership, who absolutely sucked last year, and who is playing in their first playoff game in how many years?  Of course they were inspired by the home crowd, and translated that into their level of play.  I realize that you really just hope to walk away from the road series with one win out of two, but I would have liked to have seen it in Game 1 rather than Game 2.  I don’t believe that you’re “supposed to lose” Game 1 on the road.  These are professional athletes, and this is their job.  Get it done.  Give me visible, tangible proof that the Wings are hungry and bitter to win in the postseason.

- Special teams are what demolished the Wings last night.  I don’t know what happened to the solid penalty kill, which was one of the few highlights this season for a time, but it certainly wasn’t there during the game.  The Wings allowed all 3 of Phoenix’s goals on the power play.  Conversely, Detroit only scored once on the PP, out of 7 opportunities.  That’s not good.  Detroit might live or die by special teams this post-season, so I hope that gets turned around quick.

- Was Henrik Zetterberg playing with anyone?  Who were his linemates?  For all I know, it was a snail and a sea urchin, because I certainly didn’t see anything out of Bertuzzi, other than when he got shoved over standing in front of Bryzgalov (seriously Bert, you’re gigantic; you shouldn’t be falling over like a leaf in the wind), and I occasionally spied the fabulous flowing locks of Valtteri Filppula.

– Shane Doan is a douche.  I never minded him before this season, but now every time I hear someone talk about how great it is that he’s made the playoffs, and how no one deserves it more, and how he got snubbed for the Olympic team, the more I want to roll my eyes and point to a highlight reel of his dirty hits.  Color analyst Darryl Reaugh made the interesting comment early in the game of “there’s a lot of hitting to hurt in this game.”  Yeah, and a lot of it was done by Doan.  He brought the physical play, yes, but not in a clean way.  I’ll be looking to see if the refs crack down more on it, or if they let it go.

– To that point, the Wings need to be more physical.  Kronwall needs to step up and Kronwall someone (I nominate Doan).  Stuart dished out a hit here or there, and Helm was bouncing around like a pinball, but I’d really like to see guys like Bertuzzi, Cleary, and Datsyuk get in on the physical play.  When Datsyuk is hitting guys, it usually means he’s riled up, and that he’ll have a ridiculous game.

+ I don’t think Holmstrom’s ever even had possession of the puck that far away from the net before in his life.  What a bomb.

– Were there any snakes thrown at ALL?  Pathetic, Phoenix fans, pathetic.

– I cannot believe that the high stick on Lidstrom didn’t get whistled for a 4 minute double.  I believe that’s what they call in basketball, a “flagrant” foul.  I saw Nick Lidstrom get whacked in the face by a Phoenix player’s errant stick, him bleeding on the bench, but apparently neither referee did, given no penalty call.  That should have been 4 minutes, no question.  Say what you want about conspiracy theories, or tinfoil hats, that’s clearly bullshit.

= Howard didn’t stand on his head, nor did he have a complete meltdown.  The defense didn’t aid him very much, particularly during the kill.  He looked a little shaky at times, like on the Yandle goal.  But it was his first career playoff game, you can’t expect him to play like a veteran, even if he’s seemed like it during the regular season.  We all know the playoffs are a completely different animal.

And I’m already stressing to the high heavens.

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Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Pavel Datsyuk (unassisted); Tomas Holmstrom (pp; Lidstrom, Datsyuk); Darren Helm (Eaves); Darren Helm (sh; Kronwall); Henrik Zetterberg (EN; Filppula, Cleary)
Nashville: JP Dumont (Sullivan); Joel Ward (Hamhuis)

+ What a sublime play by Datsyuk.  He didn’t just pick Klein’s pocket, he completely stripped him, deked Ellis and scored.  Pavel’s goal celebration was great–he looked like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.  Mick kept going on about how Datsyuk doesn’t show an excessive amount of emotion when he scores. It’s probably been on every blog so far, but in case you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Gorgeous.

= Bert took a stupid penalty just a little over a minute into the game, but thankfully the Wings killed it off, and Todd made a hilarious play by receiving a pass while still standing in the box.

