I've been working on a new feature for DetroitHockey.Net on and off for a couple months now and maybe it's appropriate for it to launch just two days after a group of fans had to be removed from the Joe Louis Arena rafters.
Back in October I got an email from reader Adam Pavlik with an interesting note about the rafters at the Joe. Adam's question made me realize that despite my own interest in the Red Wings' banners and their placement in the rafters, I had never documented any of that information.
It led me to create a new part of DetroitHockey.Net, a Joe Louis Arena rafter diagram, detailing the position of each Wings' banner.
That diagram is correct as of November, the last time I was at the Joe personally. The thing is, had I made it based on a trip to the arena last season there would have been something very interesting on it.
The Red Wings, by my count, have 66 banners hanging in their rafters. There are two more for College Hockey at the Joe but I don't count those. Last year they had 65, adding a Central Division Championship and a Campbell Bowl banner over the summer.
Do the math and you see that while they raised two banners they also took one down.
What I had never noticed before, and apparently neither had anyone else in the Red Wings organization, is what Adam had emailed me to ask about. Why was there a banner for the 1933-34 League Championship hanging at Joe Louis Arena?
That banner was there when I first started taking pictures of the rafters and was still there in last spring's Stanley Cup Finals.
The problem is that in 1933-34 the Toronto Maple Leafs were the NHL's regular season champions.
For at least ten years (I have to imagine longer), the Red Wings flew a banner that they never won.
Adam contacted the Red Wings organization looking for answers about the banner but none were forthcoming. That it no longer hangs at the Joe is all of the acknowledgement that I expect from the team's front office.
I could spend a whole other post on what I think should be hanging from the rafters, from team accomplishments to retired numbers. That's all opinion.
That the Red Wings were honoring an accomplishment that never happened is a fact. Unfortunately, we may never know why.
Update, 11:20 AM, 1/26: Adam has corrected me to note that he did get a response from the Red Wings organization, thanking him for pointing out the out-of-place banner. They did not, however, explain why it was there.
I'm glad to see this get a little traction. When I first wrote to the team about this, a few days after Christmas '08, I assumed I had made a mistake and they'd point it out. A few weeks later, I was delighted to get a letter back on the team letterhead from Mr. Ilitch acknowledging the mistake. That letter said that they'd "see what they could do" to fix the problem during the offseason when they ordered new banners. I took that to mean that they'd try to correct the problem, because although they did not finish 1st overall in 1933-34, they did win the American Division. And, because they won the American Division 2 other times, I thought that correcting the problem would also spark a re-evaluation of the way the team is displaying their history; I think it is a significant omission that they don't mention the 11 times in the pre-expansion era they finished as the Stanley Cup runner-up. I sent a letter to the JLA General Manager, Tim Padgett, about this in March '09 but he did not reply.
If you notice, the old "League Champions" banners are stylistically different from anything the team has put up since Ilitch owned the team. Everything since he bought the team has been a consistent appearance: a satiny fabric with a double border around the sides. The Stanley Cup banners invert the colors (red-on-white, instead of white-on-red for everything else) for emphasis. The old "League Champions" banners are smaller, with no border, and no satiny fabric. Thus, I can only assume that they pre-date Ilitch. That helps explain my theory for how the mistake was made (which is just speculation).
During the "Original Six" era, the team that finished 1st overall (the "League Champions"
was awarded the Prince of Wales Trophy. However, prior to the Montreal Maroons ceasing operations in 1938, the NHL was actually broken into an American Division and a Canadian Division. During that time (most of the 1930s), the Prince of Wales Trophy was given, not to the team finishing 1st overall, but instead to the winner of the American Division (a different trophy was given to the winner of the Canadian Division); there was no separate prize for finishing 1st overall. The Red Wings won the American Division 3 times: 1933-34, 1935-36, and 1936-37. Two of those 3 times ('36 and '37) they also happened to have the best overall record in the NHL; the other time ('34) they did not. My theory is that at some point during the Norris ownership (perhaps when the team moved into JLA? They had some pretty lean years in there) someone decided to gussy up JLA with some banners, to remind the fans of the team's history. Of course, at that time their 1st overall finish in 1965, when they were last awarded the Prince of Wales Trophy, was a recent memory. So my theory is that management simply ordered a "League Champions" banner for each season they won the Prince of Wales Trophy, and nobody noticed or checked to see that the Prince of Wales Trophy had been awarded on a different basis during the 1930s. Of course, they had some great teams in the 30s, so you can see how someone would make that mistake if they hadn't gone back to check. And, 2 out of the 3 times, they ended up being right: the team DID finish 1st overall.
