Neither the Avalanche nor the Red Wings will make the 2016-17 NHL playoffs.
Yes, times have changed.
By now, few of the players on the two rosters have a feel for what the Avalanche-Red Wings rivalry meant to the game in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when one or the other won the Stanley Cup five times in a span of seven seasons — and the rivalry so often was extraordinarily acrimonious. That’s a nice way of saying that while somewhere beneath all that hatred, there was respect, it could get ugly.
Another page will turn next Saturday, when the Avalanche makes its final appearance ever in Joe Louis Arena, the site of many of the great games and, yes, much of the fireworks.