Adventures of A Red Wings Packrat: Jersey Foul Edition...

I just so happen to be the proud-ish owner of a Red Wings jersey foul. I say “proud-ish” because after all these years, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I’ve had it for at least eight years (it was an integral part of my ’02 Cup celebration), but I’m not exactly sure when it came into my possession. I have no idea where my mom found it. It’s a baseball-style jersey that says “Red Wings” on the front and has Shanny’s name on the back. It’s officially licensed stuff, so I’m not 100% sure it qualifies as a foul. Either way, it’s awesomely bad.

Back in ’02, I was but a high school sophomore. The Wings were kind enough to win the Cup the night before the last day of school/final exams. The next day, I wore the jersey foul since wearing a real hockey jersey to school in June would’ve been a poor life decision. One of my best friends happened to show up in an Yzerman semi-jersey that day, too. Somehow, in our excitement, we ended up nicknaming each other after the players on our backs. I became Shanny and she became Stevie. This was ironic because my favorite player was Stevie and hers was Shanny.

That day was also the end of the year pool party for a school club. At the party, we assigned Wings player names to all of our friends. An extremely studious friend became Igor Larionov. A talkative one became Brett Hull. Someone else became Sergei Fedorov because we felt like he had to be represented at the party and nobody else fit. I think there was also a Luc Robitaille. Nobody else there had the slightest idea what we were talking about. I’m fairly certain that most of them wouldn’t have known the Wings had won the Cup if we hadn’t shouted it at them multiple times. That didn’t stop us from finding a silver-ish bucket and making them pose for celebration shots like the team did on the ice. We also discovered that the people who were hosting the party owned an autographed Gordie Howe stick which they let us take pictures with, but that’s not really the point. In more on-topic news, a red and white jersey foul paired with a turquoise beach wrap with killer whales on it makes a fantastic outfit.

Those same jerseys were worn down to the city a few days afterward when my dad took us to the celebration parade. It was the first we’d been able to attend. It was sweltering. Once again, the Shanny jersey foul saved me with its short sleeves and breathable fabric. I’m fairly certain it was almost seven years before the jersey foul made it out of my closet again to see the light of day.

Last spring, when the Wings were in the Finals, that same friend from high school and I decided to watch one of the road games down at Hockeytown Café. I’d worn most of my Wings shirts already, so I decided to throw on the Shanny foul for nostalgia’s sake. Imagine my surprise when my friend showed up at my front door wearing the very same Steve Yzerman semi-jersey she’d worn for our fake celebration all those years earlier. It was an awesome moment in our friendship. Of course, the Wings went on to lose the game, further cementing my refusal to watch another Finals game at Hockeytown ever again. (I was also there for the 3OT disaster in ’08.)

When I decided to stop being lazy and write something, I chose this jersey foul because I’ll be wearing it when Liz and I go to the Wings Alumni Softball Game tomorrow. She’ll also be rocking a jersey foul. I figure mine won’t be terribly out of place there since it’s a Wings softball game.

Hockeytown Garage Sale...

Last weekend, I met up with Amanda and Courtney at Hockeytown Authentics for the used equipment garage sale. We had a blast even though I’m pretty sure everyone else in attendance thought we were raving lunatics. That’s actually pretty par for the course for me as I often wonder why society lets me venture out in public.

We had a great time geeking out over the game-used jerseys, sticks, skates, and gloves. Amanda and I fist-bumped with Zetterberg’s used gloves. We totally felt the Eurotwin power in that moment. We were also amused by the fact that I was able to walk up to a pile of skates on a table and immediately pick out Z’s. Malik was not impressed with my equipment identification skills though. He says it was too easy. Whatever.

Another highlight was the Brett Lebda jersey and autographed stick. You’d better believe there was some RAAAAGGGGHHHHing going on when we posed for pictures with those.

One of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen was hidden away on a shelf at the store. This is a sleeping bag meant to look like a hockey player. The head is a detachable pillow so when you’re not using your sleeping bag (that feels like it’s lined with plastic grocery bags) you can cuddle with the disembodied head. It was selling for $50. For $5, I would’ve bought it just to use as a conversation piece.


