The most remarkable factor about these Detroit Red Wings isn't that they're defying all preseason expectations -- including their own -- by sitting in third place all alone in the Eastern Conference's Atlantic Division, just two points out of the lead with a game in hand on Montreal.
Nor is it that they finally found a way to win a shootout game, as they did Friday night with a third-string goaltender who had an otherwise forgetful game.
It isn't that they're three games into the second quarter of the regular season and haven't yet lost consecutive regulation games (nor had they won more than two straight until Friday).
It's not even that they're doing it without the right-hand-shooting defenseman they so coveted in the offseason -- and didn't sign because all their offers were spurned by free agents who signed elsewhere.
Without question, this Wings team -- which was widely predicted to fail to make the playoffs for the first time after 23 straight appearances -- is one of the surprise teams in the NHL. But the most amazing thing is, they're doing it with a roster almost completely made up of what the front offices likes to call "pure Red Wings."
Heading into Sunday's game against visiting Vancouver, only three players on their 23-man roster -- Drew Miller, Daniel Cleary and Stephen Weiss -- didn't begin their NHL careers with Detroit. And those two have watched more games from the press box this year than they've played, by a wide margin.
Seventeen players on this team were drafted by Detroit. Three others were undrafted free agents signed by the club: defensemen Danny DeKeyser and Brian Lashoff, and center Luke Glendening.
In other words, history seems to be repeating itself. That same build-through-the-draft mentality that founded the nucleus of those teams that started this playoff streak more than two decades ago is having a profound influence on a new generation of Red Wings charged with making sure it doesn't end on their watch.
And the guy who started it all is sunning himself in Florida with a big smile on his face.
"In my 33 years, I don't know if there's a team I've been more proud of," senior vice president Jim Devellano said at the other end of the phone Saturday from his winter home in Sarasota. "I'm very, very proud of them."
And by "them," Devellano means not only the players, but a coaching staff who's getting the most out if this young team. He's also referring to Ken Holland's front office and scouts, the ones who found the players, signed them and created a minor-league system that develops and prepares them for prime time in the NHL.
Scouts rarely get credit for a team's success, though Detroit's European staff has been singled out over the years -- ever since they started finding guys like Sergei Fedorov, Nick Lidstrom and Vladimir Konstantinov in the 1989 entry draft, and later finding Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk in the waning rounds of the draft.
But this scouting staff deserves immense praise for finding some gems in North America, too, even while drafting well down in the first round because of the Wings' consistently good regular-season finishes throughout most of the last two decades. Among them:
-- Gustav Nyquist, this team's leading goal-scorer, a Swede they drafted out of the University of Maine in the fourth round, 121st overall, in 2008
-- Brendan Smith, their best young puck-moving defenseman, a Canadian taken in the first round, 27th overall, in 2007 draft out of the University of Wisconsin
-- Riley Sheahan, a big, strong Canadian center who seems to get better with every game he plays, drafted in the first round, 21st overall, in 2010 out of the University of Notre Dame
All three were key members of Grand Rapids' Calder Cup championship team in the American Hockey League a few years ago -- along with key forwards Tomas Tatar and Tomas Jurco, and goaltender Petr Mrazek. They're all teammates in Detroit now.
This is very similar to how the nucleus of that 1986 Calder Cup team in Adirondack helped the Wings start this streak 23 years ago.
Purely remarkable.
