Rules: it has to be a take you genuinely hold, not just trolling for reactions. It has to be about the Wings broadly, no specific trade rumors or game recaps, keep it to opinions and legacy and vibes. And you have to actually defend it if someone pushes back. No drive by hot takes and ghosting.
I'll go first and it's a real one: the 2009 Cup Final loss to Pittsburgh did more long term damage to this franchise's identity than the entire rebuild that followed. Not the loss itself, the way we never quite got the band back together with the same edge after. We were the better team and we know it and something about coming up one win short on home ice took a little of the invincibility away that had defined us since 1997. Discuss, and bring your own.
spicy take: the 2010s missing the playoffs streak doesn't start with the rebuild, it starts with us being too loyal to aging vets and refusing to bottom out three years earlier than we did. we clung to the streak like it was a personality and it cost us premium draft position. of course nobody wants to hear that the proud 25 year run had a hangover that we caused ourselves.
MY TAKE: Lidstrom retiring is the single most underrated cliff in modern NHL history and we have never once been honest about it. We didn't decline because of bad management. We declined because the greatest defenseman of all time walked out the door and you cannot draft or trade your way out of losing THAT. Everything after 2012 is just the league correcting for the fact that we'd been cheating physics with number 5 for two decades.
@HockeytownHank said:Lidstrom retiring is the single most underrated cliff
hard agree and i'll go further: we should have tanked properly the year he retired instead of fighting for an 8 seed for half a decade. the dignity cost us a generational pick or two. fight me.
I'll give you a spicy one from an old man: this fanbase overrates the 2002 team and underrates the 2008 team, and it's not particularly close. 02 had the most expensive collection of Hall of Famers ever assembled. 08 was a better hockey team built on actual system and homegrown brilliance. We romanticize the star power because the names were bigger. The 08 group played the prettier, more complete game and I'll die on that hill in my rocking chair.
MY SPICY TAKE IS THAT SEIDER IS ALREADY A BETTER ALL AROUND DEFENSEMAN THAN MOST OF THE NAMES YOU OLD HEADS WORSHIP AND IN FIVE YEARS THIS BOARD WILL ADMIT IT. NOT LIDSTROM. NOBODY IS LIDSTROM. BUT THE TIER RIGHT BELOW? HE IS THERE NOW. WATCH THE TAPE NOT THE TROPHIES.
@eddy_77 said:SEIDER IS ALREADY A BETTER ALL AROUND DEFENSEMAN THAN MOST OF THE NAMES
I actually agree with the substance even if the caps lock gave me a headache. The recency bias on this board runs backwards. People assume every defenseman from the dynasty years would walk into this lineup as a top pairing guy and a lot of them were good complementary pieces who looked elite because they played next to Lidstrom or Chelios. Seider does it as the actual number one. The bar he clears nightly is genuinely higher.
Mine's a vibe take, not a hockey take: this fanbase's biggest problem is that the standard we set in the 90s makes it almost impossible to enjoy a good team that isn't a great team. We are constitutionally incapable of being happy with a fun, flawed, competitive group because we measure everything against four banners. It's a beautiful curse but it's a curse. We could be having more fun than we let ourselves have.
@RedWingRusty said:the standard we set in the 90s makes it almost impossible to enjoy a good team
This is the realest thing posted in here and it indicts me personally. I came in to argue about the 2009 final and you've correctly diagnosed that my entire doomer posture is just a four banner hangover. I don't have a rebuttal. I have a therapy appointment.
Late spicy take to close my tab on: this fanbase has never fully forgiven analytics for being right about the decline, and it shows in how we argue. The numbers people called the dead years coming while the romantics insisted the streak proved we were fine, and we were not fine. A decade later we still treat the spreadsheet crowd as the enemy of soul when they were just the early honest voice nobody wanted. We'd have bottomed out smarter if we'd listened sooner. That's my hill.