RALEIGH, N.C. — At age 40, Detroit Red Wings defenseman Nick Lidstrom has been through the spectrum of the hockey experience, collecting Olympic gold, getting his name on the Stanley Cup and winning the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s best defenseman six times.
After Sunday, the Swedish veteran also is undefeated as what amounted to a general manager. The team he served as captain and helped draft — Team Lidstrom — came back from a 4-0 deficit and defeated Team Staal 11-10 on Sunday in the NHL All-Star Game. And afterward, he stood in the visiting dressing room at the RBC Center and allowed that, yes, the entire weekend experience reminded him of the league’s youth movement.
“I was looking at some of the kids here and when they were born,” Lidstrom said. “Some of them were born about when I played over here my first season. They’re getting real young, and I guess I’m getting older.
“It is a fast game now. We’re an open game now. You can’t clutch and grab anymore, and you have to be using your speed all the time.”
The consensus used to be that hockey players’ prime seasons fell in the 28- to 32-year-old range. Yet on Sunday, the average age for the 42 players on Team Staal and Team Lidstrom was . . . 27.
Among those in the same room with Lidstrom were Matt Duchene, 20, the second- year Avalanche center who had a goal as well as an unsuccessful penalty shot on Team Staal goalie Henrik Lundqvist in the third period; Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos, who turns 21 on Feb. 7 and is the NHL’s leading goal-scorer, with 38 in 51 games; and Chicago’s Patrick Kane, 22, a first- team postseason NHL all-star last season for the Stanley Cup champions. Although Kane is a Buffalo native and played for the U.S. at the 2010 Olympics, all three of those players came through major junior and the Ontario Hockey League.
“To have this happen at my age and to meet so many of these guys is amazing,” Duchene said after he spent Sunday playing on a line with Los Angeles’ Anze Kopitar and Toronto’s Phil Kessel. “I made some new friends. This always will be the first, and I hope this will be the first of many.”
Stamkos was the first overall choice in the 2008 draft. Duchene was the third overall the next year, and the young Colorado center took note of Stamkos’ slow start his rookie season, then his explosion since as a frame of reference for his own early days in the NHL.
“I grew up playing against Matt a lot and played with him (for Team Canada) at the world championships, and now here,” Stamkos said. “He’s one of the great young players in the league with tremendous skills, and he showed it tonight.”
Asked if he felt he and Du- chene were part of the next wave of stardom, Stamkos rattled off a list of additional players in their early 20s that could fill a roster. “There’s so many young players coming into this league and making an impact right away, and you’re seeing a lot more of that in the past four or five years, young guys coming in and playing great hockey right away.”
Much was made of the players who either withdrew or weren’t in the all-star pool because of injury or illness, but that list — including Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby (23) and Evgeni Malkin (24), Atlanta’s Tobias Enstrom (26), Calgary’s Jarome Iginla (33), Edmonton’s Ales Hemsky (27) and Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk (32) — isn’t exactly a roll call of graybeards.
As Peter Forsberg considers returning to the Avalanche roster at age 37, he will know that many players in the league are older than he is, including Boston’s Mark Recchi, who turns 43 on Tuesday. That conceded, the evidence keeps mounting: This is a young man’s league.
Carolina’s Eric Staal, all of 26, already is considered enough of a veteran — albeit also because of the Hurricanes’ host status — to be a captain in the All-Star Game as well.
“I do feel old very quickly, to be honest,” said Staal, who had two goals for Team Staal in front of many of his “home” fans Sunday. “I feel like I just started and was one of the young guys.”
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
Fitting right in
How the two Avalanche players fared in Sunday’s All-Star Game:
Matt Duchene, Team Lidstrom
Played wing on a line with Anze Kopitar and Phil Kessel.
Ice time: 15:47
Shots on goal: 3
One goal, no assists, plus 1
Faceoffs: None
Paul Stastny, Team Staal
Played center on a line with Patrik Elias and Jeff Skinner.
Ice time: 15:34
Shots on goal: 3
One goal, one assist, plus 1
Faceoffs: won 6, lost 8
