“I made the wrong decision to leave.”
That was the message Sergei Fedorov wanted to deliver to Detroit Red Wings fans in a video on the team’s social media channels last week.
The video was part of a promotion for Fedorov’s long-awaited jersey retirement by the Red Wings, which will happen Monday night, more than a decade after he entered the Hockey Hall of Fame as one of the flashiest superstars from the Wings’ dynasty years.
“It’s not so much that I leave, it’s just the business side as a whole, I regret that,” Fedorov says in the video. “By far that’s the most, and probably the only, regret that I have. I should have stayed with the Red Wings for the longest time.”
While Fedorov was a key player in three Stanley Cup wins for the Red Wings, the business side of the game twice fractured the relationship between player and team. Now, as No. 91 is set to rise to the rafters, that relationship is finally beginning to heal.
But how did it get to such a low point to begin with? It all comes back to loyalty and broken trust between Fedorov and Red Wings owners Mike and Marian Illitch.
Fedorov was one of the hottest prospects in hockey entering the 1989 NHL Draft, but it was still a time when many Russians couldn’t escape the Iron Curtain to come play in North America.
The Red Wings took a chance on Fedorov in the fourth round of that draft and helped him defect in a scene that could be out of a spy movie. In a coordinated effort between Red Wings executive vice-president Jim Lites, general manager Jim Devellano, and sports writer Keith Gave, the Red Wings were able to sneak a note to Fedorov and defenceman Vladimir Konstantinov while the two were playing an exhibition game in Finland. Fedorov agreed to defect in the summer of 1990, and when the Soviet National team came to Portland, Ore., to play some games, Lites picked up Fedorov at his hotel, and they flew back to Detroit together on the Illitchs’ private plane.
Fedorov was an instant star for the Red Wings, scoring 31 goals as a rookie to finish as runner-up for the Calder Trophy, and winning the Hart Trophy in 1994 after scoring 56 goals and 120 points. In 1997, he helped the Red Wings snap a 42-year championship drought when they captured the Stanley Cup. But it was in the months after that first Cup win that the loyalty between club and player was first tested.
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As a restricted free agent, Fedorov missed the first half of the 1997-98 season while in contract talks with the Red Wings. He competed for Russia at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and after returning with a silver medal, signed an offer sheet with the Carolina Hurricanes, who were owned by Peter Karmanos, one of the Illitchs’ Michigan business rivals.
The six-year, $38-million offer sheet included a few poison pills meant to deter the Red Wings from matching. The contract paid Fedorov a $2 million annual salary and the rest of the money in signing bonuses, including one worth $14 million and another worth $12 million to be paid in full if the team signing the contract made the conference finals. The Red Wings ultimately matched the offer sheet, then went on to win the Stanley Cup that spring, meaning Fedorov was paid $28 million despite playing in only 43 games between the regular season and playoffs.
Fedorov continued to dominate for the Red Wings over the course of that contract, and they won a third Stanley Cup in 2002, defeating Karmanos’ Hurricanes in the Final.
But after the 2002-03 season, Fedorov’s six-year deal was up and he was an unrestricted free agent. While the Red Wings reportedly offered Fedorov a five-year, $50-million deal, he turned them down and instead signed a five-year, $40-million contract with the Anaheim Ducks, who had just upset the Red Wings in the playoffs.
Fedorov played five more NHL seasons with the Ducks, Blue Jackets and Capitals after that, and was routinely booed by fans whenever he returned to Detroit as an opponent. He finished his career in the KHL and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2015. While he did receive a warm welcome during a ceremony before a Red Wings game to honour his Hall of Fame induction, his number was never retired by the team, even as the numbers of teammates Steve Yzerman and Nicklas Lidstrom were.
Mike Illitch died in 2017 and he never revealed why Fedorov’s jersey wasn’t retired. But it was clear that the two difficult contract negotiations were a major factor. Gave, the sportswriter who helped Fedorov first make contact with the Red Wings, told The Athletic in 2018 that loyalty was always important to the Illitch family.
“(Marian) and her late husband, Mike, valued loyalty above all things regarding their players and employees,” Gave wrote in an email to The Athletic. “Not once, but twice, Sergei Fedorov betrayed them. … They weren’t happy.”
Christopher Illitch, the son of Mike and Marian and current CEO of the company that owns the Red Wings, was the one to call Fedorov in the summer to let him know his number was finally being retired.
“My parents, Mike and Marian Ilitch, had a special reverence for Sergei as one of the most dynamic and charismatic players of his era, and someone who made a tremendous impact on our organization,” Illitch said in a press release announcing the honour.
The ceremony, which will come before a game against the same Hurricanes team that tried to pry Fedorov away nearly 20 years ago, will be the final step in mending a relationship between a team and one of its greatest players.
Better late than never.
