The Detroit Red Wings Season is Over

Just like that. The Detroit Red Wings season is over. After blowing a 1-0 lead with under a minute to play in Game Five, then losing in overtime, the Red Wings put their back up against a wall and had to win Game Six in Anaheim. They didn't, and now, the Ducks move on to the Stanley Cup Finals, and the Wings, well, they hit the local links.

It was a disappointing end to a season where maybe in September you would have said "Great" to a season ending in the Western Conference Finals but as expectations grew, and it looked like this had all the makings of a Stanley Cup winning team, losing now is just bitter. It shouldn't have ended this way, but it did, another season in Hockeytown complete.
AP Photo
The Red Wings, after getting nothing going in the first two periods Tuesday night (maybe they were distracted by the American Idol finale), made a late run at saving their season, scoring three goals in the third period, but it wasn't enough. The Ducks netted four pucks behind Dominik Hasek. The comeback was not to be.

So where do the Wings go from here? Attempt to bring Hasek back for another year is a given, and so is re-signing the ageless Chris Chelios. Robert Lang likely won't be back, and Todd Bertuzzi didn't show me anything in his short Detroit stay to make me feel as if the Wings need to keep him around. The real question is, without an extreme makeover, will the Wings, in their current incarnation, ever be good enough to win the Stanley Cup? They weren't this year, but they also were missing two key defensemen (Schenider and Kronwall) in the playoffs. Would they have made the difference? Maybe.

Right now though, there are more questions then answers, and sadly for the Red Wings, they will have a longer summer then they were expecting and then they wanted to try to figure them out.