Worst playoff exit of the last 20 years?

[RedWingsForPresident]

( I took the 95 and 09 Stanley Cup losses out for obvious reasons)

As a fan, which one of these was the most heartbreaking of the last 20 years for you?

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[Super Fadio Bro]

Heartbreaking: 2007, 2011 and 2013 exits.

2007: One minute away from leading 3-2 in the series. They could have played a much better 1st and 2nd period of Game 6 and eliminate the Ducks.

2011: I wanted a comeback to be complete, even if it's meant losing to Vancouver in the WCF.

2013: Game 6. One period away....ugh.

Embarrassing: 2001, 2003, 2006, 2012 for obvious reasons.

 

[crashman]

It's '09, but of these options '03 and '06 were the worst for me. I just remember feeling extremely disappointed because I felt we lost to inferior teams.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

20 years would table all the way back to maybe including 93 until we start the next season. Losing a cup stings a lot, but we got steamrolled in 95', by the time the dust had settled it didn't hurt as bad for me as other losses, it might not even be top 5.

93' Toronto Game 7 overtime, brutal, rival everything imaginable sucked about this

94' Was at this one in person Sharks that was awful, people were throwing away their jerseys at the Joe

96' In many ways when it happened the toughest I have taken one. Remember thinking Draper's career was over, we are never going to win and this team is cursed. A why do you do this to yourself, why root for this team? They terrorized the league that season, were ridiculous, that was very hard to take in the moment. Those of us that believed in 94-96 that it was our time, were starting to feel like Canucks fans now, something wasn't right and did we just miss our time?

06' Knowing it could be Yzerman's last moment made that one brutal. You could feel it and even if he was declining and you knew he was too hurt to continue, it tore your heart out watching him disappear into that tunnel in Edmonton after a pathetic series by pretty much everyone but the Captain.

09' Game 7, don't want to lose a Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, would rather get hammered like the Devils did. The fact Crosby would enjoy so much praise while he sat on the bench with a freaking charlie horse made this one more annoying. But we didn't close and the team likely cost Osgood a Conn Smythe and a locked position into the HHOF. I hope he still gets in, but that was a part of the suck that night on top of just not winning. At least I will always remember that angle.

13' Of course this year blowing a 3-1 lead to our second biggest rival. It hurt but we shouldn't have won the series.

A lot of what has made the Wings playoffs exits pretty bad is of course they are bad as die-hard fans, but also we have no reason not to believe this thing isn't ending on Woodward Avenue.

At the time it was easily 96', there is a reason we hated that team so much, it started there, it started with the bitter feelings over how that played out. It would spark one of the greatest conflicts/rivalries in sports, but if you weren't mad as hell after that series you were very unusual Wings fan. Tough way to end that season, in a lot of ways even tougher than Game 7 in the Stanley Cup finals at least for me given Draper's ongoing status updates and the immaculate season the Wings had, putting them in the position to claim greatest team ever if they pulled off that victory and Cup over an easily beaten Florida in the next round.

 

[WingedWheel1987]

Excluding 09, it's gotta be 06.

 

[SoupNazi]

2006.

 

[Heaton]

Easily '04. We lost Yzerman to a puck to the face, then lost two games back to back 1-0 to lose the series.

 

[Detroit Sports*]

2003.Defending champs. We got swept by the ****ing Mighty Ducks. Then Fedorov goes there that summer,depressing just thinking about it.

 

[RedWingsNow*]

