July 2010
Henrik Zetterberg and Emma Andersson Married in Mölle.
By Chris Turner, Zetterbergfan.com, July 24th, 2010
Zetterberg to Marry Emma Andersson Tomorrow
By Anna Lindback, Aftonbladet.se, July 22, 2010
Tomorrow hockey star Henrik Zetterberg will marry Emma Andersson. And the couple will be married before a row of NHL stars.
"Weddings are among the most exciting [of events], and this will be really cool," said Detroit defenseman Niklas Kronwall.
For three years they've been a couple. But soon they'll exchange rings. 120 guests have been invited to the grand summer wedding at Molle, just outside Angelholm in southern Sweden.
The ceremony takes place in Molle for the simple reason that it's close to Emma Andersson's home. The exclusive wedding will be held at the Grand Hotel in Molle, and it's expected to be the most luxurious kind of wedding.
Among others, all of Detroit's Swedes--Nicklas Lidstrom, Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson, Johan Franzen, Andreas Lilja, Tomas Holmstrom and Mattias Ritola--will attend the wedding in Skane [southern Sweden], together with teammates Pavel Datsyuk and Valtteri Filppula. In addition to the Detroit players, among others, Mikael Samuelsson from Vancouver is on the guest list.
For three days, the couple will celebrate with pomp and circumstance, and the festivities begin tonight with a dinner.
"All of us meet with each other during the course of the season, but this will be another different circumstances, which are enormously fun," says Niklas Kronwall to Sportbladet.
Are you going to surprise Zetterberg with something special?
"No, I can't tell. But it's going to be full speed for three days."
Zetterberg Weds Swedish Survivor Winner
By Chalk, Sportsuntapped.com, July 22nd, 2010
The Detroit Red Wings currently have eight Swedish players on their roster, so when one of them gets married to a former winner of Sweden’s version of Survivor (Expedition: Robinsson), you know it’s gonna be one sweet Swedish superparty. The lucky gentleman is 29-year-old left wing Henrik Zetterberg, who’s played his entire eight-year NHL career in Detroit.
“All of us meet with each other during the course of the season, but this will be another different circumstances, which are enormously fun,” says Swedish Red Wing defenseman Niklas Kronwall to Sweden’s Sportbladet.
Zetterberg’s bride is Emma Andersson, who appeared on two seasons of Swedish Survivor, winning the second time in 2003. She won about $70,000 in Swedish money, of which the Swedish government took about $40,000 in Swedish taxes. She went on to model and host Swedish TV shows, and was voted #1 in Swedish “Café” Magazine’s “Sweden’s 69 Sexiest”-list of 2005. She’s been dating Zetterberg for about three years, and in 2006 they appeared together on a 2006 episode of the Swedish home-improvement show Room Service.
The Swedish nuptials are Friday in Molle, Sweden, near Emma’s home. The Swedish Chef will cater. Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher are said to be extremely jealous.
Other Swedish Red Wings on the guest list:
D Nicklas Lidstrom
D Jonathan Ericsson
LW Johan Franzen
D Andreas Lilja
LW Tomas Holmstrom
RW Mattias Ritola
Other hockey players:
C Pavel Datsyuk (Red Wings, Russia)
C Valtteri Filppula (Red Wings, Finland)
RW Mikael Samuelsson (Sweden, went to Vancouver Canucks last year after playing for the Red Wings from 2005-
Wings Discovered CBA Loophole First
By Michael Traikos, Montrealgazette.com, July 22, 2010
Jimmy Devellano does not consider it cheating. That involves breaking the rules. And no one has done that.
What the Detroit Red Wings and a handful of other NHL teams have done, is found a loophole in the collective bargaining agreement and exploited it.
The NHL appears to be willing to take a harder look at the loophole after the league cancelled Ilya Kovalchuk's contract with New Jersey -- a 17-year deal worth US$102 million.
Indeed, ever since the Red Wings signed Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen to lifetime contracts with gradually decreasing annual salaries, savvy GMs have realized they could lock up their core players for the rest of their careers if they were willing to take the gamble.
"There was criticism," said Devellano of signing Zetterberg and Franzen.
"And maybe they're right. But each team has to do what they have to do to satisfy their market and their ownership."
Devellano had a different reaction when GM Ken Holland first suggested the Red Wings could skirt the CBA by offering long-term deals to its core stars.
"I gave him a big hug," he said. "I thought it was wonderful because I didn't want to lose those players. You have to understand, these were young players who won Cups for us. We didn't want to lose these guys."
