Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The End of the Old Guard
But just look at some of the guys this league has lost of the past couple years, since the lockout basically. Peter Forsberg, Jaromir Jagr, Trevor Linden, Dominik Hasek, some truly dominant figures...in their own era. How many of that past era of NHL Hockey are still around? There's the 2 mentioned earlier, Mats Sundin, Marty Brodeur, Brendan Shanahan, Nik Lidstrom, Joe Sakic, and Teemu Selanne. Then I suppose there's a 2nd tier; Scott Neidermeyer, Chris Chelios, Mark Recchi, Rod Brind'Amour, Sergei Zubov, Rob Blake, and Jeremy Roenick. Well Christ, there's still guys like Bobby Holik and Owen Nolan floating around. Remember when these guys were the Bee's knees? Remember when teams were built around these guys, instead of being called "veteran role players"? I'm sure they all do.
Now look around, outside of a few of those guys (I'll give you Sakic, Lidstrom, and Brodeur), they really are just veteran role players. It's a shame some of these guys can't accept, hell even recognize, when their time has come. The changing of the guard has arrived, well, it probably arrived 3 years ago. But now that the lights are fading on our oldest stars, they're really starting to shine for the up and coming superstars of a new generation.
Who's not excited to see Ovechkin try to top Selanne's 76? Could Crosby and Malkin put up 300 assists combined? Is Datsyuk really going to win the Selke for the next decade? Who is going to be the next Lidstrom? Pretty exciting huh?
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