The best moment, though, had to be when Courtney found a little goal light on a stick. She turned it on and commented that it would be a lot more fun if it made the goal horn noise too. Naturally, I whipped out my cell phone and played the goal horn ringtone on repeat. Then we took a video and pretended to celebrate the imaginary goal. It was pretty clear that everyone around us thought we were insane. This was the result:



Other things that amused us:

• Homer’s stick with absolutely no curve.
• The many repairs done to Homer’s game-worn sweater.
• Realizing that Ericsson's stick is taller than I am.
• Datsyuk’s pants that had giant holes cut into them and hemmed that way.
• Getting into Draper’s pants.
• The wide variety of Pasha sticks.
• Discovering a horrific puck bunny t-shirt. None of use even understood what correlation “It’s raining men” had with the Wings or hockey.
• Used equipment bags were selling for $500-700. As far as I could tell, all of the players’ numbers were accounted for so I don’t know that anyone actually purchased one.
• Amazing kids’ helmet-style hats and inexplicably green Cat in the Hat-esque ones.

I didn’t buy any of the equipment, but I did raid the autographed book clearance table. I snagged a copy of 48 Hours with the Detroit Red Wings that was autographed by Brett Hull and On Tour with the Red Wings & Stanley 2008 signed by Homer. The 48 Hours book has a busted dust jacket, but both of them were way below list price. I also picked up birthday presents for my three siblings and a coloring book for myself for a grand total of $68. The coloring book has a jersey math section. I love it. I’d consider our visit a success. I really had no intention of buying anything because I didn’t figure I’d find anything in my price range.

After our adventures at the store, we walked next door and hung out at Joe Kool’s talking hockey for a couple of hours. We reminisced about the good old days of the Wings-Avs rivalry (Courtney’s a die hard Colorado fan) and how much we missed hating each other’s teams. We talked about the Tomas Holmstrom-Dustin Byfuglien debate and why we think Homer’s in a class of his own. We told the story of H2H. I got a ridiculously small yet overpriced pizza. The whole day was fabulous. Check out the rest of the pictures on Photobucket.

Hall of Famer Steve Yzerman...

That has a pretty nice ring to it, eh?

The Captain finally took his rightful place in the Hockey Hall of Fame last night. He's been enshrined where all hockey fans will whisper his name in awe like we already do here in Hockeytown. Where parents will hold their kids up to his plaque and reverently tell stories about the feats they saw him accomplish. His status as a legend is fully cemented now, not that we didn't know that already. Stevie really has reached the "finish line" of his playing career, but you and I both know better than to think that his legacy won't continue to influence this team, this town, and our hearts and minds.

He delivered a wonderful speech that was everything we’ve come to expect from him over the years. It was humble and delivered with just a touch of nervousness from being in the uncomfortable spotlight. Instead of reflecting on his accomplishments, Stevie instead showered praise on those who surrounded him. It was a classic Captain moment, and yet another fond memory of Yzerman that I'll be telling my grandkids about someday. I’ve already had my say about how I feel about this even that’s been so long in the making, but there’s been quite the round of tributes popping up around the Wings’ blogosphere, and, I have to say, some of them really knocked it out of the park.

First up is the Chief’s entry over at Abel to Yzerman. Honestly, if you read nothing else this decade, read this post:

There are players who’ve been voted in who probably felt it was owed to them. There are “captains” who stayed too long, wore out their welcome in at least three different cities, loved the attention, begged for it, thrived on it, then missed it so much created ways to keep their name out there....like inventing a “leadership award” and finding a hygiene product to sponsor it. There are others who’s spectacular play earned their admission to the Hall, but their lack of character made you cringe to consider their place among the greats like Howe and Beliveau.

Steve Yzerman? He’s never felt like hockey owed him jack squat. And his character is spotless. He is the icon of our age. A hero in a time when defining one is nearly impossible.

