The Red Wings Will Soon Be Eliminated From Playoff Contention For the First Time in 25 Years
By Nick Seguin
7 years agoI leave for vacation tonight. While I’m gone, the Detroit Red Wings will likely be mathematically eliminated from playoff contention. The Wings face the Tampa Bay Lightning twice (who they’ve yet to beat this season) as well as the Minnesota Wild and the Carolina Hurricanes twice to make up for the cancelled game on December 19th). The quality of competition may not be great, but they have to play five games in six days. As of Fridat, any combination of them losing 7 points and Boston or New York Islanders gaining seven points means they are done.
When we booked our vacation earlier this year, the NHL season was young. There was hope. By most projections, including my own, the Red Wings were a bubble team who were expected to miss the playoffs any season now, but they had gotten off to a good start this year. A six game win streak and leading the league in fighting majors led me to believe that this team had a strong bond and had one more post-season berth left in them. There was no Nick Kronwall due to a knee injury, Andreas Athanasiou had finally cracked the lineup, and Tomas Vanek was rebounding off a poor season that led to the Minnesota Wild buying him out of the remainder of his contract.
But, just like the unforgiving Canadian weather, shit got cold in November. Very quickly, it became apparent that this team’s struggles were not the result of a cold streak. Through the month of December, every post-game interview was an echo of the team’s passionate captain’s rallying cry: “We need to go on a streak here before it’s too late”.
But the streak never came. And on January 1st, 2017, the Red Wings faced the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Centennial Classic outdoor game. A victory at BMO Field in Toronto could have really been a definitive statement that this team was not out of the picture yet. 2017 would be different and this team could turn around their train wreck of a season. They almost pulled it off, too, as Anthony Mantha tied the game with 2 seconds left in the 3rd period. But Auston Matthews brought the Wings crashing back to reality as he personified the trajectory these two teams were on. With a swift backhand that flipped the puck over the shoulder of Jared Coreau, Matthews made it clear to Wings Nation: “Your time is over. It’s our turn now.”
It’s been all downhill from there, as the team has been unable to string together enough wins to at least have them competing for a Wild Card position in the Eastern Conference. At the trade deadline, Ken Holland unloaded four players in a selling spree that he’s never had to go on in his entire tenure as General Manager. He accepted the fate of the season. The playoffs were a pipe dream. Time to cut our losses and arm ourselves for the future.
But the streak is very important to this team and it’s a point of pride for the fan base. It’s the symbol of longstanding success through an always-changing league. It survived 4 lockouts, the introduction of the salary cap, losing all-time greats Steve Yzerman and Nicklas Lidstrom, and countless rule changes. The Red Wings are, in fact, the last standing of the behemoths of the late 90s and early 2000s. The Colorado Avalanche and New Jersey Devils already have a couple of basement-dwelling seasons under their belts. The Dallas Stars have also fallen from grace. The Red Wings, who had perhaps been flying higher than the rest, have finally come crashing back down. The latest change in the league, from old and tough to young and fast, is too great of a hurdle for the Wings to leap over.
It’s a style of management that is just not set up for success in this era of hockey. Long-term contracts to players who have serviced the team well will serve as handcuffs to a cap that is already tight to begin with. One has to look no further than the Chicago Blackhawks for the new way of managing a successful NHL franchise. Lock up your pillars long-term and build around them, doing whatever it takes every season to make sure they have the best support possible. The Red Wings chose pillars too late into their careers and they locked up the support system (that should be cheap and cheerful) for too much money and for far too long. The fall has been hard.
As a die-hard Wings fan who grew up in Windsor, Ontario through the glory years of the late-90s and early-2000s, it’s been especially painful for me to be watching the team’s struggles this year. I currently live in Toronto, so I’ve been very vocal about my team’s successes over the years. I even posted these pictures to my Facebook page every year.
Images courtesy of Google.
Needless to say, this season has been rough for me as I’m surrounded by friends and colleagues who are Leafs fans and I miss being able to fire back.
More than the bragging rights, though, I miss the excitement of contending for a playoff spot and reading about our clinch scenarios. Now, we are tracking the successes of other basement-dwellers, hoping for their success so they might surpass the Wings in the standings and we can end up with a higher draft pick. I realize that tanking is a necessary reality in today’s NHL, but it f*cking sucks.
Booking my vacation at this time was not intentional. I was not trying to avoid the chirping and trash talk that will surely come with being eliminated from playoff contention for the first time in 25 years. In fact, I’m sad that I’m going to miss it. I want to see the Leafs fans dangling Auston Matthews in front of our faces and the Lightning fans taunting us with pictures of Steve Yzerman. I want to read every blog and article about how poorly managed this team is, how much they rely on ageing veterans, and how Anthony Mantha and Andreas Athanasiou’s talents are being wasted on the bench.
I want to be here to fire back at it all, because you know what? We’ve got the third longest playoff streak in NHL history. It’s brought us four Stanley Cups, six President’s Trophies, and fourteen Division Championships. That’s a lot to be proud of. We also have the fastest skater record on our roster. We’ve got young kids who are embarrassing some of the best teams in the NHL. There is hope with this team. For now, we’ll lick our wounds, pick high in the draft, and see if they can put together a competitive roster next year. I believe they can.
If there’s one thing this team has taught me over the years, it’s that they always fire back. By this time next week, they may be eliminated from playoff contention, but they’ll be back.
Now I’m off to California to avoid any backlash from writing this article. Happy Red Wings Elimination Day and we’ll see you on the other side.
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