They were different kind of players, but boy, they were very competitive.
Bill Keenan lived it, wrote about it – and now it's the latest hockey movie.With players from other leagues sitting on the sidelines to protest racial injustice, hockey players were forced to have some difficult conversations. Evidence of this can be seen by the types of players clubs began drafting after Sergei's arrival. Datsyuk is without a doubt, the most talented stick and puck-handler the game has ever seen. I just put them together.We didn’t use them all the time because I felt like someone would decipher how they were doing it.
Do you think Bure, Jagr or any other one-dimensional forward would make the cut and help lift the Wings? They weren’t the type of players they were maybe 10 years before that, but he was a great team player, good with some of our younger players, and he was very good with Konstantinov. I remember that. But its Cup winning days are still plentiful. It’s a totally different game.Not a subscriber?
Dallas Stars Daily Links: Sergei Fedorov and the Dallas Defense Issue. It was a different game. When I went to Detroit, we had three (Russians). With Lidstrom's retirement along with a few key forwards and D-Men leaving, the talk is not that the Wings need to increase scoring but rather that all players must emphasize better two-way play and Defense. He did this on a consistent basis, night after night.
Sergei's impact on future Detroit players is very much a Soviet style strategy still being implemented today.
Coach Ken Hitchcock hinted yesterday that Fedorov likely will stay there the rest of …
He was impossible to shake off the puck. Not a single forward scored over 40 except Hossa. Could have been an all-star defenseman, but he developed his offensive skills. Malkin is a fine-tuned, two-way player and juggernaut in his own right. Ovechkin is a raw scoring machine like Jagr and Selanne before him. No other player had more of an impact on the nature of Hockey than Sergei. That is why when both were in their prime, Sergei bled Detroit for top dollar contracts while the Pens were happy to let Jagr go.
Larionov came in a trade from San Jose, because we had seen him in a trade from San Jose. We had other guys… they didn’t shoot a lot. His playmaking was second to none.
Jagr proved to be a scoring machine, but unlike Sergei, he was an awfully one-dimensional player and simply does not make those around him better the way Sergei did. We made a call to Lou Lamoriello, gave up a mid-round draft pick, and then Fetisov came in and it was like a breath of fresh air for all our players because he was such a warrior.
I know Chicago, with Toews and Hossa have played together and they play a lot like the Russians.
For such a scrawny guy, he was rarely ever injured.
He did it.He was a wonderful guy. A lot of our game came into theirs, and a lot of their game came into ours.Especially with (Igor) Larionov and (Slava) Fetisov.
They joined the national team as real young players – as did (Sergei) Fedorov, but not for long because he moved to Detroit – they were so strong, they had the pick of any players they wanted, they had to sacrifice a lot, and I think what happened is over a decade of winning championships and Olympics, they didn’t have much competition. We had (Vladimir) Konstantinov, Fedorov and Slava Kozlov, he was just starting when I got there.
But Fedorov was a different kind of player. I doubt it.
The stats speak for themselves.While Sergei shared the spotlight with many notable snipers during his era, few adapted well over the years or saw the Cup again.
Zetterberg, Franzen, Datsyuk and all Detroit forwards are expected to play a defensive minded two-way game. I would bet that their second pick would be the best two-way player of the lot... Datsyuk. I wouldn't try to discount the defensive force that the Wings were with Hall of Famers like Chelios, Lidstrom, Murphy, Konstantinov, Fetisov and so many others.
These players had a lot of resiliency and a lot of sacrifices when they were playing for their national team because it gave them a little bit of a lifestyle – not a great lifestyle like we had here. Of course we added Larionov and Fetisov. Most notable among them is Jagr. But Fedorov was a different kind of player.
He and Fetisov played together on the original ‘Russian Five,’ so I didn’t have a lot to do with what they were doing. He had no equal in speed.
Him getting no respect from the country when he wanted to come to the NHL. Exploring an interesting way of stabilizing a thin blue line with a Russian forward. They were sitting him out. Sign up today to get the best features and analysis from the NHL and beyond.