Bragging rights go hand in hand with sour grape disparagement like Guinness goes with ice cream. Truth is, I thoroughly enjoyed taking all the good natured ribbing from my dear brothers during last Saturday’s NHL Connect Community Radio show. Face it when people are gunning for you- you must be doing something right…
If you listened, you know that I spend most of my time giggling at their sassy silly snipes. Matt, and 22 were hilarious (or hi-larionov-ous”)
My giggling, however, was sort of embarrassing. In fact my responses were, well. They weren’t Stanley Cup Championship worthy.
I mean, how may time can you say “Stanley Cup Champions”, “Scoreboard”, and “Absolute Dominance” before you get bored and sound like a tool?
Actually I never get bored of saying “Stanley Cup Champions”, “Scoreboard”, and “Absolute Dominance” or thinking about how amazing these Red Wings are, how great this upcoming season will be and how incredible last season was. Of course maybe I am a tool…
Truth is, I should have had some better arguments last Saturday than “Stanley Cup Champions”, “Scoreboard”, and “Absolute Dominance” and so now I am writing to redeem myself.
(ps: it really never gets boring to say those things.)
I will even enjoy all the flaming and teasing I am bound to get from my non-Red Wing fan friends just for writing this blog ….But it is not those people or my co-hosts on Connect Community Radio that I am aiming at today.
Rather, I’m taking aim at myself for not being eloquent on the radio. Oh and since I am on it, maybe take a couple pot shots at some of the true haters.
What Juice? Who could hate the Wings? A shocking accusation Miss Juice, truly.
Nope, Dear Reader, I swear its true. Some people just plain hate the Red Wings. I have even seen some Connect profile pages that just blatantly state “I hate the Red Wings”- Connect Groups singularly devoted to the subject.
The nerve, why its, its like saying you hate Sidney Crosby and Gatorade…. (crickets).
“Suck it up Juice” I can hear some of you now, “quit whining, who cares.”
I know its not logical, I know its all emotion, but I feel like everyone should LOVE my Wings the way I do. (more crickets)
Never mind, that hating the most successful team in a league is par for the course for some people. Never mind that the Yankees, Patriots, Lakers all have as many haters as fans. Because these are the Wings and everyone knows how logical it is for me to expect that everyone must bow and express absolute adoration and worship immediately.
On your knees people.
Haters take note! This is also for that random guy who professes hate over on his profile page, seeing “red” through his loathing. Maybe even enjoying it and hating the Wings all the more for the pleasure such hate brings him. But what has he actually accomplished? Well, he motivated me, one of the most annoying Red Wings fans here, to write a blog about how great the Wings are.
AWWWW, my red faced “friend”, your hating has backfired. I know, I know its diabolical, and delicious. I can’t help but react to such opinions and use them as an opportunity to tell such people just some of the many reasons they are wrong to hate the Wings.
On that note, here is a series of less giggly retorts, explaining is why I think the Detroit Red Wings deserve better than that special brand of hate reserved for the bestest of the bestest.
The Wings didn’t buy their way to the 1997 Cup. I know some of you think otherwise, and I am not suggesting that the Wings payroll in the late 1990s wasn’t, by all counts, outrageous- it was one of the highest in the league.
However, if you look at the rise of the Winged Wheel from 1994 through 1997, you can clearly see a pattern of, growth, missing the mark, re-tooling and coming back stronger each consecutive year. Yes, the Wings had the Russian Five and Yzerman and Shanny and they were the best team in the league, but that team was built over many years, not purchased in one fell swoop. Remember one of our most important and long term players was purchase for a $1.00. Face it, the Wings can take a guy with raw talent and grow and exploit that talent drive and energy better than anyone else in the league. Guys who don’t make it in a mediocre market come to Detroit and win Cups.
The Wings have had their struggles too. That “first” Cup didn’t come easy at all. We had years of heartbreaking loses prior to 1997. I know there were some very disappointed Flyers fans in 1997, some who are good friends of mine, and I agree that it is heartbreaking to get to the finals and lose. The Wings and Wing fans have experience with that heartbreak in spades. For every team that gets close and misses the mark, please remember Wings have gone through all of that too.
Wings continued their success after the lockout. A main criticism of the 1997 and 1998 Cup runs is the traditional “best team money can buy” complaint. For many reasons I find this one of the biggest sour grapes complaints in the world of sports. But fine. Let’s say this is the best argument you have got for discrediting the Wings organization, well. The lockout and the resulting salary cap obviously did some playing field leveling damage there. Many teams still haven’t recovered from the effects of the 2004. And yet the Wings stuck with their system, and their vision and have remained a playoff perennial and very quickly thereafter a Stanley cup champion once more. In fact, in the eyes of some very important people, This 2008 Stanley Cup winning Wings team is better than the 1997 Wings.
Organizational Commitment. The Wings have an organization that, from top to bottom- Ilitch to Abdelkader, values trust, loyalty, growing their players from within the system and building players into its own vision, sticking with a program that works better than any in any major sports league. Its something that all teams should aspire to not detest. Frankly if your team doesn’t aspire to it, then you aren’t getting to the Cup and you should be directing all that hateful energy toward your own management.
Cocky Smug Wings Fans. Well. First, I don’t actually know any hideously obnoxious cocky smug Wings fans, because if you are a true Wings fan you know all too well that no matter how high one flies, he can just as easily fall. Thank goodness our Red Wings are more Phoenix than Icarus. Trust me, once you’ve taken that tumble a few times, you never take any of the success for granted.
Along side our team, Wings fans have struggled over the years, learned as they have, been humbled, beaten, crushed with our boys in red. We shared ever bit of that long and winding road with this franchise and we earned the right to be proud.
We also know how fleeting such success can be. (Ok ok, I’m giggling when I say that, I mean 18 years of making the playoffs, 4 cups, all the Presidents trophies, conference wins, Norris, Smythe, Bing trophies- I guess success isn’t all that fleeting…)
And while a true Wings fan may seem cocky smug and arrogant because she perhaps sends red handled brooms out to her philly friends every year at Christmas…well she’s really re-gifting because she is getting those same darn brooms from her Devils fan friends… Trust me. We know the pain too.
Please just remember for all the success the Detroit Red Wings have earned, they have suffered and paid the price and struggled just like any team in the NHL- True Wings fans know this and we never forget. If you can remember that and still want to hate- so be it.
SOOO did I convince anyone? Of course not, HEDHS I didn’t even intend to. But it sure is fun to have an excuse just two days before Wings pre-season starts to extol the virtues of the most prolific, well rounded and dominant franchise of our day. How is that for eloquence?
GO WINGS!
ps: you can listen to my radio show Sunday nights at 10:30 EST on www.blogtalkradio.com/nhlcr
Originally Posted on Monday September 22, 2008 @ 07:09 PM EDT at http://fans.nhl.com/members/JuiceinLA/blogs/20757
Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved. No use or reproduction without the express written permission of the author.
Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved. No use or reproduction without the express written permission of the author.
No comments:
Post a Comment