There have been some defencemen we’ve marvelled at over the years, beginning with the reason this failed future NHL star played defence as a kid and wore No. 4 whenever possible, from house league hockey all the way to old-timers hockey.
We didn’t know it at the time, but watching a player like Bobby Orr — or Serge Savard or Borje Salming — was the beginning of what we now call perspective. Hockey moved on to blue-liners like Paul Coffey, Scott Stevens, Sergei Zubov, Scott Niedermayer … Even Bryan Marchment did one thing better than anyone else ever did, becoming the benchmark for catching opponents in open ice — even when they’d all known all night that he would be coming eventually.
So when this hockey writer had been around NHL press boxes for only a little while, he was lucky enough to have accrued some sample size on great defencemen. Then Nicklas Lidstrom and Chris Pronger came into the National Hockey League in 1991 and 1993 respectively.
Since, they have become iconic. Two great NHL defencemen who did what they did, played the way they played, better than anyone else in their generation.
I have never watched an NHL defenceman for a while and declared, “That guy reminds me of Lidstrom,” even though players like Victor Hedman, Hampus Lindholm, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Erik Karlsson are very, very good. And a lot of tall defencemen emerge from junior purported to have fashioned their game after Pronger. All of them looked to me more like Sean Pronger than Chris.
Lidstrom and Pronger were part of an elite group — even by Hockey Hall of Fame standards — announced on Monday, that also included Sergei Fedorov, Phil Housley, Team USA defenceman Andrea Ruggiero, plus Bill Hay and Peter Karmanos Jr. in the Builder Category.
With apologies to the others however, for me the HHOF Class of 2015 will be recalled for Lidstrom and Pronger, the two greatest defencemen of their generation for completely different reasons.
Lidstrom played the game like a luxury Volvo, winning seven Norris Trophies. As such, he will always be remembered as truly the greatest blue-liner of his time. His was a 1,564-game career in which Lidstrom missed only two or three games per season, often at the behest of management, who wanted to rest him for the playoffs.
He became that classic Swedish defenceman, smooth, almost unhittable, and the consistent purveyor of the simple play. Or perhaps, the difficult play that he just made look so easy. He was silk. Thousand dollar Scotch. So smooth, all game long, that there weren’t enough words to describe how simple he made an intricate play appear.
Lidstrom never made a mistake; he read the play properly and sent the puck to the right place. He shot to score when he found himself on that end of the play, or deftly put a wrist shot on the blade of Tomas Holmstrom for a deflection, or the goalie’s pad for a rebound when that was the best bet. Or the end boards — he may have been the first I saw make that shot off the end boards at Joe Louis Arena that ended up right in the slot.
In all the times I interviewed Nick he never, ever said anything controversial. Nor, as is often the Swedish way, did he give you a quote to hang a column on. But he was as available as the Sedin twins, every bit as polite, and of course, when a legend rolls through town you make a point of dropping by at the morning skate for some conversation. Even it was friendly, but you knew he wasn’t giving up much.
That may be the one place where Pronger was better. Well, in an interview, or a five-on-five brawl.
Off the ice, Pronger truly enjoyed the repartee between journalist and player, and was one to challenge a dumb question, or a written prediction that had backfired. He read, and was aware of what was going on around hockey the way Gretzky was when he had played. Pronger was connected, and voraciously ate up hockey gossip.
On the ice, just as Lidstrom was the classic Swede, so too did Pronger bring to the table every element that a lover of the Canadian game wants from his captain and top defenceman. He checked off every box where skills were concerned: shooting, passing, skating, defending. But it was his intangibles that rounded out a player who, in his later years, went team to team infusing a winning attitude into those around him.
Pronger was snarly. He’d fight, and he fought to win. He would always exact revenge, and sometimes get a head start and simply intimidate the opponent without any particular invitation. He was a great physical player, sometimes clean, sometimes (often) dirty. Where Lidstrom was predictable in his machine-like consistency, Pronger was every bit as unpredictable, eschewing the rulebook and doing what needed to be done.
Hence his eight NHL suspensions, followed by a post-career job in the department of player safety. Delicious irony that was, and Pronger always saw the humour in it as well.
Fedorov was the first Russian to count 1,000 points, and a Hart Trophy winner; Housley played 23 NHL seasons and is the leading scorer among U.S.-born defencemen; Ruggiero led Team USA to four world championship golds. Bill Hay and Peter Karmanos Jr. have been part of the sport for decades.
But when the question becomes, who can you picture stepping into a Steve Yzerman pass for a one-timer from the dot? Or defending with the grit and strength of 10 men, taller, stronger and seemingly more driven than any power forward in the game?
I will remember Nick Lidstrom and Chris Pronger.
As a hockey writer, I may be fortunate enough to see better in my time. But I doubt it. I really doubt it.