Hockey fans need to embrace Red Wings streak of 25-consecutive playoff appearances
By Mike Moore
Staff Writer
It begins tonight, a tradition bordering on ridiculous, yet one any hockey fan needs to embrace.
For the 25th consecutive season, the Detroit Red Wings are a part of the NHL’s postseason tournament.
Try and put that into context, or find a similarly staggering streak of consistency.
Good luck.
Some will say the Red Wings backed in this year, playing slightly less worse than the Boston Bruins in the season’s final week, but to that I ask, so what?
If the NHL has proven anything since the most-recent lockout, it’s that any team that makes the Stanley Cup playoffs has a shot at ending up on top.
Sure, that’s a long shot for this group of Winged Wheelers, who spent the better part of the season searching for a consistency that never truly arrived.
The team’s leading goal scorer is a 19-year-old, and some of the key pieces still remaining to the last championship in 2008 are approaching the end of their careers.
According to just about every national expert, the Wings begin tonight’s best-of-seven series against Tampa Bay as the underdog, even if the No. 2-seeded Lighting are banged up at just about every position.
Still, it’s the streak that lives on, a streak of yearly consistency currently unmatched in any of the three other major sports.
The San Antonio Spurs are the only one in shouting distance, having clinched a 19th consecutive trip to this year’s NBA playoffs.
The last time the Spurs missed, the Red Wings were winning the 1997 championship, the first of four during the quarter-decade trek to the postseason.
But why is it so important? Why, as many have prognosticated, let the streak end and reload or revamp what has became a fairly average hockey team residing in Hockeytown?
First, missing the playoffs doesn’t guarantee anything other than a slightly better draft pick, and the Edmonton Oilers are a constant reminder of how better draft picks guarantee nothing.
Secondly, as stated, this isn’t the NBA, where the two teams that eventually reach the finals can likely be predicted before the first playoff jump ball sails skyward.
And thirdly, well, maybe it’s just selfishness.
Growing up in metro Detroit, hockey was a year-round fascination.
Winters were spent watching the Red Wings, reenacting game-winning goals in the basement or lacing up the skates for a few laps around the rink.
Summers were spent in the street, roller blades fastened, and games paused only briefly if a car were to come by.
But it the was the playoffs that drew the hockey fan in. The four-round, near-two-month journey where every shift could alter the outcome of any game.
No other sport has a postseason like the NHL does.
We live in a world of change, where one day’s MySpace becomes tomorrow’s Facebook, where the Minnesota North Stars become the Dallas Stars and then one day the Minnesota Wild.
And in 2016, the Wild and Stars open the playoffs against one another!
It was 1990 the last time the Wings missed the postseason, the Pistons were NBA champs, the first George Bush was president, a Super Bowl ad cost $700,000, Home Alone was tearing up the box office while Cheers was the most popular show on TV.
In 1991, Detroit’s hockey revival began, and tonight, some 25 years later, it continues.
Enjoy every second of it.
Mike Moore is a play-by-play commentator and Sports Writer for JTV Sports. You can reach him at mjm12@albion.edu. He’s also the author of ‘Love, Defined; A Dedication to the Love, Sacrifice, and Magic of Motherhood.’
Love, Defined is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Tate Publishing or by contacting Mike directly.
