Worth the effort? The Red Wings are the latest Presidents' Trophy winner to make an early exit from the postseason

Hockey Digest, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Karl Samuelson

THE 2003-04 DETROIT RED WINGS, 2002-03 Ottawa Senators and 1999-2000 St. Louis Blues have more in common than just being winners of the Presidents' Trophy. Each team established dominance over the course of 82 games. Nothing could derail their drive to become the NHL's best regular-season team. Not even injuries to key players could deter them from their quest. They consistently demonstrated their superiority against bitter rivals and teams from outside their division. So dominant were these teams that the only question posed by pundits was which team from the other Conference would meet them in the Stanley Cup final. But the playoffs told another story. And not just for those teams.

The same destiny was accorded other Presidents' Trophy winners who met a premature demise in the postseason, including the 1997-98 Dallas Stars, 1996-97 Colorado Avalanche and two consecutive Detroit squads in 1995 and 1996. In fact, seven of the past 10 regular season champions have been upset in the playoffs during the past decade. Little wonder people are asking ... is it really worth the hard push during the regular season when all anyone remembers is the playoffs?

"Here's out feeling here in Detroit," explains Jim Devellano, the Red Wings Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations. "We have a good franchise here, and I've had this feeling since the day I arrived 22 years ago. We sell 17,000 season tickets and we have played to a string of sellouts going back to the late 1980s. The reason we charge a lot of money for our tickets is we constantly put a pretty competitive team on the ice with a lot of stars and that costs a lot of money. As an organization, we feel an obligation to the people who buy our tickets in the regular season. We take the regular season very seriously and we try to win in the regular season and we don't hold up. We go for it."

Detroit has iced a contender in each of the past dozen years. Yet the Red Wings have learned through bitter experience that winning the trophy that goes to the NHL's best regular-season team hasn't been a good barometer of postseason success.

"We've been shocked and upset over the years," responds Devellano. "I remember in 1994 when we were the first seed in the Western Conference and being upset by the San Jose Sharks who were the eighth seed. I'm not sure that any (playoff series) was more shocking than that one. The year before we took a 2-0 games lead over the Toronto Maple Leafs, then a 3-2 lead only to lose in Game Seven (of the opening round of the 1993 playoffs) when Nikolai Borschevsky scored in overtime. We've been upset a lot over the years. That's part of sports and it always will be."

Of all the great Detroit teams in recent years, none was more impressive than the 1995-96 Red Wings. They finished atop the league with an incredible 62 victories and a franchise-best 131 points. Sergei Fedorov cemented his reputation as a two-way superstar by capturing the Selke Trophy after finishing the year with 107 points in 78 games and an astounding Pins/Minus rating of 49. Fedorov's offensive output was complimented by other future Hall of Famers such as Steve Yzerman (95 points), Paul Coffey (74 points) and Nicklas Lidstrom (67 points). But the Red Wings didn't just boast a high-octane attack. They had the fewest goals against in the league, and goaltenders Chris Osgood and Mike Vernon earned the Jennings Trophy for their outstanding work between the pipes.

As the 1996 playoffs approached, Detroit supporters were euphoric about their team's chances of ending their 40-year Stanley Cup drought. This had to be the year. After as all, they reached the Stanley Cup final the year before only to lose in four straight games to the New Jersey Devils, Surely previous playoff upsets had taught them a lesson.

Detroit's first playoff opponent did nothing early in the series to suggest that this was going to be anything but a sweep. The Winnipeg Jets were clearly outplayed in lopsided 4-1 and 4-0 losses before rebounding in Game Three with a 4-1 victory of their own. The stubborn Jets eventually succumbed to Detroit in six games.

Series Two appeared to be a replay of the Jets series with Detroit winning the first two games by scores of 3-2 and 8.3. But the Blues took command with three consecutive victories. The Red Wings bounced back with a 4-2 win in Game Six, setting up a dramatic Game Seven at Joe Louis Arena. Only a blast from Yzerman's stick at 21:15 of overtime broke the scoreless tie and salvaged a series for Detroit that could just as easily have been won by St. Louis.

Reality set in during the Western Conference final when Detroit was eliminated in six games by the eventual Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, thereby establishing one of the most intense rivalries in recent rimes. Interestingly, the tables were turned the next year (1996-97) when the Avalanche won the Presidents' Trophy on the strength of 49 wins but lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Red Wings, who managed 11 legs wins during the regular season than their rivals in Denver. The 1997-98 campaign saw the Dallas Stars emerge as the winner of the Presidents' Trophy but in the playoffs it was again all Detroit as the Red Wings battled to their second consecutive championship. Perhaps that's the operative word in the playoffs ... battle.