Award winner 2017. The motivation was: Nicklas Lidström is considered one of the world’s best hockey defensemen of all time. During his 20 years in North America, he played for the Detroit Red Wings in the NHL and won the Stanley Cup four times. Nicklas participated in ten all-star games and has played the most playoff games, a total of 263 games, of all Europeans. In 2009, he became the first European to reach 1,000 NHL points and was voted the best hockey player of all time by the ice hockey magazine “the Hockey News”. He won gold at the 1991 World Cup with the Tre Kronor and gold at the 2006 Olympics where he scored the decisive 3-2 goal. In 2015, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. The hornet is lost to Linus.