Motor City need the rebuilding Detroit Red Wings to be their savior

Can the Detroit Red Wings save the hopes of an entire city?

It isn’t a fun time to be a sports fan in Detroit right now and, believe it or not, the Detroit Red Wings may be the one safe bet that the people of Motor City can pin all of their dreams on.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t planning on writing anything about the dire Detroit sports landscape or the Red Wings saving a whole city from complete despair, but this is 2020 and anything is possible.

Plus, you can blame the NFL Thanksgiving Games as the inspiration for this story and why I think the Red Wings have a huge role to play in the resurrection of Detroit sports.

More from Puck Prose

• Detroit Red Wings 2023 Rookie Camp Has Plenty of Ups and Downs
• This Columbus Blue Jackets rookie doesn’t want to be forgotten
• 2 trades the Boston Bruins must make to secure the Stanley Cup
• 3 reasons the Avalanche won’t win the Stanley Cup in 2024
• This is a big year for Alex Turcotte and the Los Angeles Kings

Tuning in to the Detroit Lions – Houston Texans game yesterday, I was actually looking forward to seeing Lions Quarterback Matthew Stafford in action because, quite frankly, I think he’s seriously underrated.

However, unable to protect the ball and despite Adrian Peterson refusing to let Father Time prevail, the Lions got the absolutely wheels beaten off them and slumped to a 4-7-0 record following a blowout of a 41-25 loss to the Texans on Thanksgiving.

To be honest, if I didn’t have a belly full and a beer in hand I may have been more disappointed, but there you go.

It was ugly and it got me thinking – have Detroit sports fans got it the toughest right now?

Granted, there are other options and, being a New York sports fan, I would say we have a case based on the Giants and the Jets alone, although the New York Islanders and the New York Rangers are on the rise, the Yankees are the Yankees and the New York Mets have a new era to look forward to under Uncle Steve Cohen.

Detroit, on the other hand, are consistently hurt and letdown by the Lions, the Detroit Pistons are light years away from being competitive, and the same can be said for the Detroit Tigers too.

Then there are the Detroit Red Wings.

Currently stuck in the midst of a long and ugly rebuild, the Red Wings were historically bad in 2019-20, going 17-45-9 with an appalling .275 points percentage.

They stunk the place out more times than not and if you watched any of their games last year, you would struggle to accept my reasoning that they are the next great hope for the City of Detroit.

However, hear me out for a minute.

They’ve actually got a lot going for them right now, including the fact that the Lions are going nowhere, the Pistons are in a rebuild themselves and it could take years for the Tigers to be even competitive.

So there’s that. But, more importantly, the Red Wings are trending in the right direction under General Manager Steve Yzerman, who is attempting to move into uncharted territory by bringing the glory days to Detroit as both a player and a front office executive.

Yzerman of course led the Red Wings to three Stanley Cup Championships as the longest-serving Captain in NHL history, and he will now look to restore his franchise back to their former glory as GM.

Of course, the odds are firmly stacked against Yzerman given what he has got to work with, but he rebuilt the Tampa Bay Lightning and the team that finally lifted the Stanley Cup this past year had Yzerman’s fingertips all over it.

And, while there is a lot of work to be done, Yzerman has already put some exciting building blocks in place around the likes of Dylan Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi in defenseman Moritz Seider and left winger Lucas Raymond, the No. 4 overall pick in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft.

Plus, Yzerman made a string of smart additions this offseason to ensure that the Detroit Red Wings are more competitive in 2020-21, signing reliable goalie Thomas Greiss, forward Bobby Ryan and defenseman Jon Merrill, while trading for veteran blueliner Marc Staal who will help to cultivate a new culture in that locker room.

Throw the likes of Troy Stecher and Vladislav Namestnikov into the mix, then the Red Wings certainly have the ingredients to be a much tougher out for a lot of teams next season, and if they can start to develop a winning culture then that is only going to benefit their plethora of exciting prospects.

Yes, Detroit hasn’t smelt the postseason since the 2015-16 season and that isn’t likely to change in the next year or so, but they took a huge step in the right direction this offseason and they are riding an upwards trajectory.

The same can’t be said for their sporting neighbours in Detroit and, with a proven GM at the helm in Steve Yzerman who knows what it takes to win in this City, a core that is starting to take shape and a boatload of high-end prospects that aren’t that far away, the Detroit Red Wings look like they could be the franchise to truly save Motor City from itself.

And we didn’t think we would find ourselves saying that, but this is 2020 after all.