While I'm not sold on the Wings' current trend of raising banners for divisional championships, I would like to see them be consistent. To me that means either taking down division (and conference, for that matter) regular season banners or raising banners for their American Division wins.
Of course, I'm also in the "Raise Larry Aurie's #6" club. I'd love to see the Wings' organization recognize more of their pre-Production Line history.
I express no opinion on retired numbers. That's a subjective thing; some people think this guy should have his number retired, some another (I think Drew Sharp, in his own special way, said not long ago that Osgood ought to have his retired, for example; I imagine that would get an emotional response).
On the other hand, I think that consistency is important. The problem is cost, though; I think if the team were to start rooting around in this, it they'd have to do a lot of replacing. But they'd be faced with the following consistency issue:
1. Currently, when they win a discrete trophy, they put up a banner with that trophy's name on it. E.g., "[year] Clarence Campbell Bowl" or "[year] Presidents' Trophy." For them to be consistent, they would need to put "[year] Prince of Wales Trophy" each time.
2. However, their current discrete pieces of hardware have always been awarded for the same reason (since the team won them). Every Campbell Bowl the team won was for winning the Western Conference Playoff Championship, for example. But if they put "Prince of Wales Trophy" up, they'd need something that accommodated the shift in the definition of the trophy.
My proposal to Tim Padgett was as follows:
1933-34: American Division Champions [break] Prince of Wales Trophy (the [break] means a line break; you'd write both things on the banner)
1935-36: American Division Champions [break] Prince of Wales Trophy
1935-36: League Champions
1936-37: American Division Champions [break] Prince of Wales Trophy
1936-37: League Champions
1942-43: League Champions [break] Prince of Wales Trophy
1948-49: League Champions [break] Prince of Wales Trophy
(same for '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '57, '65)
See what that does? It visually communicates the shift in the definition of the Prince of Wales Trophy. For the 3 times they won it in the '30s, it's associated with the American Division, and they put up a separate banner (mentioning no specific trophy, because none was awarded) for the 1st overall "League Champions" finish. Then, when the definition for the Prince of Wales Trophy shifted to finishing 1st overall, it becomes associated with that instead.
Actually, Sharp suggested retiring Dominik Hasek's number. It led to a rather infamous exchange where Sharp admitted, "I really don’t care what fans or bloggers think." In other words, he doesn't care what his readers think.
I'd argue that hanging Aurie's #6 isn't an opinion-based thing as James Norris retired it and Mike Ilitch refuses to honor that, but I've been over that before and don't think it'll do any good to rehash it again.
If the Wings were to raise American Division banners, I like the idea you're going with. The Boston Bruins have something similar, where their Conference Champions banners are subtitled with "Prince of Wales Trophy" (yet another of that particular award's purposes).
Although not related to this particular issue, there was another change I was hoping they'd implement as part of my hoped-for reassessment of their historic (pre-expansion) banners. They have another inconsistency. Now, any time they finish as the Stanley Cup Runner-Up, there is something in JLA for that: the Clarence Campbell Bowl banner that is not paired with a Stanley Cup banner. I see no reason not to honor the pre-expansion teams that made it to the Cup Finals but came up short. That's still a huge accomplishment.
How to go about it? Glad you asked:
1933-34: Stanley Cup Runners-Up
1940-41: Stanley Cup Runners-Up [break] O'Brien Cup
[ditto for '42, '45, '48, '49]
1955-56: Stanley Cup Runners-Up
[ditto for '61, '63, '64, '66]
In much the same way as with the Prince of Wales Trophy, that would visually communicate the transition of the NHL awarding the O'Brien Cup (for a time) to the Stanley Cup Runner-Up, while honoring all such finishes.
I'd argue that the Campbell Bowl doesn't honor finishing second as much as it does winning the Western Conference. In the days before conferences losing the SCF was just finishing second.
That said, in the years the O'Brien Trophy was awarded the Wings did win something, even if what they won was for finishing second-place.
Even if that's how you want to construe it, YzerFan, I think it'd be a strange result to recognize a runner-up finish only in those seasons where the NHL happened to give something to the runner-up.
Joe Louis Arena
Credit: Clark Rasmussen
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