Wednesday, February 13, 2008

16 Years Of Cup-Worthiness Makes Us Take Red Wings For Granted

It's going to be asked around the water cooler at work, over the airwaves on sports talk radio, and in some of the area's finer establishments -- and even the not-so-finer. And it will go something like this:

"Do the Red Wings have a shot at the Stanley Cup this spring?"

Brief pause.

"You know, I think so. They look tough enough, and deep enough."

OR

"The regular season doesn't mean squat. And Dan Cleary's hurt, and so too Dominik Hasek. Chris Osgood is showing signs of fading. The Anaheim Ducks got Teemu Selanne and Scott Niedermayer back."

Well? DO they have a shot?

"I don't know ... I'm cautiously optimistic."

It'll go like this, off-and-on, the closer we get to the end of the regular season. Perhaps some doubting Thomases were won over by the team's advancing to the conference finals last May. Who knows.

But one thing is certain, and it simply cannot be overstated -- though I'm going to give it a shot here, you can rest assured -- the fact that we've been able to ask that question of the Red Wings, with complete legitimacy, for 16 springs in a row now, is stunning in its amazement. And I really hope you appreciate that.

Think about it for a moment. Is there any team, in any of the four major pro sports, that can honestly say that it has been a serious contender for its sport's championship for 16 years running?

Let's take a look around, shall we?

In football, have the New England Patriots been football gods for 16 years in a row? Uh-uh. In fact, 16 years ago, the Pats were trying the ill-fated Dick MacPherson coaching experiment (he came from Syracuse), and were bottoming out before Bill Parcells rescued them. The Packers have been very good, but not Super Bowl-like during the past 16 years, which perfectly coincides with Brett Favre's time there. They've certainly had their ups and downs. The Cowboys have been downright wretched in between Super Bowl-contending years. Don't ask about the 49ers, Bills, or Redskins, either.

Not even in baseball, where the Yankees have had outstanding years under Joe Torre, is there a team that's been October-worthy for 16 years straight.

Basketball's cupboard is dry in this department, too.

That leaves the Red Wings, who ever since the 1991-92 season have been not only playoff qualifiers, but a good bet to go all the way. The Wings have never, since '92, simply snuck into the playoffs as a fraudulent team. They have endured some rotten playoff losses and disappointments, for sure. There've been some strange first round encounters. But that doesn't alter the fact that even in those years where the end has come too soon, the Wings went into the post-season as a team many talked about as hoisting the Stanley Cup when all was said and done.

I'm sorry, but I find that fascinating -- that we've been talking about the Red Wings winning the Cup ever since the end of the FIRST Bush Administration.

Not sure why I bring this up now, except that I had been thinking about it for awhile but never splashed it on this blog. And I guess it became a little more topical this season, with all the whining about how Joe Louis Arena's red seat cushions have been showing in their upright positions with alarming frequency for the TV cameras.

It could be that Hockeytown's denizens are taking their team for granted.

But I also want to serve as a reminder this point: as gut-wrenching as 1996, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, and 2006 were in terms of how the Red Wings bowed out of the playoffs, know two things. Number one, on several of those occasions the team that drummed the Wings out of the playoffs went on to the Cup Finals themselves. Second, at least the team was good enough to even BE disappointed with their playoff exodus. How many teams in sports are lauded for simply playing beyond the regular season?

You can't win the ring every gosh darn year, you know. Though some have tried, like the 1960s Celtics and the 1950s Yankees. But even they failed here and there.

The Wings have lost four in a row, in an NHL sort of way. They're actually 0-3-1, but it's still considered 0-4. Go figure. Those silly overtime/shootout rules! Anyhow, despite that little lull, the team is running away with things in their division, and all of hockey for that matter. They'll go into the playoffs as -- guess what? -- prime-time Cup contenders.

Yawn.

Shame on us -- and that includes you and me -- for not talking about this streak more, and with the appropriate awe.

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