The hockey world is changed. As a fan, I’m supposed to feel sad today, but I don’t. I’m supposed to mourn, but I can’t. The Detroit Red Wings won’t be in the NHL playoffs when they start on April 12. They didn’t even make it to April. One could argue, really, their impressive 25-year run of consecutive playoff appearances ended sometime in January or February—and while you really wouldn’t want to say that anywhere near Henrik Zetterberg, it’s a valid point.
A necessary admission here in case it’s not clear: I’ve been a Red Wings fan since I was a dumb kid who felt bad for them when Nikolai Borschevsky broke their hearts in 1993. They were talented losers when I met them, and I mostly chose them because I didn’t want to root for the same team as my friends. So I came to them for honest and sympathetic, if contrarian, reasons. And yes, I struck gold and my entire life as a hockey fan has been charmed and banners hang forever and blah, blah, blah.
That doesn’t matter anymore. And that’s okay. That’s only fair. The Red Wings are bad now. And not bad as in ‘Some unfortunate injuries and we need a new coach and maybe a good free agent’ bad. Bad as in ‘Get used to paying more attention to spring training for the next half decade’ bad. There will be babies born this summer and beyond in a world in which the Wings never make the playoffs and the Maple Leafs always do. Unless the Pistons finish strong, the longest playoff streak in Detroit will soon belong to the…Lions. And all of these facts are slightly unfathomable, but also perfectly natural.
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And this is where we get to the silver lining, and the reason no Wings fan should despair: Maybe now every Red Wings fan under 40, especially those outside of Detroit, will no longer have to justify it with a story like the one I just told you. For 19 of the 23 years I’ve worn winged wheels, I’ve been an assumed bandwagon jumper; a frontrunner. A Patriots or a Spurs or a Yankees supporter, basically, all worth writing off as someone who will always back the low-odds horse, who views fandom as a way to drape themselves in other people’s victories. The kind of spoiled fan that says “scoreboard” like it’s a full sentence.
But trust me, there are Yankees fans who came on board in the early 90s, and Pats fans who threw footballs with their brother and fought over who got to be Drew Bledsoe. And they all have origin stories. Sports is just sports, after all, and fate twists and fans get lucky. Bill Belichick could have stayed in Cleveland and there would be fewer Patriots fans today, no doubt, but they would still exist. Even the most bandwagon of teams have die hards—and maybe now the Red Wings will get to separate the wheat from the chaff. Maple Leafs fans who have lived their whole hockey lives in disappointment and doubt, should fervently hope they soon have to fend off these sorts of accusations.
Because if there’s a lesson that Red Wings fans—and every fan really—should take from the end of this remarkable run it’s that losing, in the end, is what being a sports fan is about. A fan whose team just won a championship is like the dog who caught the car. The chasing is the fun part; the wanting and hoping is what makes it a worthwhile pastime. This is where so many people’s affection for tanking takes hold. It’s a far more engaging pursuit to dream of what might be to come.
Of 25 consecutive Red Wings playoff appearances, six of them ended in the Stanley Cup final. Ten of them ended in the first round. It’s also worth remembering that, for all the 25 seasons of playoff appearances, the Red Wings “dynasty” that really matters to history spans less than half of them: 1996-97 to 2007-2008, with a missing lockout year in the middle. You can add 08-09 if you’re being generous.
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But before and after the real dynasty, the Wings spent six seasons being able but not willing, and later seven seasons being willing but just not able. Thirteen years not being good enough, even as eulogies are written about a quarter century of dominance.
If you want to get philosophical about it, that’s a life. You start out strong enough but you don’t quite know how, and you end up knowing how but not being strong enough. That’s how this whole thing works and that’s fair. And now? Now we start over.
