They did it. The Red Wings are in the playoffs; the streak lives on.
22 consecutive hockey seasons with the Detroit Red Wings in the playoffs. There’s a good number of Red Wings fans whose only recollection of a world in which the Red Wings didn’t appear in the postseason happened because there was an entire year of their lives in which the NHL simply didn’t play any hockey at all.
That success has bred a lot of hate, delicious delicious hatred. Not necessarily for the Wings though. You travel the blogosphere and you see the same types of comments:
I have the utmost respect for the Red Wings as an organization. It’s their fucking fans I can’t stand.
It warms my heart: jealousy from fanbases who have no clue. The last two weeks, the sheer number of hopeful dickwits out there just praying that this joke of a shortened season would kill the sport’s best streak spanning over what is now a third era for the game has grown large and loud. Boy oh boy did they want the Wings to miss the postseason. Now that Detroit has again claimed their rightful place in the postseason, I have a simple message for them.
Smooch my fart-hole, losers.
Take a deep breath, pucker up, get down there and get to kissin’, chumps. We’re spoiled jerks who take our team for granted. We wail and gnash our teeth in situations where they would just be happy to be there. Guess what, idiots, we did that in seasons where you’re supposed to do that. Lots of you losers can’t grasp this and some of the dipshit fanbases out there are just starting to learn, but when you’re a team with expectations, the first round isn’t somewhere you’re happy to be; it’s a chore you’ll soon be happy to be out of.
If you’re a team that people have attached “of destiny” to when they talk about you, the same rings true for the second round. You simply can’t be happy to just be there because a failure to just get out of that round is a failed season. When you’re expected to compete for the cup, falling short is heartbreak; not sniffing within two rounds of it is abject failure. Red Wings fans know this better than anybody.
Some of you will learn this; others will continue on with their ignorance, willful or accidental.
Right now? For the Red Wings? This is a team with zero expectations once the postseason starts. Every game is an opportunity just to watch them compete. It’s an amusement park ride at this point. It will probably be over before you’re ready for it to be, but if you’re not smiling by the end, you’re the problem. So of course the haters will root for the Wings to drop out as soon as they can and they’ll take a modicum of happiness from it. Let them have it. You have no idea how much that happiness is really just relief that they don’t have to deal with a Red Wings fanbase dealing with an emotion with which we’re not really familiar. If the Wings make a run against expectations, we might crush the hockey world under our enormous balls.
So keep on hating, haters.. just smooch the o-ring first.
Oh, and if you’re a Wings fan who wanted the team to miss the playoffs so they could have a better draft pick in the hopes that it’s better for the team in the long run, you’ve got a valid opinion. Get that out right now though because we’re not going to talk about it until after the playoffs. Try to enjoy what’s going on right now. If you can’t do that and can only focus on what the Red Wings should be, then what you are doing is rooting for a team which exists only in an alternate universe. Since my Red Wings don’t exist in that universe, I’m going to treat you like you don’t root for the same team I root for and you’re my enemy.
Just know that this is only temporary. We can be friends again after you stop trying to bring me down. We’re only ever four losses from me agreeing with you.
