They're serving Wings dark in Detroit
  

In the West, all you've heard about during the first half is about the Anaheim Ducks and the San Jose Sharks.

In their own division, the critics talk about how a younger and faster Nashville Predators got that much better with the acquisition of power-forward Jason Arnott.

Given all that intelligence, Detroit had become something no one in the Motor City could have ever imagined earlier in this decade.

The Red Wings were an after thought. Detroit was, at best, a dark horse.

Halfway home in the NHL season, the Red Wings stand 13 games over .500 and trail the Predators by four points. From all appearances, they will battle Nashville for both the Central Division title and the second seed in the Western Conference throughout the second half.

They have not been spectacular, but as solid as a rock with balanced scoring throughout their four lines.
 

But this team isn't really about Cleary; it's about the old guard that keeps rolling along.

Lidstrom came off a Norris Trophy year last season, scoring 16 goals and 80 points, a career year at 35-years of age. With four Norris', three Stanley Cup rings, a Conn Smythe Trophy and an Olympic gold medal in his trophy case, that was massive talk after the Wings were eliminated from last season's playoffs that the Wings' new captain was going to ride off into the sunset and not be the one that Yzerman passed the torch to.

When Holland came to the table with a $15.2 million, two-year offer, Lidstrom decided to strap it on for his 14th NHL season and the Wings are grateful he did. While he won't post the numbers he did last season, he's played flawlessly, and is tracking to have a plus-50 rating at his current pace.

While all the regular season talk is about the great things Chris Pronger is doing in Anaheim, Nicky's just being Nicky in Motown. He's averaging just a shade over 27 minutes on ice, good for fifth overall in the NHL. His presence on the ice is both calming for his teammates and dangerous for the opposition.

One of those teammates that needs to be calm is the eternal enigma, goaltender Dominik Hasek.

After struggling through two injury plagued seasons in 2003-04 with the Wings and last season in Ottawa (he missed the last 25 games of the regular season and the entire playoffs with his legendary groin pull), they were oodles of skepticism when he signed over the summer.

The naysayers said too old, too injured, too high maintenance to be considered a prime time player any more. Those naysayers might want to put some extra salt on the crow they're eating.

Detroit GM Ken Holland couldn't have dreamed of a better performance over the first half of the season by the Dominator. Through 32 games, Hasek has a 21-7-3 record, a 2.01 goals-against-average and a .913 save percentage, clearly Vezina Trophy numbers.

Moreover, he's stayed healthy, which is a more crucial factor than his on ice performance at this point in the season. He is one of the few goalies in the league that can win a series based on his history. That's the good news, the bad news is that at any point in time during the second half, that Hasek's wonky groin could go pop go the weasel. Chris Osgood is a great guy in the room and a quiet leader in his own right but his game is far past the point where he could win 16 games in the second season.

While we were joking about Chelios' age, he continues to be an athletic marvel, performing like a man 15 years his junior in his 22nd year in the league. While the offensive skills he once possessed are gone and he's definitely a step slower, he never gets fooled and still has that nasty streak when the time is right. The nastiness is welcomed because unlike the trend back towards North American talent in the NHL, GM Holland has injected large dosing of European flavor on this year's model of the Wings, with no less than a dozen Europeans getting regular ice time.

With the Swedish mafia of Lidstrom, Andreas Lilja, Mikael Samuelsson, Henrik Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall, Johan Franzen and Tomas Holmstrom patrolling the ice, it sometimes seems like the Swedish national team skates in Detroit.

Based on their performance during their three game California road swing, that's not necessarily a good thing.

The Wings looked disturbingly passive during all three matches, surrendering leads in San Jose and Los Angeles and looking tired in Anaheim. As is the case in Colorado, there has been a changing of the guard in Hockeytown and it's no secret.

Back in the day, backstage at a Red Wings game in Los Angeles was like being backstage for the Rolling Stones. While the Red and White still comes out in droves to support the Winged Wheel, backstage is more like an Incubus concert now and the lack of matinee idols Yzerman and Shanahan have a lot to do with that. But when you walk through the Detroit locker room, you don't feel that edge, that championship swagger, you just have a nice bunch of guys peeling off their uniforms.

You can't underestimate the losses of The Capitan and Shanny at the top of the scorecard, but the absence of the veteran grittiness of a Darren McCarty or the savvy of a Brett Hull causes echoes in a quiet locker room.

Mike Babcock may be two coaches removed from Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman, but he will forever toil in the shadow of Bowman's legacy and accomplishments, which can't be a comfortable feeling and he looks as if he feels the pressure with every game.

Talking about shadows, Lidstrom is a class act and still one of the premier players in the league, but imagine being the next guy to take the "C" from Stevie Y? Maybe he should have said thanks, but no thanks; Babcock would have been better served to appoint three alternate captains and let the captaincy cool off for a season or two.

While Cleary is a nice success story, should he really be the leading goal scorer for this team? Just who will be to the go to players come crunch time in the playoffs?

Pavel Datysuk was thought to be the go to guy but his numbers are way off his career year of 2005-06 and the Swedish Connection doesn't have a ring except for the aforementioned Lidstrom. While they have better talent than most, Holland needs to look around for more veteran leadership come the trade deadline.

Looks like there's definitely dark(horse) meat on those Wings this year.
 

Dennis Bernstein, the man behind SCORE! Media, is a columnist for TheFourthPeriod.com and the Los Angeles Correspondent for The Fourth Period Magazine.