Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Great D-Men Looking Great

by Todd Maternowski

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week, we delved deeply into the dark depths of Detroit, relishing the Red Wing's relentless regality while warmly and wistfully wondering whether wombats weep. And to all three of you who read and enjoyed that last column: you're not alone! The Red Wings themselves, possibly tired after a long life of molesting collies, have gone on quite a tear since I penned that fatefully-entertaining column. Quick statistic: the Wings were 33-8-3 before I wrote that, and 0-2-1 since, giving up 14 goals in three games, including a whopping 11 in two games at The Joe. Granted, those were against unstoppable powerhouse offensive juggernauts Minnesota and Atlanta, but I would still like to take full credit for introducing the Red Wings' to the concept of mortality. More on that later. Hopefully.

With the Stars languishing in 3rd place in their division, it seems the team cannot get out of their own way on the ice since New Year's -- it seems like the entire team has adopted Chris Connor's New Year's resolution to skate around aimlessly and get knocked off the puck. Realistically, though, the problem is a little deeper: something is wrong with Stars #1 defenseman and resident Russian, Sergei "The Professor" Zubov. He's missed three games in the first two weeks of 2008, and even when he's on the ice, he's playing tentatively. Were I Tippett, I'd bench him for a week, let him rest, and take the inevitable losses as a sacrifice to greater success down the road.

But wait, some of you will ask --who says the Stars will automatically lose if Zubov sits? Good question: I do! But don't just trust me on this one, trust the statistics. Anecdotally, ever since the Stars won that first-round playoff series against Edmonton while Zubov was injured (I believe it was 2000-01, but frankly, we played the Oilers so many times it's all running together), I boldly posit that the Stars have not won one single game without him in all the years since.

Normally, since Zubov is built like a T-34 Soviet tank, this is not a problem. Like a vast majority of Russians, he has supernatural abilities, and rarely gets injured or even hit. But as constipated as the Stars' powerplay sometimes seems when he is back there, when he's not the unit looks like Disney's Unclean Anus on Ice. Much like that Cinderella song, Stars fans don't know what they've got until Zubov is gone. And the numbers back that up in a serious way.

Ever the stathound, I tried for nearly six or seven minutes this morning to find a website listing player injury histories, and a team's winning record when said player is out of the lineup. Despite an unheard-of three (3) Google searches, two of which included the helpful phrase "+girl-on-girl" for additional inspiration, I failed utterly to find such an amazing, column-writes-itself site. However, thanks to Wikipedia I was able to skirt around that and get to the nitty gritty of the matter without having to open a new tab on my Firefox. Phew! Also, while I was typing, I was rescuing a sackful of kittens from the maw of a chaotic evil dire crocodile. Don't believe me? Ask fellow sportswriter Peter King. You wouldn't believe some of the things he's had to beat off with one hand while typing. It's a tough job, for sure.

At any rate, a favorite "drinking Guinness at the table" question is: if you had to start a hockey franchise and could pick one player, who would it be? Most hockey fans would choose a top-flight goaltender, like Luongo or Brodeur in his prime. Another large percentage would take a high-scoring prettyboy like Crosby or Ovechkin. But when it comes to wins and losses, by far the most important player on the ice is a top-flight defenseman. By my extraordinarily high standards, there are only currently four such defensemen in the league right now since the retirement of Ray Bourque: Nick Lidstrom, Chris Pronger, Scott Niedermayer, and Sergei Zubov. These are the four defensemen who, it seems, make crappy teams better instantly, and when they leave for greener pastures, make their new teams instantly better while their previous teams tank. At least it certainly seems that way, right? Don't even bother looking it up, I did all the back-breaking research for you already!

Let's start with Nick Lidstrom, since his career is the easiest to follow, having been with the Red Wings his entire career. Before Lidstrom came on in 1991-92, the Wings had three consecutive losing seasons, including one in which they missed the playoffs entirely (extremely annoying Wings fans will be the first to point out that they have not missed the postseason since, a feat unequaled by any other major sports team). They started Lidstrom as a rookie in 1991-92, and have been first or second in their division every year since. That includes his rookie season, too.. and I hardly need to mention the three Stanley Cups they've won. This amazing run of success has occurred while the team gained and lost players like Yzerman, Shanahan, Hull, Hasek, McCarty, and Mike Vernon. Did the Wings miss a beat when any of these guys left? No. Why not? Easy answer: Nick Lidstrom. It's a good thing he recently extended his contract with the Wings, because once he's gone, it's unlikely Zetterberg and Datsyuk will be enough to keep them from becoming Thrashers North. Enjoy it while you can, you octopus slingers!