So we’re gonna go ahead and break the glass tonite. We’re gonna smash it open and take him out. We present our Captain to you because he’s always been bigger than just one town. We’ve all known how lucky we’ve been and we’ve been stingy. Frankly, if it was just about us, we’d keep him to ourselves. But, it’s not and we know that. We owe it to Steve Yzerman, against his wishes probably, to let him wear the C for an entire sport, not just the red and white.
…
Four years later the legend was cemented with every shuddering rise from the ice. If you’re a Wing fan you look back at that playoff run and you hear stories of the kind of pain he was in and it brings tears to your eyes because you feel like he did it for you, individually. That’s the effect Yzerman had on Wing fans. You just felt like when he won, he willed it for you. And when the time came for credit and adulation, poof....gone.

But he’s ours no longer. Tonite he becomes hockey’s. And it’s a gift hockey had better be grateful for. Hockey had better stand on its feet tonite and understand that there can be only one. There has never been, and never will be, another Captain like Yzerman. No one has withstood the kind of pain he did, or led as well. Nobody. As Captain Norris said in a comment earlier today, the Hall had better be ready to be humbled.

He’s been ours for nearly three decades, hockey. Tonite we present him to you and the Hall becomes his keeper.

I know. I wish I could write like that too.

This is from On the Wings:

That’s all I can say. There’re more reasons why I love him, but I cannot put them into words. He has a quality. If you are a Wings fan, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And you cannot put it into words either.

He’s Steve Yzerman, and he’s my captain. He’s The Captain.

Exactly. I’m pretty sure that no words we could come up with would do Stevie justice. It’s just not possible.

Detroit4Lyfe brings us this little quote:

If you're a Red Wings fan, you know how hard it was watching Red Wings games following Yzerman's retirement not seeing #19 glide down the ice. But I came to realize over the past four years that Yzerman's not gone. There is an aura about him that will last eternally. He has forever stamped his legacy on the Detroit Red Wings, permanently in a way that will never fade, that we'll never forget.

It won’t fade because this organization simply won’t let it. And neither will we fans.

Kukla’s article on NHL.com said this:

Yes Steve, you have crossed one finish line, but I am sure there are many of those lines ahead of you. People say the first race they win is the one that is most remembered, and as a fan of the Detroit Red Wings, I must admit, that holds true.

You thrilled us, Steve -- we named children after you, we have hockey shrines built because of you and now we anticipate your next race and assume you will finish first again.

You made our dreams come true, you brought happiness into our lives and provided us with memories we can pass on to younger generations.

It is our time to thank you, Hockey Hall of Famer Steve Yzerman, for all that you have done for us.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve considered the name Steve for my future firstborn child. Boy or girl. It doesn’t matter.

And two final quotes, this time from A2Y’s Live Blog of the induction ceremony (Of course we live-blogged it. Why wouldn’t we?). So now Steve Yzerman, our Captain, sits amongst the greatest of the greats, forever to be cherished by all:

The Pantheon. That tiny sliver of Hall of Famers whom even the other Hall of Famers stand in awe of. Steve Yzerman, Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, Nicklas Lidstrom, Terry Sawchuk. Absolute legends. Wayne Gretzky, Brett Hull, Bobby Orr, Mario Lemieux, Rocket Richard. Players for whom the Hall just doesn’t seem adequate. --monkey

Followed quite poetically with:

The ancient Greeks had no problems whatsoever with the concept - there are gods, demi-gods, and mere mortals.

Demi-gods don’t rise to the level of gods, but they are more than mere mortals and have some of the same qualities of gods, just not as many or in such a large quantity.

Gods and demi-gods alike are in the Hall of Fame, but that doesn’t mean they are all exactly equivalent. Just that they are alike in being so far above others that they deserve special recognition. --Baroque

There are more excellent posts at Bingo Bango, Nightmare on Helm Street, The Production Line, The Triple Deke, and Winging it in Motown. The Freep also had a couple of good articles, as did the News.

And now for your viewing pleasure:

Lidstrom's Latest Milestone...

I was going to write a post about Lidstrom’s 1,000th point last night, but I’d been up since 5:30 that morning, and I felt like he deserved better than the incoherent ramblings that my brain would’ve created at that point.

