By Terry Frei
The Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_9515936?source=commented-avalanche
The Avalanche lost to the champions.
Some remnants of the Colorado-Detroit rivalry remain, and that's what a
rivalry
is, I suppose.
The fans can have longer memories than the players or the organizations,
and
they're better than most athletes are at thinking more of the logos on the
front
than of the names on the back of the jerseys.
But . . .
Can anyone really muster genuine enmity for this Red Wings team? It goes
far
beyond the Red Wings' international cast and the history made when Swede
Nicklas
Lidstrom became the first European captain to hoist the Stanley Cup.
The NHL didn't go global yesterday.
Even the old Colorado Rockies had a famous (albeit for the wrong reasons)
Swede,
goalie Hardy Astrom, and a handful of Finns.
The cliches of derision about Europeans in general, and Swedes in
particular,
became laughable long ago and have been dismissed by anyone credible for
ages.
Even the most xenophobic and myopic of Canadians who adhere to the old-
school
North American philosophies (and they're in the minority now, even in
Canada)
long ago came to grips with accepting the fact that the NHL couldn't - and
shouldn't - ban Europeans. And most accept that Europeans, visors and all,
can
be as competitive and gritty as anyone from Saskatoon.
Virtually every dressing room in the NHL is such a mini-United Nations,
there
should be a picture of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the wall.
This is more about the Wings' organizational wisdom in scouting and
selecting
the right Europeans, often late in the draft, and assembling a roster that
displays impressive combinations of skill, grit and savvy.
How can anyone hate that?
~~~~~~~
Well, we all know a couple dumb ****s that troll around here that do.
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