If the regular season ended today, the Wings would find themselves out of the playoffs for the first time since the 1989-1990 season. Including the 2004-2005 season, which was lost due to a league lockout, the Wings currently have the longest playoff streak in the history of pro sports. 21 years.
Yet it doesn't look like they're going to make it this year because -- in a few words -- they're not very good. Sure, the Wings have had a rash of injuries happen to them this year, losing well over 200 man-games to players that got dinged up one way or the other. But that's life in the NHL, and the Wings are hardly alone in that category. The Pittsburgh Penguins have lost even MORE man-games to injuries this year, but are leading the Eastern Conference while the Wings continue to flutter, at best.
Detroit head coach Mike Babcock recently pointed out something interesting. Babs said when the team was "old" a few years ago, they didn't get hurt much. Now that they're "young", guys are going down right and left.
On the surface, this would seem to be backwards. But is it really? Consider -- much like savvy boxers learn to slip a punch while only taking a glancing blow, perhaps NHL veterans have learned to sense when a hard check is coming, and avoid the brunt of the contact. Conversely, the youngsters are out there throwing their bodies around at high speeds with reckless abandon trying to make an impression on their coaches, so they might stick on the team. Should it really be that surprising when many wind up getting injured?
And there's some Detroit irony afoot as well. The Wings haven't missed the playoffs going on 22 years. The Detroit Lions haven't won a playoff game for -- you guessed it -- 22 years. The last being on Jan, 5 1992. Before that, the Lions hadn't won a playoff game in a whopping 35 years, dating all the way back to 1957, when a guy named Eisenhower was President. The next model year (1958) the first Ford Edsel rolled off the assembly line (an omen?) and this was a full 10 years before the Super Bowl even came into existence.
So if I have this right -- the Lions have a grand total of one playoff win in the last 57 years, and the Red Wings have won 4 Stanley Cup championships since Clinton was President.
Methinks even if the Wings don't make the playoffs this year -- which looks highly unlikely -- they've earned a pass. Streaks come, streaks go, nothing except Regis Philbin and William Shatner lasts forever, and the Red Wings should be commended for their standard of excellence over the last two decades.
And who knows? Speaking of streaks -- the Chicago Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908. That's 105 years. Or approximately the same amount of time since yours truly got lucky.
Nevertheless, give the Lions another century or so, and they just might be able to break that record too. The north-siders from Chi-town are bound to win eventually -- right?
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