A brief history of Nicklas Lidstrom

SEE? I'm not the only one who can't spell it!

The NHL said goodbye to one of the greatest players in recent history on Thursday when Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom officially announced his retirement. While the announcement wasn't a surprise, it was still a difficult moment for fans who'd become used to seeing him patrol the Red Wings blueline over the past 20 seasons.

Most hockey fans can recite the numbers by now: Lidstrom won seven Norris Trophies, was a first-team all-star ten times, and won four Stanley Cups. But perhaps just as impressive, he leaves the game as one of the most-respected players of his generation. Even in this cynical age, it seems as if nobody in the hockey world has a bad word to say about the classy superstar.

Here's a look back at the NHL career of Nicklas Lidstrom.

June 17, 1989 - The Red Wings select Lidstrom with the 53rd overall pick at a draft which is perhaps best remembered for the major traffic jam that apparently caused every team in the league to miss the first 52 picks.

October 3, 1991 - Lidstrom is a team-leading +2 in his NHL debut against the Chicago Blackhawks, who immediately vow to only let him dominate them like that maybe 150 more times, max.

January 20, 1996 - A 25-year-old Lidstrom makes his NHL all-star game debut, then celebrates with fellow young all-stars Teemu Selanne and Jaromir Jagr by taking a few swigs of that weird bubbling elixir offered to them by a cackling Chris Chelios.

November 3, 1999 - A bored Lidstrom makes a bad decision in the defensive zone, just to see what it's like.

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Kings vs Devils: The 2012 Stanley Cup preview

Dustin Brown attempts to confused Martin Brodeur with
a rarely seen trick play he calls "remaining upright".

It took an eight-month regular season and three rounds of playoffs, but we're down to arguably the most unlikely Stanley Cup final matchup of all-time. With the presumptive favourites all on the sidelines, the #6 seed New Jersey Devils and the #8 seed Los Angeles Kings will take to the ice tomorrow to begin the battle for the Stanley Cup.

How did we get here, and who has the edge? Let's compare the two finalists by breaking down the key matchups.

Coaching

Devils: Peter DeBoer became involved in a heated screaming match with John Tortorella in the conference finals but that probably won't happen again this series, according to the five Sutter brothers cracking their knuckles behind the Devils bench.
Kings: Darryl Sutter is trying to draw on the experience of losing in the 2004 finals, according to players who are starting to get tired of the constant "make sure you shoot the puck as far over the goal line as possible" drills.

Offense

Devils: Team officials have enjoyed watching Zach Parise play the best hockey of his career, although they admit they could do without his post-game ritual of immediately sprinting up to Lou Lamoriello's luxury box and scrawling another zero at the end of his free agency contract demands.
Kings: Struggling star Jeff Carter is having a miserable playoffs and probably wishes he wasn't even there, Rick Nash keeps telling himself bitterly.

Defense

Devils: They focus on using their speed to create turnovers in the transition game and attack with an aggressive forecheck that pins the other team inside its own zone. Or, as everyone will spend the next two weeks calling it out of force of habit, "the neutral zone trap".
Kings: While they acknowledge that he's a great player who plays in all key situations, the team's other five defencemen still say it's not cool how they all have to wear jersey nameplates that read "Not Doughty".

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Happy Kerry Fraser Day

Today marks the 19th anniversary of the Kerry Fraser game, which long-time readers may vaguely remember me mentioning once or twice. If you live in Toronto and were born the night of that game, today's the day you can legally start trying to drink away the pain. (Spoiler alert: It won't work.)

If you missed it on Friday, I did a post over at Grantland about the game, why it still stings for Maple Leafs fans, and while it always will: Why Won't Toronto Fans Get Over Kerry Fraser's Missed Call?

(While I don’t repost most of my Grantland stuff here, I’ve been writing there fairly often during the playoffs. You can find the full list here. I also post links on twitter and facebook, so considering following me there if you don’t already.)

Take the quiz: How well do you know the LA Kings?

While the Rangers and Devils were continuing their battle for Eastern Conference supremacy last night, the team they were competing to face in the Finals was enjoying some time off. The Los Angeles Kings wrapped up their series with the Coyotes on Tuesday to complete a stunning 12-2 run through the Western Conference, and will likely enter the Finals as the consensus favorite.

That's a shocking development, considering they barely made the playoffs and were considered a team in turmoil only a few months ago. Combine their lackluster season with their status as a West coast franchise that typically doesn't get much coverage in the rest of North America, and it's likely that many hockey fans don't know as much about the team as they'd like.

How well do you know the Los Angeles Kings? Take this quiz and find out.

For their debut season in 1967, team owners chose the colors purple and gold for the Kings' first uniforms because:
a.) They were considered traditional colors of royalty.
b.) They were the same colors worn by the Los Angeles Lakers.
c.) They wanted to use up at least one eye-gougingly awful color combination before the mid-90s expansion teams arrived and took them all.
d.) Hey, nothing says intimidation like a mildly bruised banana.

In the late 1970s, the line of Marcel Dionne, Charlie Simmer and Dave Taylor was known as "The Triple Crown Line" because:
a.) There were three of them, and the Kings' logo was a crown.
b.) The phrase "triple crown" is frequently used in various sports to denote excellence.
c.) The long-time NHL employee in charge of naming lines by just taking each player's initial and making it spell something was apparently sick that day.
d.) They wanted to save the name "600 lbs of unstoppable force" for future use by Dustin Penner.

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Martin Brodeur vs. Henrik Lundqvist: An in-depth comparison

"Do you think they'll eventually stop
trapping and blocking shots long enough to
notice we stopped playing ten minutes ago?"

The Eastern Conference finals between the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils continues this week, and in a series dominated by defensive play and low-scoring games, no two stars are getting more attention than goaltenders Martin Brodeur and Henrik Lundqvist.

On the surface, Brodeur and Lundqvist are similar players: Elite goaltenders for Atlantic Division powerhouses who’ve racked up plenty of all-star appearances, rewritten franchise record books and built stellar international resumes. But look deeper, and you’ll find some subtle differences between these two stars.

Brodeur – Turns away NHL shooters by employing a hybrid style that combines aspects of the butterfly technique with a more traditional stand-up approach.
Lundqvist – Turns away NHL shooters by lifting his mask and gently saying “Look at this face, would you really want to be responsible for making it frown?”

Lundqvist – Developed a reputation for quickness early in his career by frequently diving across the crease to stop sure goals.
Brodeur – Developed a reputation for quickness early in his career by frequently diving across the crease to avoid the incoming severed heads of forwards who hadn’t noticed that Scott Stevens was nearby.

Brodeur – Has scored a goal into the other team’s empty net in both the playoffs and the regular season.
Lundqvist – Would love to score a goal, but every time he tries a Rangers defenceman sprawls out to block the shot and then mumbles “Sorry, force of habit”.

Lundqvist – Spent his early years playing hockey in local rinks in his native Sweden, where he was frequently mistaken for his identical twin brother Joel.
Brodeur – Would often accompany his photographer father to Montreal Canadiens practices as a small child, where he was frequently mistaken for Mats Naslund.

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