Nobody Hates Swedes, Do They?

Don Cherry is an institution in Canada. In the northern US, too. If you have the option to watch the NHL on CBC, you do it, and Cherry is part of the reason. He wears outrageous clothes and says outrageous stuff. That's what he does, and it's why he gets paid. Among his views: that every NHL team should play like the 74-75 Flyers, and would win the Stanley Cup and please all hockey fans by doing so. So he called Detroiters rednecks and says they want the team to be more physical. He has a reputation for disliking European players. Here's the video from the other night:



I'm a lifetime Red Wings fan. I love the Red Wings. Even the guys who were there in the bad times - John Ogrodnick, Reed Larson, all of them. I'm also 28, which means I was 10 when the first Russian players joined the NHL. A year later, Sergei Fedorov made his NHL debut. And my God, what a debut it was. I imagine I'll be writing something similar in a few years when he retires, but the effect Fedorov had on the Detroit area was incredible. We had just seen Cecil Fielder hit 50 home runs, which was a Herculean feat in 1990, and everyone was buzzing about him. The 1990 Michigan-Michigan State football game was one of the greatest, and most controversial, in the history of the rivalry. But above all this was the rookie season of Sergei Fedorov. I remember one net crashing goal late in the season that was part of a 5-point game for Sergei. Very few regular season goals are memorable. That one was amazing.

My dad brought me to a sports card show in January of 1991, and I had one goal: to procure a Fedorov card at any cost. Series II Pro Set had just been released, and this was the card I judged to be the most affordable. It was $5, which to me was a fortune then. My dad tried to bargain with the card dealer, and he curtly explained that 100 other people would buy it if we didn't. So my dad bought it for me. And I was thrilled. We went to the lumber yard after the show and I took the card with me. I carried it in its hard plastic case all day long.

He was so exciting. The Russians who had entered the league before him were older, slower, more traditional-style hockey players. You know them: Larionov, Makarov, Fetisov, and Kasatonov were among the first. The Wings had two other thrilling rookies that year in Johan Garpenlov and Paul Ysebaert, but no one could compare to Fedorov. Bure and Mogilny were great goal scorers, but Fedorov could pass, check, and play great defense. I believe he was the best player in the NHL in the 1990s. He could have put up 150 point seasons in the right system and with no restrictions, but he never had that. He did whatever you needed among the best in the league.

So what's the point? I grew up with these players, and that's the style of play I appreciate. There are a lot of hockey fans who never saw the league when it was all-Canadian. European players made the NHL even greater than it was, and brought it closer to being a true major sport in America than it has ever been.

I will never understand Don Cherry's attitude, much as I will never understand the Flyers' management trying to play Don's choking, dull style. There are empty seats at Joe Louis Arena. And economics is a lot of it. Is it everything? Probably not. But as people are pointing out, the Wings didn't win Cups with their imposing lineup in the late 80s and early 90s. They lost to more balanced teams who stayed out of the penalty box. I think Mr Ilitch will take a Cup winner over a 5 percent attendance slump.