End of the year thoughts

The end of a season is always a heartbreaking experience for a team and its fans. It's obvious enough that I am pointing out the obvious, but I think that I've come to learn that each season has to be treated differently for the pain to slowly ease away. Previous seasons, like the terrible end to the 2006 campaign or last seasons Stanley Cup Final debacle, hit me hard and still continue to so. (Actually, I really don't know if I will ever be able to fully get over that Game 7 loss.) Handling a playoff loss, especially when you know that no matter how dedicated you are as a fan, there really isn't anything you can do about the result, isn't always easy.

That's not to say that this year's loss to the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference semifinal was easy to take. It wasn't, we all know that, but so far, I think it's fair to say I've taken it relatively well compared to other postseason losses in the past.

Part of me wants to be objective, I guess, and say that maybe we actually were playing like a team that was a five seed, albeit a strong five seed. There was no doubt in my mind that this team could win the Stanley Cup for the 12th time in franchise history, but I think that after we barely survived the scare that was the Phoenix Coyotes and were simply outplayed by the Sharks, it was just as far as we could go this year.

The other side of this would argue that that logic is somewhat flawed due to the incredible amount of injuries we had sustained throughout the season, and the fact that our guys had played more hockey the past four seasons than any other NHL team.

The Wings had a total of 312 man-games lost this year, a number I'm sure puts us within the top-five in that category. Ten(!) Wings missed at least five consecutive games, and I'm willing to bet we all remember when we fielded the Detroit Griffins at one point in the season, where eight guys were out at one time.

Franzen (torn ACL) missed 55 games. Filppula (broken wrist), Williams (broken leg), and Kronwall (sprained knee) missed 94 games combined. Zetterberg, Cleary, and Ericsson were out a combined 34 games in December.

These weren't just injuries -- they were significant injuries, and I think when I look back on this season one of the things I will definitely remember was this team's ability to overcome these losses, especially the Franzen one, in my opinion, on their charge to the playoffs.

Now obviously that's no excuse for how we played in the playoffs, but I think it's pretty amazing that this team was able to make the playoffs, let alone be a five seed in the very tough Western Conference. How they accumulated the 102 points wasn't always impressive, but it is impressive that we had the seventh most points in the league, including finishing with one more point than the Pittsburgh Penguins.

As Matt Saler said, it makes me very proud to be a Detroit Red Wings fan. We did overcome great adversary this year and I thought that Babcock and the players handled it very well.

These adversaries made this one of the most exciting seasons ever for me as a fan. While watching and struggling through the rough start in Sweden and the "meh" months of October-December wasn't always fun for us, the ups-and-downs of the season made we feel more committed than I've ever felt before as a Red Wings fan.

That, along with the emergence of Twitter, made this one of my favorite Red Wings seasons, despite the postseason exit. It's good to know that such a classy organization has such a great fan base, and I think things like Herm 2 Hockeytown and the great blogs we're able to read prove that.

I look forward to the 2010-11 season and the road to the Stanley Cup. For the 12th time.