- Nicklas Lidstrom praised Jaccob Slavin in an email to The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun
- Slavin says he modeled his game after the Red Wings legend
- Read below for the full quotes ahead of Game 2 tonight
Jaccob Slavin grew up in Colorado trying to play like Nicklas Lidstrom. Turns out the admiration runs both ways.
The praise came in an email exchange with Pierre LeBrun for a story in The Athletic on Slavin’s Stanley Cup Final run, and the Hall of Famer sounded like a fan. “Glad to hear he had me as a hero growing up!” Lidstrom wrote.
LeBrun shared the story Thursday morning:
Lidstrom was asked what separates Slavin from other defensemen.
“Jaccob is a very good skater with good gap control and really good positioning on the ice. Makes it hard on forwards to get on the inside and create scoring chances when he’s on the ice.”
That’s heavy praise coming from a guy who won four Stanley Cups and seven Norris Trophies across 20 seasons in Detroit.
Slavin told LeBrun why No. 5 was his guy growing up.
“He was unbelievable. He was never the most physical guy. Some of the older guys that have come through the locker room talk about trying to dump a puck in on him, and he’s knocking it down, and you can’t get by him, that kind of stuff. I tried to model my game after that.”
Twenty years later, the blueprint clearly worked. Slavin won Olympic gold with Team USA in Milan this winter, and now he’s four wins away from adding a Stanley Cup to the same season.
Carolina dropped Game 1 to Vegas 5-4 on Tuesday and gets its first crack at evening the series tonight in Raleigh. The room knows how long the road back to the Final was, and the message ahead of Game 2 was blunt:
Puck drops at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
