Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Lidstrom | Nov. 7, 2025

Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Lidstrom | Nov. 7, 2025

Sorry, what does it feel like to be back here? Have you been to Little Caesars before or? Yes, I visit uh arena year and a half ago with my family. Mike Boff show me in the summertime. What is it like to be here this weekend? It’s tough to be honest with you. Soon as I landed, uh a lot of thoughts came, a lot of memories came and it’s still overwhelming. So trying to control myself, but great to see you guys and uh I follow Red Wings from Moscow time to time. So what will it mean to you maybe at some point tonight to be able to look up and know your number is going to be up there in another couple of months. Um tremendous honor. Thoughts are very simple. Um I got lucky to play with the greatest uh players in the game, coaches, staff and I cannot uh thank enough ownership that uh give me chance and send the plane in Portland, Oregon to get me. So uh Miss Jill’s family did a great job and I’m glad that we won. Finally, we won. So Sergey, what were the emotions like when you got that phone call uh this summer? And was it something you had thought about much prior to it? No, no thoughts about that. Um Chris call we talk about for three four minutes about family stuff and I had no idea what he’s going to end up with. So eventually he broke the news and stopped breathing and it was again I’m going to use this word over overwhelming um memories, feelings uh everything that happened uh just click. So, but uh like I said, I try uh gather my thoughts together and uh thank him um for the tremendous honor and um a little bit in disbelief that u that kind of a things happened to the Russian kid who came to North America when he was 20. Um, and then I remember about Nick. We’ve been roommates for quite uh long time. Right. That’s right. So those kind of feelings and um still not easy to grasp and um put it uh into the words um what kind of January 12th will be nervous already. And then Nick, you and Sergey’s careers were so connected from the very beginning. I’m just curious, what will it mean to you to see his number go up there with yours? Uh first of all, I think it’s welld deserved. You know, Sergey had a tremendous career. Uh when I came to the Wings, he had I think he came the year before I came and Sergey was already a star when I joined the team. And a couple years later, he was a superstar in the NHL. Uh hard trophy winner, Stanley Cup winner. Sulki, you you’ve won everything. So, it’s welld deserved to see his jersey go up in the rafters, too. It’s amazing. Both of you look like you could still play basically. Uh the hundred years, all the history in the organization and you guys are big part of it. What were some of the best memories and what was it like playing for this organization both of you? Uh I think first of all just the history of the the team, the tradition of of the teams. Um, knowing playing for one of the original six teams is very special and and be able to do that uh for a long period of time was very special, too. And then, you know, having a chance to finally win Stanley Cups with the team. We’ve had some disappointing years. We we started off in the early 90s with very good regular seasons, but we couldn’t really finish it off in in the playoffs. and finally getting over the hurdle and winning that first uh you know Stanley Cup meant so much to to the team to the city as well. So it uh it’s been a lot of a lot of fun stories going around uh with all the guys that we’re seeing this weekend. How about you sir? Um, I think Nick said set said it all and put it in really good perspectives, but I like to add that um, fun is a good word for the process we do, but it was grueling fun. We went through a lot of workouts, a lot of injuries, playing with the injuries, playoffs, it’s all about pain in my mind. So, and uh we took it like uh Nick said uh we had a few disappointed seasons but we never thought we cannot done it. Fans drove us support us win or lose bad or good. It was amazing um platform for us to continue this hard working process until eventually to get that precious uh trophy to the city, to the state, to the fans and um those parades uh over 1 million people. I think it was a sea of uh people. Uh it was a tremendous honor to be on that stage and speak to all those people who really want us uh to succeed and really thank God we did it and uh this kind of a winning attitude, winning matter um help uh one another because um it’s not easy. Our team was be uh built from really really good players, superstars. Obviously Scotty and obviously I cannot uh thank enough that uh Mr. family u believe in us through get-go from day one until we finally got the trophy back in town. Uh Nick, do you have a uh favorite memory or moment or game from Sergey’s career that stands out to you? Uh there’s so many games where Sergey was the best player on the ice, but the one game that stands out was the one when he scored five goals against I believe it was against the Capitals. Um I think that when the fifth goal you throw your gloves up in the air like you couldn’t you couldn’t do any any more than that. But but that yeah but that that game is one that that really sticks out. But he had so many good games, strong games that he he took games over all by himself. So, but that one is the first that comes to mind with scoring five goals. And uh Sergey, just what what does the future hold for you? Have you considered like uh possibility of