posted 2007/05/23 at 14:30
As much as I tried to steady myself for the Wings not winning the Cup this year, last night still kind of hurt. Even though I was angry enough with the Wings for signing Bertuzzi that I was approaching near-2002 levels of apathy for the team, I still wanted them to win, if only to hear Bob Cole and Harry Neale call a few Wings games on CBC. Once again my Red Wings shirts are all packed away for the summer, and as much as I'd like to Ottawa win (if only because it's been too long since a Canadian team had the Cup), my gut tells me that Anaheim's going to win it all just to really tick me off.
Now, that being said, there's something I've been wanting to say all season about the Red Wings that I held off on talking about until after the season was over, but now I kind of feel compelled to say something about it. Namely, I am tremendously upset at Red Wings fans -- at least those in Detroit -- for how poorly they've been treating the team. It was bad enough when the fans forced Red Wings management into so many bad personnel decisions in between the 1998 and 2002 Cups, but if you tuned in to any Red Wings games this season you undoubtedly saw the huge patches of empty seats at the Joe for each and every game. Even the night where they hoisted Stevie Y's number 19 up to the rafters for all eternity, there were empty seats there.
Here's the thing, though: technically, Joe Louis Arena was sold out every game this season, as it has been for several years. What is happening is that season ticket holders are continuing to buy their tickets, but they're just not going to the games. Don Cherry attributes this to the lack of physical players and enforcer figures on the Red Wings, and it's kind of hard to argue with that. Losing Darren McCarty to the post-lockout salary restrictions was a huge blow to the face of the team, and then losing Brendan Shanahan after that just left the Wings without that real grinding figure that I think Detroiters are genetically drawn to loving. I honestly think that's the main reason why the Wings took a chance on Bertuzzi at the trade deadline, even though his injuries made him a real question mark and there are still lots of people, myself included, who don't believe that he has any business wearing any NHL jersey at this point let alone the Wing Wheel.
Someone on CBC reported that over 2,500 Red Wings season ticket holders just never bothered to pick up their playoff tickets, which is as good a sign as any to the apathy that a great number of Red Wings fans have towards the team at this point. I'm not saying I don't understand why people would be less interested in the team now that we haven't had an enforcer in a while, but the number one rule about being a fan of a team is that your loyalty to the team does not waver. Even when I got pissed off at the Wings for buying into the fans' incorrect perception that Chris Osgood was the reason they didn't win more Cups in the late 1990s, they were still my team and I still supported them, even if it was with much less fervor than I'd shown in years past.
I've always said that Detroit deserves the label of "Hockeytown USA" not only for their support of the Red Wings, but because of the long and strong history of both minor league hockey and junior hockey, both in the Detroit area and the state as a whole. (How much free publicity did Stephen Colbert give the Saginaw Spirit this past season?) Still, for people to buy up all those Red Wings season tickets and then leave the Joe looking half-empty most of the time -- for them to not fill up the arena when Steve Yzerman was receiving the greatest tribute that any sports team can give one of its former players -- really pissed me off this past season. I want the Red Wings to get a good enforcer-type player as much as anyone else -- the NHL is one notable exception to my "violence never solves anything" philosophy -- but I can think of a lot of so-called Red Wings fans in the Detroit area who should be ashamed of themselves for the image they've given to Red Wings fans, both here in the Great Lakes area and elsewhere.
Detroit, and the Greater Metropolitan Area, has a lot of things going on now, very few of them good. The downward spiral of the economy matched nowhere else in the nation (with the possible exception of New Orleans, but for an entirely different reason) has really cast a pall of pessimism over everyone. They really want to let off some stress by getting behind guys they can identify with. And that just ain't the 2007 Red Wings.
Although the term "Hockeytown" made for great marketing, Detroit always, and always will, be "Baseballtown". The Tigers just loaned the hearts of the city to the Wings for a decade or so while they worked their way out of their funk, which they did in spectacular style last year. Now the Tigers are the toast of the town, and the Pistons provide the gritty blue-collar style of play that Detroiters can relate to. The Red Wings have become redundant, a third choice of escape for the weary people of Detroit.
The Hockeytown Era is over, I'm afraid. At least until the next Stanley Cup comes around.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon