DETROIT -- The Detroit Red Wings will retire Sergei Fedorov’s No. 91 on Monday. Some feel the honor is long overdue. Others thought they’d never see the day. In the end, it will be a special moment for the team, the fans and Fedorov himself.
Fedorov will take his place in the rafters at Little Caesars Arena before a game against the Carolina Hurricanes (7 p.m. ET; FDSNDET, FDSNSO), of all teams, because of his important place in Detroit history. The Red Wings nabbed the center in the fourth round (No. 74) of the 1989 NHL Draft, when teams were afraid to take players from the Soviet Union, figuring they couldn’t get them to North America.
In a story out of a spy novel, the Red Wings helped Fedorov defect in 1990. He became part of their famous Russian Five and helped them win the Stanley Cup in 1997, 1998 and 2002. He won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player in 1994, plus the Selke Trophy as the League’s best defensive forward in 1994 and 1996.
Although Detroit has had many great players over the years, Fedorov is the only one who has won the Hart with the Red Wings since Gordie Howe won it for the sixth and final time in 1963.
The Red Wings hoped Fedorov would spend his entire career in Detroit, like teammates Nicklas Lidstrom and Steve Yzerman would do. But here’s the hard part: Fedorov chose to leave -- not once, but twice.
After winning the Cup in 1997, Fedorov held out as a restricted free agent for the first 59 games of the 1997-98 season and signed a six-year, $38 million offer sheet with the Hurricanes, then owned by Peter Karmanos, a rival of Detroit owner Mike Ilitch. The Red Wings matched the offer sheet and ended up having to pay Fedorov $28 million in salary and bonuses that season. Fedorov helped them repeat as champions.
Detroit defeated Carolina in the Stanley Cup Final to hoist the Cup again in 2002, and Ilitch personally offered Fedorov a five-year, $50 million contract during the 2002-03 season. Fedorov declined. After they were swept by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in the first round in 2003, the Red Wings offered Fedorov a four-year, $40 million contract. Again, Fedorov declined.
Ilitch compared his relationship with Fedorov to one between a man and a woman.
“Sometimes the man or the woman loves each other maybe more than the other one does, and you think that you maybe have a closer and a better association than you really do,” Ilitch said then. “I always thought we were really close.”
Fedorov signed a five-year, $40 million contract with Anaheim on July 19, 2003, as an unrestricted free agent. The feeling was that he took less money to escape the shadow of Yzerman, then Detroit’s captain, now its general manager.
“I think he wanted his own team,” former Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood said then, when he was playing for the St. Louis Blues. “He’s not going to tell anybody, but I think that’s what he felt.”
In an interview before his Hockey Hall of Fame induction Nov. 3, 2003, Ilitch said he missed Fedorov. He recalled how the Red Wings helped Fedorov defect and how Fedorov even stayed with his daughter, Denise, for a couple of months afterward.
“There’s special attachment there because of that, and because [Carolina] tried to get him away one time and we had to come up with $28 million to make sure we kept him here,” Ilitch said then. “Hopefully, we’ll get him back one day.”
The first time Fedorov returned to Detroit, the fans booed him each time he touched the puck and cheered when he lost face-offs in a 7-2 Red Wings win at Joe Louis Arena on Dec. 3, 2003. The boos were especially loud when he scored against his former team for the one that had just swept it in the playoffs.
Fedorov finished his career with the Mighty Ducks, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Washington Capitals and Magnitogorsk of the Kontinental Hockey League, but he still had a place in Detroit and would return in the offseason.
He appreciated it more with age.
In 2012-13, when he was general manager of CSKA Moscow of the KHL, the team from which he once defected, he had little memorabilia in his office. What he did have was a framed photo that included him and Ilitch the night he won the Hart and Selke.
“Certainly,” he said then, “Detroit is a huge era for me.”
Time has passed. Ilitch died Feb. 10, 2017. His wife, Marian, turned 93 on Jan. 7. Their son Chris is CEO of Ilitch Companies, and he is the one who told Fedorov the Red Wings would retire his number.
Fedorov made a key comment in an interview the Red Wings released on social media.
“I made a wrong decision to leave,” Fedorov said. “It’s not so much that I leave. It’s just a business side to it all. I regret that. By far, that’s the most and probably the only regret I would have. I should have stayed with the Red Wings for the longest time. But like we say, until you try it, you don’t know what it is.”
