The Detroit Red Wings have made the playoffs for twenty-five consecutive years. During that time, they've competed in the Stanley Cup Final six times; won the Stanley Cup four times; finished first in their division, conference, and league multiple times; and in an unusual-for-hockey-stroke of hubris, assigned the city of Detroit the moniker of Hockeytown.
It's been nothing short of a dynasty.
However, somewhere along the way, Hockeytown stopped being fun.
It took me longer to find out just how fun hockey is than my dad would have liked. I grew up in Troy, Michigan and when a new state-of-the-art arena opened he camped out to sign me up for youth hockey. The only problem was that I had no interest in this and made my opinion abundantly clear.
I was in elementary school, the Red Wings had not yet won a Stanley Cup despite being an excellent team and I did not yet have hockey fever.
That all changed though with the back-to-back Stanley Cups. I started playing in a learn-to-play program when I was in middle school. It was already too late for me to develop any significant skill; but I could skate fast, play gritty, and make plays. I modeled my game after Kris Draper.
The the league shut down for a year and my interest dissolved. I stopped playing hockey. However as the lockeout went on I started actively participating in various online forums to discuss the game. When the league came back with new rules and the salary cap in place, I became an avid fan.
Eventually my Red Wings fandom bloomed into more of a fandom of the sport at large and that's where I find myself today.
Even still, I live in Michigan and the Red Wings are my team.
And they're just not fun anymore.
Ask any fan and he or she will agree. Oh, sure, there's moments. The blazing speed of Dylan Larkin or Darren Helm, the acrobatic heroics of Petr Mrazek, the riverboat gambling of Brendan Smith, the dazzling dangling of Andreas Athanasiou.
But these moments are too few and far in between.
Winning matters, no doubt. Winning is fun.
But I think we should know that the process is just as important. In the late 90's the teams to beat were Detroit, Colorado, New Jersey, and Dallas. Of those four teams, New Jersey was infamous for playing a boring, low-scoring brand of hockey. They also from what I know were the team that developed the smallest fan base.
So while the Red Wings have had little success in the playoffs in recent years, I don't think this is the only reason why the team is no longer fun. It's not why watching them throughout the season has become an absolute grind.
Instead, it's because of the way the team plays.
It shouldn't be like this. There's a lot of talented players with fun skill sets on the team. There's even some absolutely electric players. But they aren't allowed to be electric.
Why not?
Well, I think it all goes back to when Nicklas Lidstrom retired.
At this point the Red Wings had lost Lidstrom, Rafalski, and Stuart within the past year. The former two were elite puck-moving defenders. Lidstrom may have been the greatest of all time.
Mike Babcock realized his team had one consistent, proven puck-mover in Kronwall and made adjustments. The adjustments were to play a much more conservative game tailored to giving up as few opportunities as possible.
This worked more or less and was probably the right call. However, it also stunted the development of possible puck-movers in Brendan Smith and Jakub Kindl.
The bottom line though was that forwards had to do more defensively and had less to give offensively. This meant they weren't able to entertain as often as they had before. The aging process didn't help, either.
At this point, the conservative Red Wings have become a stale team. The recent UFA signings haven't done much to help.
I had hoped Jeff Blashill would have helped last year, as his AHL teams always played an exciting brand of hockey. We were all disappointed in that though, even if the Wings ended up being a positive possession team.
The bottom line is if this team is going to continue to be a playoff bubble team, and that's most certainly what they're looking at the next couple of years, then they at least need to play an entertaining brand of hockey in order to keep fan interest high.
This should be of particular importance for the team since they have a new arena to fill in a year.
So please let the players and the team be fun again.
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