The Wings started out slowly in the first period, and I was pretty convinced that it was going to be another ugly game. After the first few minutes, they started to turn things around, though. (I think I’m just going to copy these two sentences and paste them at the beginning of every post that I write this season.) They didn’t look great, but they were much better. Not that it would’ve taken a whole lot to improve from the previous game, but it’s a step in the right direction. There are enough game recaps out there that I’m not going to waste my time writing one of my own. Some notes, though:

• Mike Babcock kindasorta called out Hank. Hank responded by scoring his first goal of the season. Maybe that was just the kick he needed to get himself going. (I say kindasorta because in the grand scheme of “call-outs,” that one was pretty low key.)
• For all that talk over the summer about making up for the “lost goals” that the free agents took with them, I bet nobody thought Kirk Maltby would be picking up the slack. He’s currently tied for second on the team with two goals. In fact, he, Lidstrom, Rafalski, and Abdelkader are the only four Wings who have positive +/- ratings at this point. I think the competition for playing time is good for him. I’ve noticed many times that he tends to play better when he’s fighting for a job. Maybe the occasional benching or two will be a good thing for him.
• Datsyuk sitting out the game worries me. So does the fact that nobody’s saying what the mysterious injury was. I’m used to the playoff mindgames about hiding injuries, but this is much too early in the season to be messing with my head. The last thing the Wings need is to lose him for any measure of time.
• Todd Bertuzzi continued to not make me gouge my eyes out. To date, he’s only picked up a couple of assists, and he hasn’t displayed the offensive touch he once had (ie. firing a shot clean over the glass on a great scoring chance in close), but he’s been much, much better than I expected defensively. And for now, I’ll take that. As an avid holder of grudges, I don’t know what to make of this.
• I like Ville Leino more and more each game. He’s been as good as advertised offensively, and way better than I expected defensively. He had a couple of really good plays on the backcheck last night.
  

And finally, Nick Lidstrom. He recorded points #999 and 1,000 with assists on Homer’s and Hank’s goals respectively. As much as I hoped he’d hit the mark in Sweden, it was nice to see him do it at the Joe. I’ve always felt like he’s been underappreciated, and that’s a shame. I really believe that if he were on a different team with a less renowned offense, he would’ve been recognized for his greatness earlier. For so many years, names like Yzerman, Fedorov, Shanahan, Hull, and now Zetterberg and Datsyuk have been headlining the team, and the media often tends to focus on the scoring stars and their offensive flash. Lidstrom doesn’t deliver bone crushing checks (although he was credited with two hits last night) that attract attention and more often than not makes defensive plays so perfectly that folks don’t even notice that he made an effort to do it. There’s a reason his teammates call him The Perfect Human. Remember how nauseous you felt last year when it was announced that Lidstrom would be missing a playoff game for the first time in his career? That says all you need to know about how much he means to the team. So congrats to #5. He’s been a class act since day one and he’s right up there with the best of all time.

The Great Debate: '97 vs. '02...

According to Japers’ Rink, a book called Hockey’s Greatest Teams has listed the ’97 Wings as one of the top 15 hockey teams of all time. The 1949-50 Wings also make the list, thanks to the legendary Production Line. Anyway, I thought it was interesting that ’97 was chosen over the ’02 squad. I would argue that the ’02 team had more pure talent than the ’97 team did, and there were significantly more future Hall of Famers in ’02. In fact, I honestly can’t remember a roster that looked better on paper being iced in my lifetime, even taking into consideration the fact that Pavel Datsyuk hadn’t yet developed into the star that we all know and love today. It’s been said that the ’02 team should easily end up having eleven members in the Hall of Fame down the road, and I don’t count nearly that many from ’97. Igor Larionov, Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull, Luc Robitaille, and Scotty Bowman are already in the Hall/about to be inducted, and you can bet on Brendan Shanahan, Nick Lidstrom, Sergei Fedorov, Chris Chelios, Dominik Hasek, and Datsyuk joining them in their due time.

I would argue that the ’97 Cup probably meant more to the city than the one in ’02 did, just because it ended the 42-year drought, but talent wise, 2002 has to win out. From the first day of the pre-season that year, the expectation was that the Wings were going to win the Stanley Cup. Anything short of that would have been deemed an absolute failure. They were just that much better than anyone else. Their roster that year wouldn't have looked out of place in a fantasy hockey league.

