Datsyuk steered Red Wings on 'Magic' ride on road to Hall of Fame

The 2024 Hockey Hall of Fame induction is Monday. This class includes Pavel Datsyuk, Shea Weber, Jeremy Roenick, Natalie Darwitz, Krissy Wendell-Pohl, Colin Campbell and David Poile. Here, NHL.com columnist Nicholas J. Cotsonika profiles Datsyuk:

Pavel Datsyuk had passed through the NHL Draft twice before the Detroit Red Wings discovered him.

In 1997-98, scout Hakan Andersson trekked to Yekaterinburg, Russia, 1,110 miles east of Moscow, to see Dmitri Kalinin, a defenseman the Buffalo Sabres would select with the No. 18 pick in the 1998 NHL Draft.

A forward on the other team stood on the right flank on the power play when the point man misplayed the puck. The forward backchecked hard to break up a 2-on-1, diving at the perfect moment, getting his stick on the puck and deflecting it into the corner.

“I just remember thinking that he’s a small player, he works pretty hard and he seems to have some ability,” said Andersson, now the Red Wings director of European scouting. “In the game, you noticed that he had some hands and some sense. Not nearly the stuff that he ended up doing later in the NHL, but you could tell there was something there, so obviously wrote reports on Kalinin, and then I had some notes on this guy too.”

That guy will enter the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto on Monday with Colin Campbell, Natalie Darwitz, David Poile, Jeremy Roenick, Shea Weber and Krissy Wendell-Pohl.

Selected in the sixth round (No. 171) of the 1998 draft, Datsyuk won the Stanley Cup twice (2002 and 2008), the Selke Trophy three times as the NHL’s best defensive forward (2008-10) and the Lady Byng Trophy four times for sportsmanship, gentlemanly conduct and playing ability (2006-09) with the Red Wings from 2001-16. Detroit never missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs in his 14 seasons.

He was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players when the League celebrated its centennial in 2017. Dubbed the “Magic Man” by Red Wings TV color analyst Mickey Redmond, he made hocus-pocus plays at both ends of the ice.

“Hard to believe,” Datsyuk said of the Hall of Fame, his English limited, “Of course, I feel like I’m lucky boy.”

Really, it was Detroit that was lucky.

* * * * *

Andersson saw Datsyuk a second time in 1997-98. He wanted to see him a third time, but his flight out of Moscow waited for hours and never took off due to a snowstorm.

In the end, it was a good thing.

Andersson said the deicing machine made him nervous, a “huge ring of fire” rattling the plane and coming a little too close to the wings full of jet fuel. Perfect metaphor. A scout from the Calgary Flames was on the same plane.

“He was going to the same game,” Andersson said. “At least he didn’t see him.”

Who knows? Maybe the secret would have blown up.

“Apparently none of the Russian scouts …” Andersson said, his voice trailing off. “I guess they must have seen him over the season, but somehow, they didn’t … It’s not always because you like somebody you get to draft him. Every team has a boss.”

Andersson’s boss trusted his judgment.

“The guy that’s completely, totally responsible is Hakan Andersson,” said Ken Holland, the Red Wings general manager from 1997-2019. “Hakan was gushing over his stick skills.”

Datsyuk once said that when the Red Wings selected him, he found out from a friend and replied, “Nice joke.” He needed proof. The friend showed him the newspaper the next day.

“OK,” Datsyuk said. “Good. Nothing change, but good.”

Datsyuk remained in Russia for three more seasons, rising through the ranks and eventually drawing attention from other NHL teams. One GM approached the Red Wings with various trade proposals and always tacked on Datsyuk as part of the return. Holland figured out what he really wanted and didn’t bite.

Holland and Jim Nill -- then the Red Wings assistant GM, now the Dallas Stars GM -- went to see Datsyuk play for Russia in a tournament in Stockholm in 2000-01. At the time, Datsyuk was 22 and 5-feet-10, 167 pounds. Playing conservatively in Russia’s style on the larger international ice sheet, he didn’t stand out.

The Red Wings were unsure when they brought Datsyuk to North America in 2001-02. They agreed to send him back to Russia instead of Grand Rapids of the American Hockey League if he didn’t make the team. The stakes were high. They were expected to win the Stanley Cup with coach Scotty Bowman, a member of the Hall of Fame, and a roster that was thought to have nine future Hall of Famers.

No one knew Datsyuk would be the 10th.