Red Wings VP Jimmy Devellano sums up the Kovalchuk issue perfectly
By George Malik, MLive.com, July 21st, 2010
After news broke that the NHL has chosen to void Ilya Kovalchuk's 17-year, $100-plus-million contract with the New Jersey Devils because the last five seasons' worth of $550,000-salary payments officially circumvented the collective bargaining agreement, the NHL's scribes went nuts, on Twitter and otherwise, pondering whether the NHLPA will grieve the case and/or whether the NHL's officially declaring war on its general managers, long-term contracts, and, of course, essentially informing the NHLPA that it should expect its membership to be locked out starting in September of 2012.
Red Wings VP Jimmy Devellano allows the fan in me to state the obvious. Subjective fans like me don't give a rat's arse as to whether these "lifetime contracts" allow big-market teams to supposedly gain an unfair advantage on their smaller-market bretheren.
Devellano points out that Red Wings GM Ken Holland did not break any rules when he signed Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen to 12 and 10-year contracts, respectively, and Devellano had a similar reaction to the one that most Wings fans did when they found out that the team would keep Henrik Zetterberg in red and white for the rest of his career:
"I gave [Holland] a big hug," he said. "I thought it was wonderful because I didn't want to lose those players. You have to understand, these were young players who won Cups for us. We didn't want to lose these guys."
Like Devellano said, no rules are broken when teams sign players for the equivalent of four presidential terms. But they are obviously being bent. It is not quite as bad as burying a player in the minors because he earns too much money. Or sitting a player in the press box because he might be eligible for performance bonuses. But there is something wrong about signing a player who everyone knows will be retired long before his contract expires.
"There was criticism. Yeah, there was," Devellano said of signing Zetterberg and Franzen. "And maybe they're right. Maybe they have a point. But each team has to do what they have to do to satisfy their market and their ownership."
There's nothing wrong with it, as ridiculous as some of the deals have become, nothing illegal about it. The Wings fans who waited to scrimp and save their pennies to buy a Franzen, Zetterberg, or Hossa jersey until the Wings signed two of those three players to long-term contracts don't feel guilty about what Ken Holland did, nor should they.
Fans have every right to want names and faces to invest in emotionally and to invest in via their merchandise and ticket-purchasing bucks, faces that they know will remain with their favorite team for the long haul, and in that respect, that's where Gary Bettman and the NHL got their concept of roster-destabilizing parity and a CBA which forces even the best-managed teams to place key contributors' customized jerseys on the clearance rack on a daily basis. It doesn't build the brand on a market-by-market basis, and it doesn't "sell" the dedicated one-team fan on sacrificing roster continuity and winning bang for their buck for the sake of the "good of the game."
To hell with that. I want my Red Wings to win, and I want my Red Wings to not turn over their entire roster every three years.
And for that matter...I'm a Red Wings fan, and as such, I have every right to believe that my team will have spots for a 41-year-old Henrik Zetterberg and a 40-year-old Johan Franzen, spots that 40-plus-year-old players earn relatively regularly in Detroit. That's how it works here.
The Longest Contracts In the NHL
By Adam Gretz, Fanhouse.com, July 20th, 2010
Ilya Kovalchuk's new deal with the New Jersey Devils is an incredible 17-year pact that wll keep the goal-scoring machine in the red and black until his 44th birthday. It's an unheard of length, even in the current NHL, where contracts that reach double-digit years are becoming quite common.
The reasoning for a team wanting to sign a player to such a deal is quite simple: by agreeing to a longer contract, it's possible for a team to frontload it (the most money being paid in the first years) which then lowers the annual salary cap hit (total dollars divided by total years). There's also a loophole in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement that says if a player signs a contract before he turns 35, his cap hit comes off the books when (or if) he retires (also known as the 35-and-over rule).
A good example would be the 12-year deal the Detroit Red Wings signed Henrik Zetterberg to last season.
The first nine years of the contract pay Zetterberg over $7 million per year. When the contract reaches year 10, the salary drops down to $3 million, and then eventually finishes with two years of $1 million per season. When all is said and done, it's a contract worth over $72 million, but the yearly cap hit for the Red Wings is just a little over $6 million per season, which is an extremely reasonable price for an elite two-way player like Zetterberg. His teammate, Johan Franzen, is signed to a similar deal, paying him $42.9 million over 11 years (or about $3.9 million per season).
