Detroit Red Wings Tickets

Some of the best players in NHL History have played for the Detroit Red Wings. It helps that the Red Wings are an Original Six team, so they’ve been around a long time, but they’ve been successful in nearly every era.

The Red Wings won three Stanley Cups during the 1930s and 40s. In the 1949-50 season, a young forward named Gordie Howe joined the team. Though Howe did not put up spectacular numbers in his rookie season, the Red Wings, led by other legendary Red Wings like Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay, won the Stanley Cup in 1950.

In the years that followed, Howe began to build what would become an illustrious career. Howe’s game was a combination of skill and toughness. A player who records a goal, an assist, and a fight in the same game is said to have earned a Gordie Howe Hat Trick. He was the quintessential hockey player and earned the nickname Mr. Hockey. Howe and the Red Wings won four consecutive Stanley Cups between 1949-50 and 1954-55. Howe played for the Red Wings well into his 40s and played an NHL season as a 52-year-old. His 801 career goals are second only to Wayne Gretzky.

After the NHL expanded in 1967, the Red Wings struggled for many years. The teams of this era were sometimes derided as the Dead Things or Dead Wings. Finally, led by captain Steve Yzerman and other players like Sergei Fedorov, Brendan Shanahan, and Nicklas Lidstrom, the Red Wings returned to the Stanley Cup Final in 1995-96 and swept the Philadelphia Flyers to end their long championship drought.

The Red Wings won three consecutive Stanley Cups in the 1990s. In the 2001-02 season, the Red Wings assembled a roster you could have only put together before the salary cap era. The 2002 Red Wings had more future Hall of Famers on the team than would be possible today. Joining Yzerman, Shanahan, Fedorov, and Lidstrom were players like Brett Hull, Luc Robitaille, Dominik Hasek, Chris Chelios, and Pavel Datsyuk. The Red Wings finished the season in first place and won the Stanley Cup, their fourth in ten years.

The salary cap didn’t stop the Red Wings either: they won the Stanley Cup again after the 2007-08 season. The Red Wings made the playoffs for 25 consecutive seasons between 1983-84 and 2015-16. The streak was the longest active playoffs streak in pro-sports before it ended after the 2016-17 season.