Twenty-five straight years of playoff hockey in the Motor City.
That's a really long time. The streak is old enough to vote, smoke, and drink. There are little kids running around Detroit in Red Wings mini-jerseys who can't remember a time without playoff hockey in their city, and neither can their parents. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to hockey before I moved to Michigan in 1998, so effectively I also have no memory of a Detroit team that missed the playoffs. ESPN did
an amusing article on what the world was like the last time the Red Wings weren't in the Stanley Cup playoffs: no Internet, the Berlin Wall was still up,
Pretty Woman was a popular new movie, their
leading 2016 goal scorer hadn't even been born, etc.
It wasn't pretty this year. The Detroit Red Wings just barely made it in, requiring a tiebreaker with the Boston Bruins since both teams had 93 points on the season. The Wings have the worst goal differential (-13) of any playoff team. They ended the season with two losses.
But none of that matters, because the playoffs start later this week. Forget the regular season stats; playoff hockey is a whole different beast. First round will be against the Tampa Bay Lightning, same as last year. Which is annoying for me, since the Lightning are my second-favorite hockey team, but I'm still fully on board for a Detroit win. Especially after losing a close series last year, in seven games.
Detroit is certainly a long shot to take the Stanley Cup this year. But then, it was a bit of a long shot just to make it to this point. You never know what might happen.
