Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan appeared on the “Ray and Dregs Podcast” with Ray Ferraro and Darren Dreger a couple of days ago…
And the Detroit News’s Mark Falkner took note of Shanahan’s remarks:
“When a sentence starts off with no one has ever won like this, I remember when people would say no one has won with Russians, no one has ever won with a European captain, no one has even won when they’ve been in last place in January … and then someone does,” Shanahan said on this week’s edition of The Ray & Dregs Hockey Podcast, featuring TSN insider Darren Dreger and analyst Ray Ferraro, whose son Landon was drafted by Detroit in 2009.
“Every time a Stanley Cup is given out, we sort of look at that team and how they’ve been assembled. Are they a puck-moving speed team? Ok, well let’s copy that. The next year, a big physical team wins and we say, let’s copy that. I think what’s important to learn is there’s a lot of different ways that you can win this thing.”
The Red Wings were the first team to win the Cup with a Russian-dominated lineup in 1997 and with Nicklas Lidstrom as the first European captain in 2002. The St. Louis Blues were in last place on Jan. 2 in 2019 but won the title for the first time in 52 years.
Shanahan, the only player in NHL history with 600 career goals and 2,000 penalty minutes, said the Leafs have tried to find “the balance between analytics and old-school thinking” to build a winner.