93 -- Back in Windsor, Leafs vs Wings was a huge opportunity to get together with friends and drink beer and watch hockey. Oh, the trash talking. When the Wings won, they won huge. But they lost the close ones. Man did that hurt.
94 -- Ozzie allows 3 goals on 17 shots -- including the famous one to Baker -- while Arturs Irbe stands on his head.
96 -- Losing to Lemieux, Roy and the Avs *I can't Believe I Should His ****ing Hand*
99 -- Seemed destined to threepeat -- All those big names at the deadline. Going up 2-0 in round two with two wins @colorado. Only to choke. Patrick Roy faced 47 shots and Randford faced 24 and we lost game 3 at home. Ozzie came in and couldn't do it either and sucked in game 6. Roy, meanwhile, showed Red Wings fans what elite goaltending looked like.
00 -- Losing to Colorado always sucked. The heartbreaker was game 4. Down 2-1, we needed a win. Colorado scores 3 goals on 21 shots and wins in OT.
01 -- Wings start by winning 2 and then lose 4 straight in round 1. Wings make Felix Potvin look like Patrick Roy while Ozzie looks like Ozzie.
03 -- So, take the 02 cup winners and add Zetterberg. Should be a recipe for a repeat, right? Wrong. JS Giguere, AKA the Michelin Man, stops every perimeter shot the Wings could muster. We lost Grigorenko a couple weeks after the playoffs ended. And then Fedorov left. This might have been the end of the first chapter of the modern Red Wings rebirth.
06 -- Sucked to see Yzerman's career end the way it did.

Since then, I haven't been really sad about a single loss.
The Lidstrom led Wings weren't as easy to love as the Yzerman led Wings. The Swedish indifference to physical hockey, Babcock's favoritism, Holland's conservatism -- the constant overrating of the team by fans -- they've made it harder to enjoy this team ever since.

The loss to the Ducks didn't bother me, even with the horrible hooking call on Datsyuk. Because that loss was a signal of good things to come.
Watching the Eurotwins revive hockeytown was a thing of beautiy,

But the salary cap forced tough choices and Holland made the wrong ones -- choosing loyalty to players over loyalty to fans and customers.

 

[Sadekuuro]

It's '09, but of these options '03 and '06 were the worst for me. I just remember feeling extremely disappointed because I felt we lost to inferior teams.

Neither of those first round losses stuck with me because the team clearly didn't have what it took those years, even if they'd gotten past that particular matchup.

For my money, it's '96 (felt like we'd never get over the hump at that point), '99 (epic choke to our archrivals after winning the first two games in Denver), or '07 (based mainly on the circumstances, I guess... still mad about how that one went down).

 

[RedWingsNow*]

Neither of those first round losses stuck with me because the team clearly didn't have what it took those years, even if they'd gotten past that particular matchup.

For my money, it's '96 (felt like we'd never get over the hump at that point), '99 (epic choke to our archrivals after winning the first two games in Denver), or '07 (based mainly on the circumstances, I guess... still mad about how that one went down).

It's really hard to compete against losing to Colorado.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

It's really hard to compete against losing to Colorado.

It wasn't an option to vote on but 93' was really tough. 93 and 96 are really the darkest hours I have had as a Wings fan. Just seething mad and distraught at the same time. Also that could be a part of this, sure I am still a complete Wings nut, but I don't take the losses quite as hard as I used to. Probably not the same as everyone else, but as I have aged it's a little easier to take a sports defeat, I have always thought it should be for most anyway.

That Ducks team did have a lot of dirt-bags though, so I can see with the younger generation why that hatred and series would be bitter.

 

[Winger98]

I don't know if I could call any of them heartbreaking, but the '99 series was the most frustrating. We were looking good, and then we got steamrolled by injuries and Ranford collapsing, forcing a severely hobbled Osgood back onto the ice.

 

[RedWingsNow*]

It wasn't an option to vote on but 93' was really tough. 93 and 96 are really the darkest hours I have had as a Wings fan. Just seething mad and distraught at the same time. Also that could be a part of this, sure I am still a complete Wings nut, but I don't take the losses quite as hard as I used to. Probably not the same as everyone else, but as I have aged it's a little easier to take a sports defeat, I have always thought it should be for most anyway.

That Ducks team did have a lot of dirt-bags though, so I can see with the younger generation why that hatred and series would be bitter.

Same. It's hard to get as emotionally invested as you're older. You've seen everything. You've been through it. Also, as Wings fans, we've won 4 cups in 16 years or whatever, so how distraught are you going to be after a loss.