returning to the NHL in some capacity, coaching, front office or anything like that? I don’t think so. I uh like to be uh coach or involved uh with that kind of a tremendous uh grueling process. Um I’m totally family man. I do um help Russian team I work for representing uh ownership who owns a team. I had a great relationship with the coaches and uh guys when I’m there but it’s not everyday job. So I don’t see myself um be honest with you uh to conquire uh in obviously not the player capacity but something else I think coaching or something like that or anything like that not going to be uh on my mind and I don’t say it’s possible I want to stay with the family and um grow grow together with my kids and be around. Nick, a lot of the players, current players talk about how cool of an opportunity it is to have alumni in and out of the locker room, around the arena, and around the building. Um, can you just talk about what that dynamics’s like and for you guys as alumni to have that opportunity to grow those relationships with the current players? Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s it’s it’s a fun weekend for us uh former players. First of all, to get a chance to meet uh all the all the guys that you played with uh you know, back back in the day, but it’s also fun to come and meet some of the current players. You get a chance to to talk to them a little bit more. Now, you know, I work for the team, so I’m around a little bit more, but with for for some of the other players, uh the former players, I get a chance to meet the current guys. Uh I know uh today, you know, one of the players wanted to meet one of the former players and just talk some stories. And that’s that’s one of the the things that we that we share with with the the current players, too, that we we have some some a lot of things that we that we’ve been through that we can pass along and and I’m sure they’ll have questions for us, too. But just getting a chance to to meet face to face and and chat and for them to ask questions and and for us to get a chance to see them up close, too. We watch them on on TV or, you know, we come here and watch games, but get a chance to do close to talk to them a little bit closer than that, which I I we appreciate. I think they appreciate that, too. Yeah. So, for both of you, I would love to hear more about that. Those conversations with the younger players, you know, you probably think even with all the winning you’ve done in your 20s, you know everything that there is to know. What have you learned now that you look back in your careers with all this perspective that these younger players you’re talking to need to take in to get to the heights that you’ve reached? I’ll try. I think uh it’s um um understanding u pro hockey. Pro hockey is a everyday job. Work ethics, character to get the amount of necessary things to to do before every game, every practice, be positive, look forward to um conquire next opponent. But most important thing I think for me if you do have um some kind of a challenges inside of the team in my mind it’s um it’s always been uh probably that phrase that everybody knows the way you practice the way you play. So you practice hard, play, play hard. You have to be a great teammate. And I mean I mean that during all those um practices, you have to push yourself and push your teammates around you to be uh as best as possible. That’s when the team grow individual effort um become way better. And I think um in a short period of time team glued together and ready for another big step in the right direction. Time for one more if anybody else has one. You want to add anything? Okay. just that 2002 team, how fun was it to be part of that roster and how much pressure was there to win the Stanley Cup that year and why not? Uh, first of all, it was a lot of fun. a lot of fun seeing the the players that we that we signed are the players that we traded for to to put that team together to put those a lot of those future Hall of Famers and pretty much an all-star team that you know Ken Holland was able to to put together and with that comes pressure pressure of of uh you know having success and and winning at the end. So I think we had we did have a lot of pressure on us as a team too. But I think as if you look at the group, we had a lot of we had a lot of experience on that team. Guys that’s been on superstars or or stars on other teams that it was it was more a matter of of uh everyone playing for one another, accepting a role that might be lesser than what you had on on another team. And I think Scott was a big piece of that too. big a big key to to our success of of having managing the players that that you have and and have them accept their roles and have them, you know, play as a team. And I think we were we were able to do that with with the experience that we had and I I we had Steve Eisman as our leader. You know, Stevie stepped up and said the right things at the right time. We were, if most of you guys remember, we were down two nothing in the first round against Vancouver, heading out west to play at game three with lots of pressure on us. And, you know, Stevie is saying that, you know, we’re we’re a good team. We’re a confident team and we can go out just to win win this next game. Um, so we did have a lot of pressure with that, but I think we handled it well with with the experience that we had on our team back

Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Lidstrom speak with the media inside Little Caesars Arena on Friday November 7, 2025.