Michigan-centric Hall of Fame celebration weekend begins today

By @MichaelCaples –

The Hockey Hall of Fame’s annual celebratory weekend begins today for a group of inductees with significant Michigan ties.

Former Red Wings Nicklas Lidstrom and Sergei Fedorov and Michigan natives Peter Karmanos, Jr., and Angela Ruggiero are part of a seven-member Class of 2015 who will be celebrated in the Toronto area Friday through Monday.

The festivities begin with the Hockey Hall of Fame Game, which features the Red Wings and the Maple Leafs squaring off at the Air Canada Centre. Previous Hall of Fame inductees will be on hand to welcome the new class in a pregame ceremony, and the new inductees will take place in a ceremonial puck drop.

The 2015 class will take part in various activities throughout the weekend, leading up to the Induction Celebration on Monday evening. The formal event begins at 7:30 p.m., and it will be on NHL Network in the U.S. and TSN2 in Canada.

Lidstrom, one of the best defensemen of all time, patrolled the Red Wings’ blue line for his entire career, which spanned 1,564 NHL games. He finished with four Stanley Cups, seven Norris trophies for best defenseman, a Conn Smythe trophy as playoff MVP, and a remarkable plus-450 for his career plus/minus.

Fedorov, a three-time Stanley Cup champion, finished his NHL career with 483 goals and 696 assists for 1179 total points. He won the Hart Trophy as league MVP in 1994.

Ruggiero, a Harper Woods native, was a four-time Olympic medalist and one of the best American-born players of all-time.

Karmanos, meanwhile, enters in the ‘builder’ category for his work with the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes and the OHL’s Plymouth Whalers. The Detroit native also built the Compuware AAA program, one of the best youth programs in all of North America, playing an important role in not only the growth of youth hockey in Michigan, but across North America.orn players of all-time.

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