Anyway, take a look at the rosters listed over at Japers’ Rink and see what you think. The ’08 roster is included over there as well, but I still think ’02 wins. I like that '08 was post-lockout/salary cap just to silence those critics who accused the Wings of buying the Cup, but that also means that the talent level was lower. Don't get me wrong, the team was still better than anyone else in the league, but we're just never going to see a team like '02 again under the salary cap.

More Tuesday Announcements...

It wasn't an oversight that I didn't mention Stevie Y's stellar collection of HoF "classmates" in my last entry. I just felt like Yzerman deserved his own post. After all, as Puck Daddy said

Impact: Good lord, where do you start? How about here: The sight of a pristine red Detroit sweater with "Yzerman 19" on the back is known to bring grown men to tears.

That pretty much says it all, even if it's vaguely echoic of something I wrote in my last post.

Remember way back in 2002 when the Wings won with their who's-who of future Hall of Famers? Well, adding Yzerman, Brett Hull, and Luc Robitaille this year puts five members of that team into the HoF, if you count Scotty Bowman. Not bad, eh?

While I never developed a particularly deep affection for Robitaille as a Wings player, he always seemed like a stand-up guy. By the time he made it to Detroit, he was well past his prime, so my expectations were always set unfairly high for him, but unlike Marian Hossa, he chose wisely when seeking to win the Cup. (Please insert your own Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade joke here.)

Brett Hull, on the other hand, never ceased to amuse me with his various antics. Not everybody approved of his outspokenness and candor at times, but I always thought, even before he came to the Wings, that he was exactly the type of personality that the league needed. Plus, I don't think I could ever tire of watching the TV announcers marvel over the bend in his stick as they showed replays of shots in slo-mo. Not to mention that his self-titled "Two Kids and an Old Goat" line was my first introduction to Pavel Datsyuk, the only player to ever surpass Hull in terms of amusing me.

Every year it seems like the HoF inductions are more and more interesting to me on a personal level. When I visited the hall when I was younger, it always seemed somehow abstract and foreign to me (and I'm not even going to discuss how awful that "be a goalie" game was). It was like a shrine to a past generation, full of the names of players of whom I had heard or seen pictures, but I was never quite able to connect with them. Now, as each induction class brings in more players that I have seen first-hand, I feel like there is more meaning for me personally.

It's easy to discuss Gordie Howe and his legacy and impact on the game, but it's an entirely different thing to have watched him play game in and game out over the course of his career. It's not to say that I don't value Mr. Hockey as a player and ambassador of the game, but it's difficult to fully appreciate his greatness from a few grainy highlight reel clips and a biography or two.

On the other hand, seeing guys like The Captain, Hull, Robitaille, and Leech (although to a lesser extent) get named to the Hall feels much more concrete. It allows me to put their accomplishments into context and draw on my own memories. I can reminisce about spectacular plays or championships, and it almost becomes personal to me, as if those are shared memories that I can draw on because they were a part of my life. I have no doubt in my mind that someday in the future, I'm going to be leading my kids around the HoF recounting the defining moments in the careers of guys like Yzerman, Lidstrom, Shanny, and so many others until said children develop a nervous disorder manifested by beginning to convulse at the mere mention of the word, "hockey," or the phrase, "I remember this one time..."

In other news, it's sounding more and more likely that Mike Babcock is going to be Team Canada's coach at the upcoming Olympics. (Speaking of the Olympics, I'm pretty sure the entire Wings roster is going to be suiting up in Vancouver.) This should be fantastically fun to watch. Mostly, I can't wait until the Canada/Sweden game during which, in an ironic twist of fate, Babs is forced to watch Henrik Zetterberg render Sidney Crosby useless (again), but from the opposite viewpoint. Seriously, congrats to Babcock, though. If I was Canadian, he's the guy I'd want behind the bench. Actually, I think he should volunteer to coach Team USA just to prove, once and for all, that he's not anti-American. Someone should run that idea by him. I only want credit if he doesn't laugh in your face.