There's no dressing this one up: our Red Wings now own the longest active playoff drought in the entire NHL, and it stings to write. We haven't tasted the postseason since 2016, when we fell in five games to the Tampa Bay Lightning in a series that was Pavel Datsyuk's farewell to the game we love. Think about that. Dylan Larkin was a rookie back then, and now, nine years on the outside looking in, he wants out of Hockeytown. Henrik Zetterberg hung up the skates after 2017-18. The banners still hang from those 25 straight postseason trips, six Stanley Cup Finals, four championships — the last one all the way back in 2008. That's the standard we're chasing, and we're tied for second all-time with the Panthers and Oilers now, with only Buffalo's fourteen-year mark ahead of us. But hope walks through the door: Trey Augustine, our 2023 second-rounder, posted a 24-9-1 record with a 2.11 GAA and a .929 save percentage at Michigan State. The kids are coming.
Feel free to follow the link below to keep tabs on our Red Wings as they claw their way back to relevance.
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