Here's a quick rundown of similar deals that have been signed over the past decade (in chronological order). The chart below shows the player, team, length of the contract, the total dollar amount, the salary cap hit, and the age each player was when the contract was signed. Figures from CapGeek.com:
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( *Cap didn't exist when Yashin signed his contract)
-- The New York Islanders were the team that got this party started, signing Yashin (after giving up Zdeno Chara and a draft pick, No. 2 overall, that turned out to be Jason Spezza) and DiPietro to 10-and 15-year deals respectively. Needless to say, they're batting 0-for-2 at the moment. Yashin played five seasons with the Islanders (averaging 58 points) before having his contract bought out (they're still paying him today). DiPietro, meanwhile, is perhaps the poster child for everything that can potentially go wrong with such a lengthy contract, as his promising career has been derailed by injuries. It's also the exact opposite of the way the goalie market is playing out this offseason.
Over the past two seasons he's played just 13 games for New York, winning only three.
-- The only players on the list that were signed as a free agent were Hossa with the Chicago Blackhawks and Kovalchuk with the Devils. Even though Kovalchuk re-signed with his previous team, he was still on the open market and talking to other teams. The others were already with the team when signed. Eight of the players were originally drafted by the team that signed them (Luongo was drafted by the Islanders; Hossa and Yashin were both drafted by Ottawa).
Reunited: Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk on One Line?
By Chris Minniti, Bleacherreport.com, July 12, 2010
Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk on one line.
Any team in the NHL would love to have both players on their team, let alone on one line.
This past year, as we all know, Detroit suffered a ton of injuries that no one could've ever imagined. With the injuries that Detroit suffered, it wasn't the best move to have both players on the same line because the second scoring line wouldn't be as potent.
But even when they did play on one line, which was very limited, they didn't seem right.
In 2009-10, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg both finished off the with 70 points a piece. That was a far cry from the 97 points Datsyuk finished with the previous year, and yes it was only three points less from Hank's 73 points his previous year (in which he only played 77 games). But it was far from his 92 points he had in 75 games in Detroit's Stanley Cup year in 2008.
With Detroit heading into this year 100 percent healthy and having the longest summer it's had in a long time, should Zetterberg be reunited with Datsyuk on one line?
Yes they should.
The whole year last year was an off year for the Red Wings so it only makes sense that both Datsyuk and Zetterberg had off years, too.
A lot of people started to say that they are out of their prime and will start to fall off as time goes on.
16-3-2 later, everyone stopped talking and Detroit was, even with the sub-par, injury-plagued season, one of the favorites to come out of the West.
If Detroit starts the season with Datsyuk and Zetterberg on one line and they produce, they will become again one of the most feared lines in the NHL.
Barring any injury to Johan Franzen and Valtteri Filppula, and if they post the numbers that Detroit brass expects, the Wings can have the best top two lines in the NHL and can gain the scoring touch they lacked last year.
If Zetterberg and Datsyuk struggle once again with each other, Detroit has the depth to line-juggle again.
There are many reasons to believe that Detroit can be a Cup contender again. They have the same team, Bertuzzi aside, that helped win them the Cup in 2008 (also without Drake and Maltby, but Abdelkader, Eaves and Miller have proved to be perfect for those roles).
Detroit on paper looks like the big red machine it once was, but you don't win games or score goals on paper. You do that on the ice.
And it all starts off with Detroit's two diamonds in the rough—Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk
Henrik and Emma Getting Married July 24th at the Grand Hotel in Mölle
By Chris Turner, Zetterbergfan.com, July 5th, 2010
According to Swedish website Expressen.se (translated), Detroit Red Wings star forward Henrik Zetterberg and his fiancé, Swedish singer/actress Emma Andersson, will get married on July 24th at the beautiful seaside Grand Hotel in Mölle, Sweden, not far from where Emma is from. The wedding coordinator is TagerDu. The celebration will last for three days.
The couple is reported by reputable Swedish sources, Aftonbladet and Expressen, to have been engaged since August 1st, 2008. Emma was in attendance, and later on the ice, when Henrik won the Conn Smythe Award and the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings in 2008 as well as at the victory parade a few days later in Detroit. She was also in Vancouver with Henrik for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
They currently live together in Bloomfield Hills, MI and reportedly spend the off-season at Emma's summer residence in Scania and in Henrik's house on Alnö outside Pretoria.
Henrik and Emma are considered the David and Victoria “Posh” Beckham of Sweden.
"It's Zetterberg who is probably the most famous of the Wings in Sweden, mostly because they still remember him as a superstar from the Swedish Elite League. He was by far our best player when he left for Detroit. There's also the fact that there's some 'flash' around his name. He's considered very good-looking, and he's got the famous Swedish fiancée, Emma Andersson.”
“In our city, and in our county, he is more than a rock star. People here just call him Zata. That's all. He is very, very famous. Hank is the king there and Emma the queen."
-Christer Jonasson of Swedish Radio to Detroit Free Press, (on Zetterberg’s celebrity status in Sweden) September 27th, 2009
