DETROIT -- On the first day of his first training camp with the Detroit Red Wings, Tomas Holmstrom managed to make a whole lot of enemies. He ran Steve Yzerman into the boards.
"I remember wanting to kill him," Darren McCarty said. "A lot of us did.
"He came over and crushed the image. He's been an honorary Canadian since like '97."
A year ago, when Brian Burke was on his way to his first and only Stanley Cup in Anaheim, he got a magnificent playoff out of his checking centre, Sammy Pahlsson. And whenever he was asked about Pahlsson, the Swede, he always would answer something like: "I love him. He thinks he's from Red Deer."
That was either a compliment or a hockey stereo- type breaking down. Last year, when the Ducks won the Cup, the copycat mentality of the National Hockey League meant you needed Canadian players to win.
But as the Red Wings approach their fourth Stanley Cup in 11 years -- this one from the most European of all Red Wings teams -- conventional hockey wisdom has taken a beating and the oldest standing stereotype in the game has been trampled upon.
The best team in all of hockey -- all season and all playoffs -- has more European players on it than any championship team in history.
Nicklas Lidstrom, the first European to win the Conn Smythe Trophy, is expected to be the first European to be presented with the Stanley Cup. He tries to pretend that's not an important moment in the history of the sport, but that's more a commentary on the matter-of-fact way the Red Wings conduct their business.
The only colour they see is Red. The passports don't matter.
"We look for good players," Ken Holland, the general manager, said. "We don't care where they're from."
But the truth is, in a game that has blind spots, and in a league where there are many myopic general managers, the Red Wings' closeness to the Cup is indication that all bets are off, and there is no one way to build a champion in the National Hockey League.
The Wings' top line features two Swedish players and a Russian.
The second line has two more Swedes. There is a Finn on Line 3 and a Czech on the checking line.
Their best defenceman are both Swedish.
In all, the 20 Red Wings dressed for last night's game break down this way: Eight Canadians, seven Swedes, two Americans, two Czechs, one Russian. Half the roster European. The top half.
No need to call them honorary Canadians. No need to call them anything but champions, sooner or later.
"We all heard it, that Europeans are soft," McCarty said. "Well, are you going to say Pavel is soft because he's Russian? Or that Hank (Zetterberg) is soft because he is Swedish? Not a chance.
"I've played with some soft Canadian players but nobody ever mentions that. Everybody is looking for a blueprint of what works, but you're not going to find one. It comes down to what works for different teams and this works for us. I know there's a lot of attention about Nick being the first European captain and all that. The stereotypes should be done but if we're still talking about it, I guess they're not."
"I think you really dispel (the myth) when you win," Wings coach Mike Babcock said. But if you don't win, he continued, you keep it alive.
"We know we've got real good players, real competitive players." Birthplace is insignificant.
What is expected to be Detroit's fourth Cup in 11 years all centres around the defensive prize that is Lidstrom. If Neil Smith and Christer Rockstrom don't draft him in 1989 -- along with Sergei Fedorov, Vladimir Konstantinov, Mike Sillinger and Dallas Drake -- who knows how many Cups, if any, the Red Wings win.
But they did draft him and develop him. And he has become the single most indispensable player of his era. This would be his fourth Stanley Cup in Detroit, first as captain. That's the same number for Gordie Howe. One more Cup than Yzerman won here.
Lidstrom, right along with the greatest names in Red Wings history. Right where he belongs.
