in NHL Articles

Swedish gold luck

Back in 2002, Steve Yzerman won a gold medal with Canada at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City then returned to the National Hockey League to lead the Detroit Red Wings to the Stanley Cup. Hockey fans in Detroit are hoping that another set of gold medalists will turn that same trick this season.

Nicklas Lidstrom, Niklas Kronwall, Mikael Samuelsson, Henrik Zetterberg, and Tomas Holmstrom were all members of the Swedish men’s hockey team that took home the gold medal in Turin last week. That quintet will be key for the Red Wings down the stretch and into the Stanley Cup playoffs.

How key? Those five Swedish Olympians missed Detroit’s game against the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night, as a celebration in Stockholm delayed their trip across the Atlantic Ocean. The result was a 5-1 Sharks victory, with defenseman Brett Lebda scoring the lone Detroit goal.

It was a different story on Wednesday night, with the five Swedes back in the lineup for their game against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. Holmstrom and Zetterberg picked up one goal and one assist each, and Lidstrom also had a helper as the Red Wings blanked the Ducks 2-0.

That win was Detroit’s eighth in their past 10 games, and allowed them to pad their lead atop the Central Division and the Western Conference standings. With stellar records both at home and on the road this season, the Red Wings are looking like a good bet to capture the conference’s No. 1 seed in the postseason.

And their Swedish contingent, which includes defenseman Andreas Lilja and forward Johan Franzen along with the five Olympians, is looking like the heir apparent to their successful Russian core from Stanley Cup teams of seasons past.

Zetterberg is a potential 40-goal scorer for the team this year, and is coming into his own as one of the league’s most dynamic players. Holmstrom has already matched career-high totals in goals and points, and Samuelsson already has more goals this season than in his past four years combined.

Kronwall, who was out with an injury for the first half of the season, is one of the league’s top defense prospects at both ends of the rink. And of course Lidstrom is simply one of the league’s top defensemen, and has shown no signs of decline in his 14th National Hockey League season.

Of course, not every member of the Red Wings is a product of the Tre Kroner system. Americans Mathieu Schneider and Chris Chelios play big roles on the blueline, while Canadians Yzerman, Brendan Shanahan, and Kris Draper, Russian Pavel Datsyuk, and Czech Robert Lang fill out Detroit’s potent forward corps.

And another Canadian product, goaltender Manny Legace, has performed well between the pipes this season, and sits among the league leaders in both goals-against average and save percentage. Countrymate Chris Osgood has been steady as the backup, and picked up that shutout over the Ducks on Wednesday night.

It’s Lidstrom, Kronwall, Samuelsson, Zetterberg, and Holmstrom, though, who have tasted victory once already this season. To do it twice, they’ll have to lead their team past the likes of Dallas, Nashville, Calgary, Vancouver, and Colorado in the conference playoffs, and then over their eastern counterpart in the Stanley Cup Finals.

What do they think about Detroit’s chances in Las Vegas? Oddsmakers had pegged the Red Wings at 6/1 odds to win it all before the season began, and have them sitting at 9/2 odds right now. Only Daniel Alfredsson’s Senators (7/2) and Peter Forsberg’s Flyers (4/1) have better odds; apparently they’re expecting someone to have Swede success.

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