These are the moments it becomes all too real. When the entire Detroit Red Wings team gets ready to hit the ice for the start of training camp and the captain isn’t with them. Instead, it’s confirmation of the bad news everyone knew was coming.



On Friday morning, Red Wings GM Ken Holland shared the inevitable. Zetterberg has met with doctors and the conclusion is that he can’t play hockey anymore because of his degenerative back injury. This is it for the Red Wings captain.



Major news like this doesn’t just impact one team. This is one of the NHL’s stars. He wasn’t Pavel Datsyuk flashy. He wasn’t Nicklas Lidstrom worshipped. But when the best players around the league competed against Henrik Zetterberg, they knew what they were in for.



And they respected him immensely for him.



“Nothing about Henrik Zetterberg jumped out at you as being — he wasn’t super fast or powerful or big but he was...