Player loyalty is something that you see a lot across the world of sports. Players get comfortable with a franchise and the fanbase, not to mention that they build lives and raise families around the city they play in. This makes a move to another city inconvenient and uncomfortable, often influencing players to stick with what they know and love. When you believe in a franchise, why would you make a change if you don’t have to?
One stat discovered by Reddit user CityofCold shows that the Detroit Red Wings are a franchise that draws insane player loyalty. Not only have they seen rampant success over the past few decades (including a 25-year playoff appearance streak that ended last season), but their players seem to genuinely enjoy playing for the city known as Hockeytown.
Of the 17 players that have played 1500 NHL games, only three of them have done so playing out of just one city – that city for all three players was Detroit. Nicklas Lidstrom leads that list, playing 1564 NHL games in the Red Wings red and white, and zero in any other colours. Next up is Alex Devecchio, who played 1549 games for Hockeytown. Finally, one of the greatest Red Wings to ever lace them up, Steve Yzerman played 1514 NHL games for Detroit. This list would be even more eye opening if Gordie Howe didn’t decide to come back and play 80 games with the Hartford Whalers at age 51, because his 1687 games as a Red Wing are the most a player has played for one franchise, according to hockeyreference.com.
There is something that should be acknowledged here. While Shane Doan’s 1540 NHL games did not technically come out of the same city or jersey colours, they did all come with the same franchise. He was a part of the old Winnipeg Jets that have since become the Phoenix Coyotes and finally the Arizona Coyotes. For that reason, maybe he does belong on this list, but we left him off because of the city change as well as the fact he is currently a free agent looking to play for a team that isn’t the Coyotes this upcoming season.
As for other players that have shown 100% loyalty to the Red Wings franchise, Tomas Holmstrom played his entire 1026 game career with Detroit. Current captain of the team, Henrik Zetterberg, has also spent his entire 1000 game NHL career with the Red Wings. Finally, recently departed superstar Pavel Datsyuk played 953 games for the franchise before heading back to his native Russia.
When you look at the top nine players on the Detroit Red Wings all-time games played, six of those players (Lidstrom, Devecchio, Yzerman, Holmstrom, Zetterberg, and Datsyuk) played exclusively for the Red Wings, only three played elsewhere (Howe played 80 games with the Whalers, Kris Draper played 20 with the Winnipeg Jets, and Marcel Pronovost played 223 games with the Toronto Maple Leafs).
This stat may be a little skewed, as the all-time games played list would obviously be full of players that would automatically have to have played a good chunk of their career with Detroit. But to put it into perspective, the team with the next highest loyalty in this measurement is the Boston Bruins with four of their top 10 being career Bruins.
The fact is most players will go through some sort of team change during the course of their career, so Detroit having all these long-time Red Wings is a testament to both their ability to draft, and their reputation as a team that players want to play for. For a city that has been through a challenging time in recent decades, hockey continues to be a shining star in Detroit.
(H/T r/hockey, Hockey Reference)
