Hockey season 2007-08 is now officially over. For my take on Game 6, click here, or continue reading after the jump.
Last Call
The alarm went off at 1:40 in the morning yesterday here in my home in Stockholm. That gave me five minutes to get my head back on straight, and my mind focused on the task at hand. Fortunately, the task was watching Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final.
I’ll admit, I hadn’t got up in the middle of the night for all of the Final games. OK, OK, enough, you don’t have to twist my arm. Sure, Game 6 was the first time I was awake at 3 a.m. to see Sid the Kid and “Lidas” battle it out for the Stanley Cup.
Cross-eyed, I stood about a foot away from my television, when Nicklas “Lidas” Lidstrom stood at center ice, watching Phil and Craig from the Hockey Hall of Fame carrying the Cup onto the ice, wearing their legendary white gloves. I waited with Lidas for the commissioner to ask him to take the Cup back to Hockeytown, then cheered him on, wearing all the Euro hockey memorabilia I have at home, Raimo Helminen’s stick in my hand.
When “Lidas” grabbed the Cup and hoisted it above his head as the first Red Wing this year, and as the first European captain ever, I was also thinking about, for example, Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson, Borje Salming, Lars-Erik Sjoberg, Inge Hammarstrom, and Ulf Sterner, who took the jump into the unknown in the 1960s and 1970s and carved the niche for others that came after them.
I tipped my hat (believe it or not, a Tampa Bay Lightning hat with the players’ autographs) to Lauri Mononen, Heikki Riihiranta, Seppo Repo, Veli-Pekka Ketola, Pekka Rautakallio and Juhani Tamminen who showed the North American coaches that you don’t have to just skate up and down your wing to create great chances and play entertaining hockey (and a big tip of the hat to Cookie in Florida, who sent it to me).
Now that we have a European captain of a Stanley Cup winning team, there’s nothing the European players can’t do. A team with eight Swedes can win the Stanley Cup just as well as the team that had five Russians on it and the team that had 16 Canadians. The only thing that matters is how they play the game.
As it should.
I was also thinking about Alexander Mogilny, the first European to wear the “C” in the NHL, and Saku Koivu and Mats Sundin, the European captains of the most storied NHL franchises ever, and what great leaders they are.
And as Valtteri Filppula’s turn with the Cup came, my mind raced to the Turin Olympic final, and the first faceoff of the last period, when Koivu faced off Sundin. And I thought of Lidstrom again, and him scoring the game-winning goal seconds after that face off.
Of all the players in the League, and of all the European captains in NHL history, Nicklas Lidstrom is truly the perfect one to be the first Cup captain. First, he’s Swedish, and the Swedes have been true pioneers in the North American rinks, out of all European nations. He’s also a 16-year veteran, a Norris Trophy winner, a four-time Stanley Cup winner, and has nothing to prove to anyone anymore. It’s fitting that he wiped away the last remaining curse.
He’s also the perfect metamorphosis of the European style and grace (yes, that’s right), stoic Nordic grit, and North American way of life, all the way down to his perfect English.
No European captain had ever been waiting for Phil and Craig.
A night to remember.