Game 7 of the Stan­ley Cup Finals just ended with (Miroslav) Satan’s team the Pen­guins prov­ing the vic­tors.  Pitts­burgh may have got­ten their rel­ished revenge on Mar­ian Hossa (though the mild man­nered Slo­vak has to be the most bor­ing “vil­lain” ever), but I can at least take some small solace in the fact that despite the defeat, the Red Wings are still arguably the most suc­cess­ful fran­chise of the past twenty years*.  The remark­able span has included four Cups in the last twelve years, a period I have been enjoy­ing every minute of it.

Prior to 1997, the 1990’s had not been a kind decade to Detroit sports.  The Bad Boy Pis­tons won their sec­ond con­sec­u­tive title in 1990, and then quickly faded due to age, Michael Jordan’s Bulls, and those exe­crable teal uni­forms.  The Lions had Barry Sanders and a few decent reg­u­lar sea­sons, but pos­sessed the annoy­ing habit of exit­ing the play­offs as hastily as pos­si­ble.  As for those lov­able Tigers, they were in the midst of their very own dark ages, a sor­row­ful streak of twelve straight los­ing sea­sons.  The Red Wings were an orga­ni­za­tion slowly on the rise, but had hit a dis­ap­point­ing rut.  They had been swept in the 1995 Stan­ley Cup Finals by the New Jer­sey Dev­ils and fallen in the 1996 play­offs to the crim­i­nal Claude Lemieux and his Col­orado cohorts after set­ting the NHL record for wins and points.  Then came the 1997 season.

The Red Wings had mud­dled through most the reg­u­lar sea­son until a game late in the year against their arch ene­mies, the Avalanche.  With every­thing from the pre­vi­ous season’s play­off series still fresh in their minds, all hell broke loose.  I remem­ber watch­ing the high­lights and think­ing, “this is a team I want to root for.”  I had only casu­ally fol­lowed hockey before and would have had trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing any Red Wing not named Yzer­man, Fedorov, or Osgood.  The big brawl in that sin­gle game jump­started not only my enthu­si­asm, but also the team as they pro­ceeded to storm through the play­offs, pum­mel the Avalanche once again in the process, and sweep the favored Fly­ers to earn the franchise’s first Stan­ley Cup since 1955.  From that point on I was hooked.

They over­came the Vladimir Kon­stan­ti­nov tragedy and cruised to their sec­ond con­sec­u­tive Cup the fol­low­ing sea­son.  In 2001, they took the exper­i­men­tal route of sign­ing every future hall of famer they could find.  The year long all-star team included names like Hasek, Hull, Robitaille, and Che­lios, in addi­tion to Yzer­man, Lid­strom, Fedorov, Shana­han, and a tiny rookie named Dat­syuk.  It paid off with another dom­i­nat­ing sea­son, another play­off vic­tory over Col­orado, and a Stan­ley Cup title over the Hart­ford Whalers of Car­olina.  And finally, last year the orga­ni­za­tion found an ideal salary cap era com­bi­na­tion of old vet­er­ans and young stars that func­tioned per­fectly as a team from the top scor­ers to the fourth line grinders.  They earned yet another lop­sided play­off vic­tory over Col­orado that was still thor­oughly enjoy­able, even though Claude Lemieux and Patrick Roy have long since retired and defeated Pitts­burgh in a hard fought Stan­ley Cup Finals for the franchise’s most recent championship.

Unfor­tu­nately, his­tory and prior suc­cess means noth­ing in any play­off series.  The Yan­kees’ last two World Series losses have been to the Dia­mond­backs and Mar­lins.  The Steel­ers barely beat the Ari­zona Car­di­nals in the Super Bowl ear­lier this year.  The Magic may even put up a fight against the Lak­ers in the NBA Finals.  Detroit defense­man Chris “Methuse­lah” Che­lios may have already been in the league four years and earned one Stan­ley Cup in Mon­treal before Pitts­burgh cap­tain Sid­ney Crosby was even born, but all that has no effect on the game at hand.  Ban­ners and pen­nants in the rafters can not score goals or make saves as we saw in tonight’s game.

So con­grat­u­la­tions are due to the Pitts­burgh Pen­guins.  The series’ between the teams these two sea­sons have shown how evenly matched and fun­da­men­tally sound they both are.  They cer­tainly proved them­selves to be the best two teams in the league.  I almost wish they would meet a third straight time next year, though I’m sure the play­ers feel dif­fer­ently.  Con­sid­er­ing it is mid-June, I now wish to have a drink, com­pletely for­get about hockey, and root for the Tigers, who hap­pened to beat the Pirates tonight.  Take that Pittsburgh!

*The Bulls have won six cham­pi­onships in the time span, but spent six sea­sons at the bot­tom of the league after their final title.  The Yan­kees have also been pretty impres­sive with four World Series titles in six tries, but things would prob­a­bly be dif­fer­ent if they ever had to face a salary cap (the NHL insti­tuted its own in 2005).  Even with tonight’s loss, in the past two decades the Red Wings still have four Stan­ley Cups, six con­fer­ence titles, thir­teen divi­sion titles, eigh­teen con­sec­u­tive play­off appear­ances, and a league record for points set in 1996.