A little more adversity for Wings

By Jim den Hollander

Midwest Hockey Editor

There have been many changes in at the home of the Winged Wheel in recent seasons, but the departure of Head Coach Mike Babcock should officially usher in a new era in the team’s history.

During a decade as the Red Wings’ head coach, Babcock has racked up a record of 458-223-105 for a .649 winning percentage and he stands as one of the final connectors between the current team loaded with young talent, back to the days of Steve Yzerman, Brendan Shanahan, Niklas Lidstrom and several others.

He hoisted a Stanley Cup in the early summer of 2008 and the following season felt the sting of coming oh so close as well as the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Wings in the Stanley Cup finals the following season, avenging its defeat at the hands of the same Wings the previous season.

The season prior to its Stanley Cup championship win the Wings lost in the Conference finals to the Anaheim Ducks, a team he left to join the Wings at the end of the lockout just a season prior.

Babcock has been the team’s lone coach through its entire post-lockout history, having opted to join the team at the beginning of the 2005-06 season despite being offered a chance to re-sign with the Ducks following the league’s first lockout that wiped out the entire previous season.

During that stretch, the team has never missed the post season, continuing a string that actually dates back to the 1989-90 season.

More impressively, Babcock was somehow at the helm as the Detroit Red Wings successfully made the conversion from awesome, but aging team to promising young squad.

Sure, players like Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg — the most recognizable names in the red and white, could be considered long in the tooth, but there was a time not so long ago when the team seemed to have a crew of players much closer to AARP than they were to their first NHL shifts.

But in the past 2-4 seasons alone the team has said goodbye to not only legend Niklas Lidstrom but several other key longtime cogs and this past season– while Datsyuk and Zetterberg were officially the two leading scorers, Tomas Tatar and Gustav Nyquist led the team in goals while a host of players entered their freshman of sophomore NHL seasons and played major roles in the team’s success.

That shows that while he was at times blessed with some of the NHL’s top players in his lineup throughout his 10-year stay, Babcock is equally as comfortable mentoring young talent.

His legacy enters a new challenge in Toronto, but the Red Wings shouldn’t feel any major bumps. The Kids are All Right in Motown.