That one was easy, but the next puck-moving d-man on my list, Chris Pronger, has been with a much larger number of teams, starting with the Hartford Whalers. He was only there for two seasons before leaving for the Blues, but the Whalers failed to make the playoffs any of the three seasons afterwards. The Blues actually declined in Pronger's initial years with the club, only to rebound in 97-98, when they started a ridiculous string of regular-season success, becoming perennial regular season monsters until the lockout. After Pronger left the Blues, they instantly became a pathetic team, missing the playoffs in both years since his departure.

With the Oilers it's even more pronounced, as the once-great team had missed the playoffs entirely two of the three seasons before he came on, went to the Cup Finals with him in his single season there, then immediately sank back to the bottom of the league when he left. Of course, when Pronger joined the Ducks they were also a pretty inconsistent team, with a Finals appearance in 2002-03 sandwiched between four seasons of no playoffs at all and the lockout. The Ducks lost to Pronger's Oilers in the Conference Finals in 05-06, before winning the Cup in 06-07 with him as their #2 guy.

Scott Niedermayer's career closely parallels that of Lidstrom's: before Niedermayer joined the New Jersey Devils in 91-92, they were a mediocre team barely crawling into the playoffs. Two years later, they swept the Red Wings and won their first of three Stanley Cups. Niedermayer left after the lockout, and are still doing well (damn them! I wanted the easiest possible statistical correlation to my Unfounded Theory!), but the days of the Devils annually giving up fewer than 200 goals seem long gone. Niedermayer jumped ship to Anaheim, took the troubled team to the Conference Finals in 05-06, and won the Cup in 06-07.

And what about Zubov? Again, the pattern seems to repeat itself: when Zubov first left the Red Army team for the New York Rangers in 91-92, they missed the playoffs entirely. The next year they won the Stanley Cup, as Zubov led them in scoring as a defenseman. Zubov missed significant time to injury the next season, during which the Rangers floundered, and then he left for Pittsburgh. After Zubov left, the Rangers squeaked out a little success before missing the playoffs entirely for seven straight seasons. And that, with annual All-Star defenseman Brian Leetch!

The Penguins only had Zubov for the better part of one season before trading him for first-ballot HOFer Kevin Hatcher, and before they acquired him they had won two Cups, while contending for the Cup every year behind the twin powers of Jaromir and Mario. Despite his short stay, something seems to have happened there: after Zubov was traded in 95-96, the Pens had one more first place finish in 97-98, advanced past the semi-finals just once and missed the playoffs four straight years. Of course, they also traded Jagr to the Caps for Kris Beech. I'm thinking of prank-calling Pittsburgh execs, and offering Brad Winchester straight-up for Staal -- it's worth a shot, right?

And we all know what happened with Zubov's next team: the Stars completely missed the playoffs in 95-96, the year before Zubov came on board. When he got here, Dallas immediately won five straight division titles, two Cup appearances, and a total of seven 1st-place finishes over the next nine years, missing the playoffs just once in the year Hitchcock got fired and Belfour flipped out. Playoff success, of course, has recently eluded Zubov.

What does this all mean? Possibly nothing at all: but true top-flight defensemen seem to have a greater impact on their teams' success than any other position. Roberto Luongo has always been a great goalie, but didn't seem to make the Isles or Florida significantly better. Sidney Crosby, for all his highlight-reel assists, still plays on a team that got punked in the playoffs. Ovechkin, who just signed the biggest contract in NHL history, scores tons of goals but has never even sniffed the postseason.

The same cannot be said of the top four NHL d-men, who instantly make their teams successful. Point being: rest Zubov! As long as we make the top eight teams in the conference... scratch that, the top 7.. we'll be fine. And for any Wings, Ducks or Stars fans out there reading this --you know who you are-- enjoy making the playoffs while you can. Once these fogeys retire, you can expect an immediate drop-off in wins, although of all those three teams I like the Stars' young d-corps the best. They may not win it all this year, but if even one of the Niskanen-Grossman-Fistric-Vishnevskiy-Daley (yeah, I'm including him, what of it?) ascends to Zubov-like defensive transcendence, the Stars will dominate for years to come.

Well, that's it for this week's vaguely hockey-related rant. Tune in next week when I break down the Stars' trade deadline deal of Modano-for-Laraque, and what it means for Dallas' third line.

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