The Detroit Red Wings' most recent Stanley Cup championship was 13 years ago, even if their multiyear residency in the NHL's basement makes that memory feel protractedly distant.
There were 23 players who appeared for Detroit in the 2008 playoffs. Twenty of them are retired, with three having been subsequently enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Pavel Datsyuk, 42, is playing in the KHL. Only two of those Red Wings are still playing in today's NHL, and both still with Detroit: centers Valtteri Filppula and Darren Helm.
Filppula bounced around after leaving Detroit as a free agent in 2013, skating with three other teams before returning for the 2019-20 season.
Not Helm. He's been a Detroit lifer.
Darren Helm has seen the best of times: As a rookie, he raised the Stanley Cup as a Red Wing and returned to the Final the following season.
Darren Helm has seen the worst of times: As a veteran, he's watched the franchise strip its roster down to the skate laces for a rebuild that's in its fourth season.
"Those first two years, you were like, 'This is going to be easy.' Good team every year. Making the long playoff run," he told me this week. "But you quickly find out that's not how it is."
Rare is the NHL depth forward who carves out a place on a team for 14 seasons. Rarer is the player who begins at the top of the mountain and then witnesses his team slide down into the abyss.
I asked him a question that I was sure he'd been asked on more than a few occasions, by teammates and friends and maybe even family: What the heck are you still doing with the Red Wings? Specifically, these Red Wings?
