The NHL named its “Quarter-Century Team” for the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday, and the selections caused debate among Red Wings fans and pundits alike.
Without further ado, meet the @DetroitRedWings' Quarter-Century Team! 👏 #NHLQCTeam pic.twitter.com/IR5SRJBM2E
— NHL (@NHL) January 23, 2025
The Hockey News’s Adam Proteau suggests that the Red Wings’ “Quarter-Century Team” is the best one out there…
On the first quarter-century team, Wings icons Pavel Datsyuk, Steve Yzerman, Henrik Zetterberg and Nicklas Lidstrom all are Hockey Hall of Famers.
Blueliner Niklas Kronwall is a member of the elite Triple Gold Club, with a Cup, an Olympic gold medal and a World Championship gold medal on his resume. Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Lidstrom and second-team forward Brendan Shanahan are also Triple Gold Club members.
First quarter-century-team goalie Chris Osgood has three Cup wins.
On Detroit’s second quarter-century team are Larkin, Shanahan, Sergei Fedorov, superstar goalie Dominik Hasek and defensemen Brian Rafalski and Chris Chelios. Many teams would dream of having that group as their first team. Five of them won the Cup with Detroit, and Larkin is fourth in franchise scoring since 2000.
These teams are a non-stop parade of powerhouses, and no other team can boast of as many pure gems as Detroit has had in the past 25 years.
But Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff, in a subscriber-only story, argues that the team is laden with stars from the 1990’s instead of the 2000’s:
For us, the most glaring omission is that of Tomas Holmstrom. During his Red Wings tenure in the 2000s, from 2000-12, he would pot 216 goals. That’s fourth among Detroit players since 2000. Holmstrom trails only Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Larkin in that category. Working the net front, Holmstrom paid a horrific price for the vast majority of those goals.
We’d also give consideration to Johan Franzen. Before concussions stole away his career, he was accounting for 187 goals between 2005-16. There was a 34-goal season and three 20+ goal campaigns.
During his Detroit tenure, Franzen set a Stanley Cup record for most goals in a four-game series and club records for goals in a playoff game and series, most goals in a playoff year, most game-winning goals in a playoff year and a month. Nearly a quarter of the goals he scored as an NHLer were game winners.
What do you think?
