ok genuinely asking not baiting. if you're like me and your fandom started in the late 90s, you got the tail end of the dynasty, the 02 and 08 cups, and then a long slow decline into a decade of misery. and now we're in this larkin led young core era that, win or lose, is the most genuinely HOPEFUL the team has felt since like 2009.
so here's my controversial framing: for those of us whose fandom peaked early, isn't this current era, the slow climb out with a homegrown core and a real plan, already the second most emotionally engaging stretch of our fandom after the cups themselves? the misery years were boring. this is painful but it's ALIVE. i find myself more invested in this rebuild than i was in the years we were just bad and old.
not saying it's better than winning. saying the climb might be more engaging than the fall ever was, and i don't think we give the current era enough credit for being interesting. push back welcome.
I want to disagree on instinct but I can't fully. The misery years really were boring in a way this isn't. Being bad and old generated nothing but a slow resentment. This era at least generates arguments, hope, heartbreak, actual feeling. You're conflating engaging with good, which I'd flag, but you're right that emotional engagement and team quality aren't the same axis. The climb is more interesting than the fall was. That's a fair and slightly depressing point.
this is such a real take and nobody wants to say it out loud. the bad old years i basically checked out, i'd watch with one eye and not feel much. this era i'm emotionally destroyed three times a week and i wouldn't trade it. pain means you care and i haven't cared this hard since the cup runs. an engaged broken heart beats a bored healthy one. the climb has STAKES. the decline just had decline.
second best stretch is a wild thing to say about a team that hasn't won a playoff round in your framing but i'll allow the emotional point. the decline years WERE death by boredom, you're right about that. clinging to an 8 seed with a roster of expensive old men was the most joyless hockey i've sat through. at least now there's a pulse. low bar. but a pulse.
I think the framing holds if you're precise about it. You're not saying this era is the second best in quality, you're saying it's the second most engaging, and engagement is driven by hope plus stakes plus narrative, all of which this era has and the decline years entirely lacked. A rebuild with a real core is a story. A proud team aging into irrelevance is just an ending. Stories beat endings for engagement every time, even when the story hasn't paid off yet. So yes, with that precision, I agree with you.
The thing nobody's named yet is that the decline was worse than losing because it came with no future. Every loss in 2014 to 2018 was a loss with nothing attached to it, no kid developing, no pick coming, no plan, just an old team losing slower than it used to. This era's losses at least pay into something. A loss where Raymond looked great is a fundamentally different emotional object than a loss where a 34 year old looked slow. nbrennan's right. The hope tax makes the pain mean something, and meaning is the whole game for a fan.
Reading this back I think the consensus is healthier than the controversial framing suggested. Everyone agrees the climb is more engaging than the fall, and everyone's careful to say engaging isn't the same as good. Where I'd land it: this era is the most emotionally alive the team has been since the cups, and that aliveness is itself a kind of value even before any banner. We spent a decade numb. Being able to feel this much, even when it hurts, is the rebuild quietly working on us before it works on the standings. Good thread, nbrennan.
rusty closing it with the rebuild is working on us before it works on the standings is exactly the line i needed. i checked out emotionally for the decline years and this era dragged me back in even while losing. that's not nothing. an engaged fanbase that's hurting beats a numb one every time. nbrennan cooked with this one.
I'll be the old man who gently disagrees on the ranking while agreeing on the heart of it. Second best stretch is generous to a team that hasn't won a round, kid. But you've put your finger on something true: this era made us feel again, and feeling is the precondition for everything else. The decline numbed us. This woke us. Whether it becomes the second best stretch depends entirely on what comes next, but the waking up was real, and I'm grateful for it at my age. We were asleep a long time.