The Last of the Great Lines?

In this era of individual identity — even in our game of hockey, the best team sport of them all — the notion of lines with catchy nicknames seems rather quaint. It isn’t Alex Ovechkin’s line or Sidney Crosby’s trio that gets a memorable moniker; it is the player himself, as in Sid the Kid and the Great 8. Partly, that is due to marketing, and also, the way the game is played today, making long-standing trios  hard to come by.

Currently, I can think of only one truly dominating line that has any kind of tenure to speak of, and that is the Anaheim Ducks formidable Corey Perry-Ryan Getzlaf-Bobby Ryan combination. They have size, speed, skill, grit and the ever-elusive three-way chemistry. More often these days, NHL teams have tandems of a center and one main winger, with the other side more of a rotation. The Sedins in Vancouver come to mind, with Alex Burrows getting the nod most often, but is the optional piece if Canucks’ Coach Alain Vigneault thinks his team/that line needs a short-term spark.

The line of Maltby-Draper-Kocur/McCarty was one of the most formidable line combinations for the Red Wings in the late ’90s. (Michigan Hockey Archives)

Here with our Red Wings, we see coach Mike Babcock use Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg together and then he will split them up and form separate trios depending on situations in-game and in-season. Trying to keep all players healthy and engaged throughout the rigorous regular season becomes a major reason why set lines are mostly a thing of the past. Like everything else, when comparing different eras, as we’ve done in this issue, finding context is not always easy.

Here in Detroit, though, we’ve had some of the most famous lines of all time. Gordie Howe was part of the “Production Line” with Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay. They finished 1-2-3 in league scoring in 1950 — a record as safe as Glenn Hall’s astounding mark of making 502 consecutive complete starts in goal. Neither is likely to ever happen again because of how times have changed. Steve Yzerman centered many players throughout his illustrious career, but none came with a famous handle, nor came close to the league scoring trifecta. Yzerman’s line that included Gerard Gallant and Bob Probert in the late ’80s was a mash-up of skill sets that worked, making all-stars of all three, but as a group, nothing stuck.

The ’90s Red Wings, though, featured the Russian Five, and in 1997 the “Grind Line” was born. The line featured Kirk Maltby-Kris Draper-Joe Kocur, with Darren McCarty taking over for Kocur after the Wings’ 1998 repeat run to Stanley Cup glory. Ironically, the Grind Line neutralized one of the few lines from that era to carry a defining nickname, the Flyers’ “Legion of Doom,” featuring John LeClair-Eric Lindros-Mikael Renberg, during the 1997 Stanley Cup Final. That effort and the subsequent role the line played in the Red Wings’ success cemented the Grind Line’s place in team lore. They weren’t Howe-Abel-Lindsey, but collectively, Maltby-Draper-Kocur/McCarty is a part of Red Wing history as the Grind Line, serving as a marker in time, just like the Production Line.

Go to MiHockeyNow.com and weigh in on your favorite lines of all time. As a start, my favorite was the Buffalo Sabres’ “French Connection” with Rick Martin-Gilbert Perreault-Rene Robert …