Meecher Keeps some pretty good Company
Back in the day Derek Meech was once Dion Phaneuf’s defense partner. It turns out that Meech still hangs out with some fairly elite talent, in this case the best Red Wings rookies.
Bruce MacLeod has returned to the controls over at the Mothership known as Red Wings Corner. He informs us that Derek Meech was awarded the rookie of the year for the Red Wings. MacLeod makes an excellent point that Darren Helm was certainly the strongest candidate if postseason play was a factor to be weighed when voting.
This is an award that disappears off the face of the earth from time to time. For instance there was no award from 1981-1998. Steve Yzerman and Nick Lidstrom simply were not worthy of being acknowledged for their rookie seasons I guess. The award has been given out fairly consistently since the 1999-2000 season and it just goes to show that whoever dishes out this award has usually known what the hell they are doing when they actually get around to acknowledging the best rookie on the Red Wings. Have a look:
2006-07 - Jiri Hudler
2005-06 - Johan Franzen
2004-05 - None awarded
2003-04 - Niklas Kronwall
2002-03 - Henrik Zetterberg
2001-02 - Pavel Datsyuk
2000-01 - None awarded
1999-00 - Jiri Fischer
During the season - particularly when the team had several injuries in February - Meech was clearly the best rookie on the team. But there’s simply no way to overstate how important Darren Helm was to this team during the playoffs as far as allowing the team to roll four lines.
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