Will the Last Man to Leave Hockeytown Shut Off the Lights

You know something is up with the Red Wings when Mitch Albom is compelled to come to their defense.  On Sunday, Albom penned a long column, bolding declaring that "Detroit is still Hockeytown."

(Detroit hasn't been Hockeytown, as I remember it, for years, but that's another story.)

Albom, showing that his head is Hollywood more than Hockeytown, Detroit getting by without free agent Ryan Suter, who chose to sign with Minnesota, to Nicole Kidman getting by without Tom Cruise.

Albom's column is cute and all. But if you're a Red Wings fan like me, all you want is for the team to get better.

The Red Wings are measured by playoff wins. It takes 16 victories to hoist the Stanley Cup, or two octopi worth of victories. Last year Detroit won just one game.

You have to go all the way back to 2003 to find playoff season as unsuccessful as the Red Wings registered. Back then, they were swept by Mike Babcock's Anaheim "Mighty" ducks. After the season, Sergei Fedorov bolted for the west coast.

If you remember those days, you know that there was a crisis of confidence around the Red Wings. Fedorov left. Shanahan was aging. Yzerman was not the same skater after undergoing knee surgery usually reserved for old men. The next year, we brought back Hasek and bannished star goalie Curtis Joseph to the AHL.

We brought in Derian Hatcher and Robert Lang, but it didn't resemble Red Wing hockey until Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg stepped up and became superstars.

The difference between 2004-05 and 2012-13 is that, back then, we knew we might have something really special in Datsyuk and Zetterberg. Right now, I don't believe the Red Wings have any young stars who are preparing to take the torch. We don't have the kind of kid who looks poised to follow the footsteps of Yzerman, Fedorov, Shanahan, Lidstrom, Zetterberg and Datsyuk.

That's why free agency mattered so much for the Red Wings. Zach Parise and Ryan Suter are 27. They could have given us great hockey for 5-7 years, and helped us prevent our roster from losing much to age. Instead, we're talking about Shane Doan, who is a lot closer to the end of his career than he is to the beginning.

The giddy days of Hockeytown — the days when we could be sure that we had the best players and that the best players wanted to be in Detroit — are coming to an end. After 7 seasons of fighting and beating league-mandated parity, the salary cap seems to have the upper hand.