The Red Wings not only won a lot of games in their 1990s and 2000s heyday, but they also made the most of their talented rosters to win the Stanley Cup four times in this stretch. Common reverence for this era of Red Wings hockey shows how much championships matter for public perception.

For 18 years from 1997 to 2015, the Red Wings had the most wins in the NHL over a 10 year stretch. Spanning from 1987 to 1997, all the way to 2005 to 2015, no team won more games than Detroit. Fed by legends of the game like Steve Yzerman, Nick Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk, the Russian Five, Brendan Shanahan — yeah, you get the picture — these Red Wings teams were the most dominant of their era.

This data, courtesy of hockey analytics account JFresh, illustrates just how good these Detroit teams of the ‘90s and ‘00s were, but that’s not why we all remember them. We remember these red-hot Red Wings teams because they won the Stanley Cup — four times, to be exact. We remember them as champions, not just teams that won a lot of games. 

We can observe our own championship bias just by looking at who we've forgotten from this data. Just go down the list of these top-five teams over a 10-year span. During the late era of Red Wings dominance, the San Jose Sharks were second-best by record, and yet these teams’ success with the likes of Joe Thornton, Joe Pavelski and Patrick Marleau are shrugged off as a missed opportunity and little more. Vancouver rides in the same boat, perhaps more notorious for choking in 2011 than being one of the early 2010s’ best franchises. Legion of Doom Philly in the ‘90s, Cam Neely’s Bruins, the ‘00s Ottawa Senators — all these teams are some of the best of their day, and yet we hardly remember them compared to their championship counterparts. 

Meanwhile, we remember the 2010’s Chicago Blackhawks as one of the best dynasties in hockey, yet they only cracked the top 5 in 10-year average wins for a four-year stretch from 2006-16 to 2009-19 — and they never broke past third place. The Tampa Bay Lightning that have been definitively one of the best in the past 10 or so years haven't been the best of any 10-year stretches. Instead, two Stanley Cups do a lot of talking.

Out of all the teams who managed to consistently win games and win championships, the ‘90s-’00s Red Wings are only really matched by the 1970s and ‘80s Montreal Canadiens. It's no wonder that these are two of the most dominant franchises of their era, ones whose excellence transcends the sport in some ways. They weren't just champions, but they were dominant champions. But without those rings, those Stanley Cups hoisted over their head, this dominance wouldn't mean a whole lot.

Other great dynasties haven't been nearly as dominant as the Red Wings, for context. Even the '80s eras of Isles and Oilers dominance, and even the rise of the Sidney Crosby Penguins and Alex Ovechkin Capitals have been rather fleeting in comparison to such a long span where Detroit was No. 1. The Red Wings are the rare program that did it all. It’s almost obligatory for me to note that an era this dominant is hard to fathom in the modern NHL — it probably will never happen with the salary cap in place, unless some team has a hall of fame scouting staff and even better development departments. It’s really hard to be dominant for a couple years in the modern NHL, let alone 10. Maybe a 10-year average is unfair to teams like the Blackhawks and Lightning in recent years, whose championship efforts are too hard to sustain over such a long span of time.

The '90s and '00s Red Wings are exceptional, but the reason we revere their glory years shows the way we value championships over all other criteria. Detroit won titles that no one can take from them, that no memory can forget about when all the win percentages fade.

So why do we value championships so much? Maybe it’s their definitive nature, the way that a shiny piece of hardware negates all arguments of who was the best team in a season. Maybe it’s because championships are a lot more immediate than looking at a 10-year win percentage — it jumps off the page, rather than hiding in the trend lines. Regardless of why, we attribute dominance to championships more so than win percentages, but the Red Wings of their glory years have been the most shining example of a team that did both.

Ultimately, this is a valuable observation to take into the closing years of Detroit’s rebuild, when the Red Wings will be judged by win percentage and championships with a competent roster built with talented prospects. Being a dominant, memorable team isn’t so much about winning the most games, but winning the most important ones — the playoff games, the Stanley Cup Finals, the games that build the lore of legends. The Red Wings have to win games to get there, that’s for certain, but the success of their franchise will be determined in hindsight based on the championships they might win. Win percentages will largely be forgotten if they can’t win it all.

That’s all a perspective to use in the future — Detroit still hasn’t made a playoff round in eight years, so let’s not put any carts before their proverbial horses. But this data shows us a valuable reason why the Red Wings of old are so revered. It shows that championships are the ultimate goal. All other wins are forgettable for the average fan, just like all Detroit’s dominant peers who fell short.

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