Several people had similar first impressions: Humpbacked, bowlegged and pigeon-toed at 5-11, 181 pounds, the 23-year-old walked with an odd gait. He didn’t speak English and seemed shy. But he wowed on the ice, the smaller NHL ice sheet suiting his quick hands and head. His humility and sense of humor broke through the language barrier.

“We had pretty good success with the Russian players,” said Bowman, who put together the Russian Five (forwards Sergei Fedorov, Slava Kozlov and Igor Larionov and defensemen Slava Fetisov and Vladimir Konstantinov) and won the Cup in 1997 and 1998. “I think the guy was Igor Larionov. He made sure that Pavel was on the right track all the time. I give him a lot of credit. We had three Russian centers, because we had Sergei Fedorov and Igor and Pavel. We didn’t put them together, because we had other wingers.”

Like Brett Hull, who called him “the sickest player I’ve ever seen in my life.” Datsyuk and 23-year-old Boyd Devereaux played with the 37-year-old Hull on a line nicknamed “Two Kids and an Old Goat.” (Henrik Zetterberg joined Datsyuk and Hull on that line as a 22-year-old rookie the following season.)

“His peers knew that he could do things that most people couldn’t,” Holland said.

Steve Yzerman -- then the Red Wings captain, now their GM – said in January of that season: “He does something special every shift. … We’ve watched him every day in practice, and he doesn’t really surprise any of us now, because we realize the individual ability he has.”

One day, the Detroit players played a prank on the rookie at practice in Edmonton. They hid Datsyuk’s sticks, and when he couldn’t find them, he asked Larionov for help. Larionov brought him to equipment manager Paul Boyer, who told him to look in the big stick bag. Datsyuk started to unzip it, and …

Out jumped defenseman Steve Duchesne.

“Pavel almost fell over backwards,” said Dave Lewis, the Red Wings associate coach then and their head coach from 2002-04. “The guys were laughing. Oh, God.”

Really, the joke was on the rest of the NHL.

* * * * *

Datsyuk made other NHL players look silly -- and not just average NHL players, star NHL players. Search his name. Enjoy the highlights.

“I hope the YouTube still working,” he said. “Nobody forget me.”

Datsyuk would dangle through traffic and fake out an opponent in the corner so badly he fell. He’d turn his skate blades one way and his upper body the other to fool a goalie. One of his most famous moves came Nov. 12, 2003, when he did it to Marty Turco on a breakaway to score his second goal in a 6-2 win at the Dallas Stars.

“The guys on the bench, it reminded me of the first time they watched the Russian Five play together,” Lewis said. “They were just in awe, just like, ‘What? Did you see that?’ And these guys had lived through a lot and didn’t get impressed easily.”

Red Wings TV broadcaster Ken Daniels coined a new term: “Datsyukian deke.”

Datsyuk scored 30 goals or more three times (2003-04, 2007-08 and 2008-09) and had back-to-back 97-point seasons (2007-08 and 2008-09). With 918 points (314 goals, 604 assists) in 953 games, he ranks 11th among players selected in the sixth round or later in the NHL Draft. But he could have had far more.

“I always said 'Pav' would get 90 points a year, but he really was a 120-point guy because he never, ever cheated for offense,” Holland said. “He was always the best, most conscientious forward we had.

“He always sat out high. He never took any risks. He never turned pucks over. He’d only play 18 minutes; he wouldn’t play 21. He wouldn’t extend shifts. He might get 90 points, but he was worth 30 points on the defensive side of the puck.”

Datsyuk was sneaky strong and carried a heavy stick. He would creep up behind an opponent, lift his stick and steal the puck before he knew it was gone.

The NHL started tracking takeaways in 2005-06. Through 2015-16, his last season in the League, Datsyuk had 926, 190 more than anyone else.

From 2006-13, he led the NHL in takeaways four times (2006-07, 2007-08, 2009-10 and 2012-13), and he ranked second (2008-09) and third (2011-12) once each. In that span, he had 696 takeaways, 208 more than anyone else, while producing 526 points (174 goals, 352 assists), ninth in the League, and averaging only 17.6 minutes in penalties.

“Pav was the best two-way forward in the world, in my opinion,” Holland said.

How many players would you pay to watch on both offense and defense? How many would you pay to watch practice? If only fans could have seen how Datsyuk honed his skills by playing keep-away with teammates. He joked that growing up in Russia, they had one puck, so he learned to fight for it.

“You can be a top NHL player in different ways,” Andersson said, “but he was maybe one of the most entertaining you’d see.”