The Wings of Change

Anybody else notice the migration taking place in Detroit? For a team that just came off of back-to-back Stanley Cup appearances, winning one of them in the process and coming within a game of repeating, you wouldn’t be able to tell that this is a perennial powerhouse, judging from how willingly the players are ready to leave. Today’s unveiling of players who are taking their teams to arbitration, one of them being another Red Wing, Jiri Hudler, is just another example of a player that isn’t just satisfied being paid, quite handsomely if you really put in perspective, for playing on a fantastic team year in, year out. So, let’s review, Marian Hossa took the money and ran to the Windy City…not to the surprise of this blogger. Mikael Sammuelsson bolts to Vancouver, thus joining the N.H.L.’s version of Team Sweden Lite and not improving his chances of winning another title, but I digress. Tomas Kopecky joins money hungry Hossa in rival Chicago, for a considerably less amount, but bolts ole’ Detroit, nonetheless. Hudler isn’t exactly gone from Hockeytown, but I hear whispers that he may in fact hit the road, especially if he wins his arbitration case.

There is a point to this, I swear it. Here it is: you would think a player playing for a team so consistently dominant, would actually take a paycut to stay there and try to win every season. “The plane boss…the plane.” Okay, I just woke up from my stay on Fantasy Island, of course they wouldn’t. Players these days, actually for quite sometime, look out for #1, which would be themselves, not the organization they at one time played for. My stance, from the outside looking in, I would want to play for a team that had the best chance of winning every season, but that just isn’t realistic enough.

Not that Detroit is going to suffer this season, even if they lose all four previously mentioned players. They still have as solid a core as any other team in the league and have players on the verge of being a part of that core. Ville Leino, Justin Abdelkader and Darren Helm, are all ready to jump in and play vital roles for this organization, who seemingly has an endless stream of homegrown talent emerging from the minors. They did take care of the true core players for this team, as Franzen, Zetterberg, Datsyuk and Lidstrom are all returning for a shot at redemption next season.

In Hossa’s defense, he didn’t just take the money and sign with a terrible team. The Blackhawks are on the verge of being a true championship contender, for the forseeable future. But you have to wonder, if Detroit was offering contracts to all of these players that jumped ship, why did they leave? I sure as hell wouldn’t have. But then again, I am on the outside looking in.