I’m one of those who tends to think of it as several consecutive championships. That’s just how the “dynasty” moniker was applied when I came to know it: A single team on an almost miraculous run when literally no one beat them in the playoffs. “Dynasty” captured that lightning-in-a-bottle feel of going several years without losing a single playoff series.

That’s not to pretend what the Wings have done isn’t unbelievable — and possibly more impressive, depending on context. Just that it’s different. Say “Islanders dynasty” and I think of 17 players who were on all four Cup winners, the coach who led them and the GM who put them together: A special, starstruck run of 19 series victories in a row. Say "Red Wings [insert term … “empire?”]" and I think of consistent, high-spending ownership, some great drafts and player development, two great coaches, and a rotating cast of goalies and free agent supplements to keep a successful franchise churning for a generation.

It’s incredible and probably the best one can hope for in the 30-team, free agency era — and my goodness, if they make it 5 Cups in 12? Unreal. But it still feels like a different phenomenon that almost deserves its own term.

….this franchise should be mentioned along with the Yankees, Celtics, Lakers, and Canadiens.

What TV/Newspapers/blogs are you reading where they aren’t mentioned in the same breath? All I’ve heard for the last 5-8 years is how they are one of the best franchises in all of sports, from the owner to the scouts to the players to the fans. I agree with three of those only, but unless you live in a cave, there is no way you haven’t been inundated with for the Red Wings and the city that god forgot.

I’m not sure I’d put the ‘95-’09 Red Wings quite in the category of 25-year sustained runs on the scale of the Habs, Celtics, and Yankees, but given the challenges of the modern era, they’re as close to a dynasty as anyone really can come, I think.

Damn you.

That must be why Satan isn’t taking the Leafs’ calls…

Well, except shootout points have only been in existence the past four seasons, and the general uptrend has been continuing for 17. It’s really not much of factor (or else I would have factored it in).

Agreed. The Wings are the model by which every other team will be judged against, but a dynasty is a run of consecutive championships. Beat Pittsburgh again this year, then win it all again next season, and then we’ll talk about dynasties.

Heh, I identify with that. I still laugh when I see “HOCKEYTOWN” plastered over everything, because in my formative fan years the Wings were a poorly attended doormat, and the Patriots were “that team that got slaughtered in the Super Bowl and ”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INBayZpjeSY" target="new">had that awful song."

Apparently, I fear change.

I’m just shy of 30, so the Wings may have been bad when I was 10 or 11 or something, but I just don’t remember it. I think they may have been pretty close to irrelevant back then given what the Oilers, Flames and Penguins were doing (and I was living in Western Canada).

Bringing reply fails to more than one blog.

I get what you’re saying, but 16 years is just an insane period of domination… dynasties are usually defined in half-decade terms. There’s an entire generation who has known nothing but high end Red Wings teams (and it’s not unlike the Sox/Yankees in baseball, I suppose, or the Braves’ long run to some extent). I think dynasty is a shorter term of pure domination… the Red Wings’ success requires a different definition… hence I’ll support “era” as the term to be used. For a more particular identifying purpose, right now we can call it the “Lidstrom Era”. If they’re still consistently at the top when he retires, then it’s something else entirely.

If dynasty is of a different time period, then it’s an antiquated term and we can let it die out. I figure there will be a team that has that kind of run.

Besides, if the Wings win the upcoming series, suddenly they have their back-to-back, whereas if they lose, they don’t. Are you really going to tell me that the outcome of this one series can immediately change how you define a run almost 20 years in the making. I choose to see the term as something much more broad and organic than that.

They actually already have their back-to-back, from ‘97-’98, which itself is clearly rare now. Dallas was close, New Jersey was close, only Detroit managed it and just might again.

I absolutely get what you’re saying, and don’t fault anyone for wanting to broaden the definition to simply pick the dominant team of a given era — it’s all a little silly semantics, anyway — but for me it almost describes a historical incident (albeit over 3-5 years) as much as it does say “who was the best franchise in this time frame.”

Watching Pittsburgh fail to three-peat, watching Detroit fail to three-peat, and watching NJ, Dal and Col fail to put a compressed collection of Cups together, all sort of reinforced what a “dynasty” referred to in my mind. Although it’s harder (if not impossible) to do now, when Montreal and the Islanders did it, there were other very good teams who simply failed to break through and interrupt their runs, which were hardly stacked-deck cakewalks. In Detroit’s era, those teams did break through, which tells me they were the greatest team of this era, but they never (or not yet?) had their “dynasty” moment.

Perhaps, but it’s not the same. The difference there is that a 300 game winner is a quantitative value. A dynasty is a qualitative term.

The comparison with baseball pitchers is very good though, and I think correct parallel term would not be a “300-game-winner” but rather “ace”. In Lefty Grove’s time, an ace was expected to make 45 starts per season, pitch 400-plus innings, complete all his games. Nowadays, Roy Halladay or Johan Santana will never get the chance to do that stuff. Nonetheless, no rational person would say they aren’t the truest form of an ace, nor is anyone asking to retire the term, simply because circumstances have made it so that you can’t define it by the same narrow criteria that you once could.