Like Sadekuro said, in 96, losing to the Avs, it sort of felt like we'd reached our zenith and blown it. It was said to think about all the criticism Yzerman was going to face and about how the team would probably get torn apart and maybe fall into another 40 year slumber

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

Same. It's hard to get as emotionally invested as you're older. You've seen everything. You've been through it. Also, as Wings fans, we've won 4 cups in 16 years or whatever, so how distraught are you going to be after a loss.

Like Sadekuro said, in 96, losing to the Avs, it sort of felt like we'd reached our zenith and blown it. It was said to think about all the criticism Yzerman was going to face and about how the team would probably get torn apart and maybe fall into another 40 year slumber

Remember it well, this poll is really an exercise in making a couple of us feel dated.

I had trouble between the Avs and Leafs, both times you had a real fear Yzerman might be going out on a rail for it.

Although really the worst playoff ending if you will, was actually after the couple days of euphoria and while still celebrating and buying all the gear and Konstantinov was in the accident.

But that is like 2003, where Fedorov leaving or Grigorenko's accident might not be what this poll is truly about.

But I can tell you even after finally winning that was a tough blow that really knocked all the wind out of the sails. Glad that we followed it up and got some others, because if breaking the streak was just that, it would feel a heck of a lot different.

Before we had won anything they hurt a lot more in my opinion.

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

I know it's not a choice, but 09 has to be it. I literally felt sick to my stomach after that Game 7. Especially with Game 5 being a 5-0 blowout.

Of the available choices... I'd say Flames in 2004.

1) Yzerman went out with a puck to the face in game 5 and with him being pretty old then, I thought that might be the end of his career.

2) They couldn't score at all. CuJo played well enough to win, but the Wings did their specialty of making the opposition goalie look even more spectacular than he actually is.

3) Also, the lockout happened immediately after. I know that's kind of incidental, but it meant that we had to live with the loss and the fate of Yzerman's playing career being up in the air for an entire year.

 

[RabbinsDuck]

Reading some of these posts made me remember that hopeless anger I felt in '96 - which just made the wins in '97 and '98 all the more special - but after that, I never quite had that sense of futile despair that I had in '96 to go along with the anger.

 

[Austin Wings Fan]

Neither of those first round losses stuck with me because the team clearly didn't have what it took those years, even if they'd gotten past that particular matchup.

For my money, it's '96 (felt like we'd never get over the hump at that point), '99 (epic choke to our archrivals after winning the first two games in Denver), or '07 (based mainly on the circumstances, I guess... still mad about how that one went down).

Co-signed. These were the worst three for me.

 

[RedWingsNow*]

I remember going to alt-sports.hockey.nhl.col-avalanche and posting "Joe Who?" after the Wings took a 2-0 lead in Colorado and seemed ready to steamroll to a third straight cup....

 

[we like our team*]

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.sports.hockey.nhl.col-avalanche/h9rMcCy27O4/wTrddc1XOmsJ

lol

 

[Big Poppa Puck]

I'm gonna say 2007, just because Lilja getting pick pocketed by Selanne in Game 5 still gives me nightmares.

2011 is probably second. Coming back from 3-0 then coming up just short of completing the comeback is gut wrenching.

in 99 and 2000 I was still young and living off the highs of '97 and '98.

01, 03, 10 and 12 are just worthy. 06 is too, but you get the heartbreaking Yzerman factor in that one.

This year I didn't expect us to beat the Hawks anyway which takes away some of the sting but almost pulling the upset and falling short was kinda depressing.

 

[Xvash2]

Losing to the Predators in 5. **** that's embarrassing.

 

[RedWingsNow*]

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.sports.hockey.nhl.col-avalanche/h9rMcCy27O4/wTrddc1XOmsJ

lol

Newsgroups were so much better than internet message boards. But you know, people needed their avatars

 

[Heaton]

Newsgroups were so much better than internet message boards. But you know, people needed their avatars

Everything simpler and nostalgic is usually better in our minds.

 

[SoupNazi]

Everything simpler and nostalgic is usually better in our minds.

Personally, I prefer this type of message board to a newsgroup any day of the week.