The Hammock Papers: 1,500.

22 October 2011

1,500.

What have you done 1,500 times?

Saturday’s milestone will be just the latest in a 20-season career of great accomplishments, which includes four Stanley Cup championship rings, seven Norris Trophies, and a street named for him in suburban Detroit. And already the oldest defenseman to record 60 points in a season – a feat that he established last year – Lidstrom continues to deny Mother Nature.

“I really don’t know if you can put it in words,” defenseman Niklas Kronwall said. “Really, 1,500 games, that’s one impressive number. Not only that, but the way he’s played those 1,500 games. I mean, he’s basically been one of the best players on the ice every night.”

Lidstrom will join Steve Yzerman (1,514) and Alex Delvecchio (1,549) as the only players to reach 1,500 games during a career with a single NHL club. That statistic alone is staggering considering that he’s amassed that total in far fewer seasons than his fellow Wings’ legends.

However, as impressive as 1,500 games is, Lidstrom’s average minutes each night might mean even more. For the last 11 seasons, he has led the Wings in most ice-time per game. And already this season, he is playing more than 24-minutes per game.

“He plays lot of minutes,” said Tomas Holmstrom, who has played in 956 games. “I don’t know, he must average 26-28 minutes. That’s half the game every night for 1,500 games. That’s pretty impressive.”

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL