Tatar, Nyquist well on the way to being Red Wings stars

Gregg Krupa | The Detroit News

Detroit — In October 1965, Gordie Howe was seven months past his 37th birthday.

When microphones extended toward him in the dressing room, he was asked whether he, like most hockey players his age, was nearly finished.

Little did they know.

For another Red Wings player, Bruce MacGregor, the questions were a little different. Could he eventually replace Howe?

MacGregor scored 21 goals and tallied 41 points in 66 games the previous season.

But Howe’s successor did not arrive for 17 years, until the Red Wings drafted Steve Yzerman.

MacGregor would score 20 and 28 goals the next two seasons, but never as many as 20 again in the NHL. He won five Stanley Cups, but as an assistant general manager with the Oilers.

Eventually, the Wings needed to replace Yzerman.

It went a lot easier.

But, now, the accomplished players who did it, are older. Pavel Datsyuk is 37. Henrik Zetterberg is 35.

Who eventually supplants them is an important question for general manager Ken Holland, his staff and amateur scouts who scour North America and Europe for the next big scorers.

The answers may be in hand. Less noticed during the impressive first months of Dylan Larkin’s career, Tomas Tatar, 25, and Gustav Nyquist, 26, appear poised to fill a good portion of the breach.

Two full seasons into their careers, they have established a pattern of providing consistent offense.

In back-to-back campaigns, Nyquist scored 28 goals in 57 games and 27 in 82 games.

Tatar scored 19 in 73 games and then 29, while also playing in every game.

Nyquist’s 55 goals and Tatar’s 48 in two seasons, exceeded Datsyuk’s 43 and Zetterberg’s 33.

Together, Nyquist and Tatar scored 22 percent of the Wings goals in their first two full seasons. After both scored their 11th goals Friday, they have 28 percent of the goals in their third.

But do they persevere? Or does their performance across the seasons flatten out?

Both shy away from talking about replacing two special players who are their mentors. But their success in establishing significant offense on a consistent basis is not lost on them.

“I wouldn’t compare us to Hank and Pavs, by any means,” Nyquist said. “But I think throughout the whole team there’s been a little bit of a generational shift, for sure.

“It’s obviously good to have depth in scoring on a team, for sure. There are quite a few guys up there, I think.

“But that’s obviously something I want to contribute to” he said. “I want to be an offensive player.

“I think Tats feels the same way.”

Tatar spoke of good luck.

“I can be fortunate,” he said. “I am finding the net, you know?

“But just trying to be consistent and trying to score along a certain line, not go up and down, just try to be consistent all season.

“It’s a tough task, but I’m trying to do my best.”

As Holland reviewed their development, he said the Red Wings did not necessarily have Tatar and Nyquist marked as heirs apparent.

“Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg are special players,” he said. “Steve Yzerman was a special player.

“It’s not about Tats and Nyquist, it’s about our team playing our best hockey at the right time.

“The world we live in today, people want to make an evaluation on players who are 23, 24 and 25, and they’re going to play 10 more years, at least, in the National Hockey League,” Holland said.

“They need time.”

That said, their performance is providing some strong evidence.

“They’re on pace to do, again, what they did last year,” Holland said. “If they keep scoring 27, 28 goals, they’re in rarified air.

“This is a hard league to score in.”

Predicting the course of careers is enormously difficult, especially in the NHL, where injuries, some quite serious, are a major fact of life.

And it is also true that even the greats have their stumbles

“Hank and Pavs and Yzerman, they went through growing pains — maybe not Steve in the regular season,” Holland said.

“I mean, I could go through lots of stories here,” he said, figuratively dipping into the personnel files he carries in his brain. “There was one point where Pavel Datsyuk scored one playoff goal in 22 games. And there were doubters on Pavel Datsyuk.

“Steve Yzerman did not enjoy playoff success until he was 28. There were doubts about Steve Yzerman.”

Among a raft of younger players, including some in Grand Rapids and elsewhere — such as 19-year-old Evgeny Svechnikov, playing for Cape Breton in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League — the Red Wings will need lots of success if the team is to have success in the future, Holland said.

“It’s not going to happen because you want it to happen and I want it to happen and the fan base wants it to happen,” he said.

“It takes time. You’ve got to let it happen.

“It’s patience.

“The more winning your team is doing, the more patience you can have. And making the playoffs last year and the year before has allowed these players to develop at their own pace,” Holland said.

“These guys aren’t robots. This is a tough league, and they’re going to be the focal point, you know, Dylan Larkin and Tats and Nyquist. And as we go forward here in the next three or four years, and Tats becomes 28 and Nyquist is 29 and Larkin becomes 22.

“Right now, Pavs and Z are getting a lot of focus from the other teams, and that’s the way it should be.”

As they view their development, Tatar and Nyquist have had to have patience, too.

“It was a different coaching staff here at that time” Tatar said, of breaking in five seasons ago, under Mike Babcock.

“Larks is really fortunate to have this opportunity,” Tatar said, of Larkin playing for Jeff Blashill, briefly last season in Grand Rapids and so far this season in Detroit. “I feel, under Mike, young guys had it a little tougher than now. But, I’m not saying it was the wrong way.

“I’m just saying it was hard to get the coach’s trust. It was really hard on the young guys, but it taught me well.

“I’ve become a player who knows how to play under pressure,” he said. “Mike was a good coach, for me, and I think he helped a lot of guys here.”

Nyquist talked about an increasing sense of comfort that has ballooned.

“Thinking back when I came in and played my first NHL game and walked into the room, it’s a pretty intimidating room to walk into.

“Once you start playing more, you feel a lot more comfortable out there. You can make your plays and play your game a little bit more, and that comes with games, for sure.”

As they transition from establishing a career to maintaining it, Tatar and Nyquist talk about the need to do it every day, like their mentors, Zetterberg, Datsyuk and Niklas Kronwall.

They talk about the capacity, as men who are still young, to add strength in the offseason. They talk about how much fun it all is, and the need to maintain an edge despite the grind of long seasons.

Whether it all adds up to sustained seasons of scoring 25, 28 or 30 or more goals remains to be seen.

“What’s important is, doing it year after year,” Holland said. “And also being an important part of a playoff run.”

Holland recalled that it took players like Yzerman and Mike Modano some time to prove they could help drive their teams deep in the playoffs.

“You know, people are quick to judge,” Holland said. “But they don’t understand how hard it is, and it takes more than one player. It takes lots of players and it takes opportunities.

“We lose out to Boston two years ago, and people want to evaluate our young players on the Boston series. Well, Tats and Nyquist were 23 and 24 years of age. You need games, you need opportunities.

“So, what do they got to do? They just got to keep doing what they’re doing, and we’ve got to put ourselves in a position.

“We’re trying to get into the playoffs here for 25th straight year, and this would be the third playoff opportunity for Tats and Nyquist.

“You need chances.”

gregg.krupa@detroitnews.com

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