One of hockey's best writers is also one of its most underrated. Bob Duff, pens a column for the Windsor Star, a daily newspaper for the city of Windsor, Ontario, right across the river from Detroit.

A hockey historian, Duff examines where the 2001-2002 Red Wings matchup versus other great past teams given the most recent announcement of three members of that team to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

DETROIT -- A centre, a right-winger and a left-winger.

As linemates, Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille could send netminders into psychotherapy.

As teammates, they entered the Hockey Hall of Fame Tuesday forever entwined as part of the last great team of the pre-salary cap era, the 2001-02 Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings.

Yzerman, Hull and Robitaille brought to four the number of players from that club now called Hall of Famers.

Last year, Igor Larionov got the party started. A party whose celebration doesn’t figure to end for many years to come.

“At the time, you don’t really think about it,” Robitaille said. “But looking back, I think that was a dressing room with 10 or 11 potential hall of famers in it.”

Four down, seven to go.

Defenceman Chris Chelios is a certainty for the Hall. Ditto for netminder Dominik Hasek and six-time Norris Trophy-winning defenceman Nicklas Lidstrom.

All of them will be first-ballot enshrinees.

Left-winger Brendan Shanahan and centres Sergei Fedorov and Pavel Datsyuk will no doubt join them when their playing days are done.

That’s 10 and considering Scotty Bowman, coach of that team, was a Hall of Famer before he even arrived in Detroit, there’s No. 11.

On their own, each Wing among the class of 2009 would stand well deserving of such recognition.

Sixth all-time in NHL points with 1,755, Yzerman rates as one of hockey’s legendary leaders and 2002 was his signature performance. In desperate need of knee surgery, he willed himself through the entire playoffs, enduring terrible pain.

“All I did was play the games,” Yzerman recalled. “At the time, I didn’t realize it, but it was the beginning of the end for me.

“I played on a line with Shanahan and Fedorov. We played the trap, so I would glide around and force the play one way or another and then they would do most of the work.”

Hull joins his father Bobby in the Hall, the only father-son combination in league history to each score more than 600 goals and register over 1,000 points.

Robitaille finished his career as the NHL’s all-time scoring leader among left-wingers, but it’s his first season in Detroit he remembers most fondly.

“I was a free agent (in 2001) and my wife (Stacia) asked me, ‘Which team do you think has the best chance of winning the Cup?’” Robitaille recalled. “I said, ‘Detroit,’ so she said, ‘Why don’t we start with them?’

“My agent called and was I ever excited when I found out they were interested.”

The 2001-02 Wings are just the third Cup winner to have at least three of its members occupy the same Hall of Fame class, joining the 1943-44 Montreal Canadiens (Toe Blake, Elmer Lach, Butch Bouchard, Kenny Reardon in 1966) and the 1925-26 Montreal Maroons (Punch Broadbent, Nels Stewart, Reg Noble in 1962).

It puts them in select company, but Yzerman, ever the voice of reason, won’t put his squad above all others.

“I think of those Edmonton Oilers teams in the 1980s, who could put a power-play out of six of the best players in the world,” Yzerman said. “And I think those Montreal teams in the 1970s and the Islanders teams that won four Cups in a row with the same group of players, they were better.

“We had a great team, but a lot of our players were at different stages of their careers.”

Yzerman, as usual, registers a valid point.

Were the 2001-02 Wings the greatest team ever, as some have tried to suggest?

Certainly not.

Were they the greatest team since 1990?

Without a doubt.

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Congratulations should also be extended to Coach Mike Babcock on his appointment as head coach of Team Canada for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games to be held in Vancouver. Despite ending up on the short end of the stick in two Game 7’s to win the Stanley Cup, no one should question Babcock’s ability to get the most out of his teams given his track record over the past decade.

Regardless of whether or not Steve Yzerman was involved in the management process, the likelihood is that Babcock would have been selected to spearhead the bench in 2010. He certainly has earned that opportunity. Babcock also has a past history working with Hockey Canada. He coached Canada to a world championship in 2004 and the world junior championships in 1997.

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A 2009 Red Wing draft preview will be posted on Thursday. A review of the 2008-2009 season will follow next week.


mark.spizzirri@hockeybuzz.com