+ Congratulations to The Perfect Human, Nicklas Lidstrom, on his 800th career assist, which came on the Holmstrom power play goal.  Lidas is the 4th Wing in history to have 800 assists, behind Delvecchio, Howe, and Yzerman.

+ I said on Twitter after the first that the Wings needed to keep the skate to the throat of the Predators, and they certainly did a much better job in the second this game than they did in Colorado, where they’d sat back.  The Wings didn’t take it to Nashville as well as they had in the first, but it was still a strong effort.

+ Darren Helm.  I had lamented earlier to myself that he still can’t quite finish, but maybe he heard what Babcock had to say about him not being a goal scorer, because he went out and got two, including a shorty.  He had a phenomenal game.  I also love that the arena plays “Danger Zone” after he scores.

– Murph apparently knows his New Kids on the Block songs.  That’s utterly terrifying.  Ken Daniels said Murph should be ashamed of himself.

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#3: Nicklas Lidstrom
Nick shifted to a completely different gear this week, going 3-3-6 and +2.  Two of his goals were on the power play.  And he’s continued his rock-solid play on the blueline, as pretty much the only defenseman right now who’s actually playing his position, and doing it well.  By, you know, defending, and not getting skated around like a pylon.

#2: Pavel Datsyuk
Pavel’s stats mirror Nick’s with 3-3-6, except no power play goals. But he pretty much took it upon himself, with Nick, to produce the Wings’ offense this past week.  No question he’s been the best forward for the Wings, and against the Wild he looked like he wanted to drag them to a win on his own.

#1: Jimmy Howard
With poor defensive outings almost every game this week, Jimmy held them in the game.  He faced 47 shots against the Penguins, and even though he didn’t do very well in the shootout, he still only let in 1 goal in actual play.  The game before in Nashville he saw 48 shots and let in 2.  He hasn’t looked as tired, and really gave the offense the opportunity to win.

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He makes an interesting statement off the bat regarding The Perfect Human:

Holland could be looking at rebuilding half the team this summer, and all that’s at stake there is whether captain Nicklas Lidstrom comes back for another season. Because understand this, if Holland doesn’t put together a team for next season that Lidstrom feels can compete for the Stanley Cup, he’s packing up the family and moving back to Sweden.

Nobody can rightly expect Lidstrom, at age 40, to stick around for a rebuilding year and Holland understands that. But Lidstrom would likely stay if he thought there was another run at the Cup to be had.

What Nick chooses to do for next year of course has a huge impact on what Kenny does next year.  Nick makes $7.45 million–if he retires, that’s a ton of cap space freed up.  And there’s also the possibility that he could come back for another year or two at a much lower salary, something that wouldn’t surprise me.  Nick’s a millionaire several times over at this point, and I think he’ll take an Yzerman-style pay cut, when The Captain returned for 1.25 million in order to keep the team competitive.

And that’s what bothers me about McCosky’s second statement that Nick virtually is certain to return to Sweden if the team isn’t competitive next year.  McCosky sounds convinced that Lidstrom wouldn’t tolerate a rebuilding year.  But that’s the beauty of a Ken Holland constructed team–there really never is any rebuilding.  They just quietly infuse and reenforce the lineup with younger players, who are mostly all “overripe” in the first place.  Rebuilding insinuates tearing down the entire structure of the team and stocking it with high draft picks.  The Wings shouldn’t have to do that for a long, long time when you look at the players they still have under contract, along with some of the younger kids who are working their way up.

But what really gets me is… really?  McCosky honestly thinks that Lidstrom would bail on the Wings simply if they don’t have a clear shot at the Cup?  He wouldn’t stick around to mentor young defensemen?  He’d just up and leave because he’s not happy with the roster?  It’s ridiculous.  He’s already made it quite clear that when he retires, it’s going to be because he doesn’t feel he can play up to the high level that he expects from himself.  Nothing about the quality of the team.

Like I said, I think he’ll come back next season, albeit for much less than he’s making now.  He understands the cap crunch.  And in terms of play, well, we’re seeing right now that he can crank up the offense when needed, and we’ve all known he’s still invaluable defensively.

What does everyone think?  Will Nick be back next season or will he hang up the skates?

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