Few Things Are Better Than Beginning to Believe Your Team Is Good

It's Monday and this is the worst stretch of the sporting calendar so you're going to read a very obvious post about something you already know. Sorry. But it's something even the most optimistic sports fans forget when their preferred teams are mired in mediocrity or worse, going season after season without being relevant and sparking almost no joy.

There are few things better than realize a team you've been rooting for, praying that they would one day be good again, starts to prove night in and night out that they are, in fact, good.

People here in Michigan experienced that phenomenon on steroids as Dan Campbell's Detroit Lions exceeded all expectations and flirted with a Super Bowl before conspiring to break millions of hearts in the most devastating way imaginable. Against all odds, a second team in the market is also showing all the hallmark signs of life and it's the most accomplished franchise of them all.

The Detroit Red Wings — and I sure hope I don't regret saying this — are a solid group of hockey players who just might mess around and put together an exciting playoff run.

On Saturday they annihilated the St. Louis Blues in Detroit. Then yesterday they brought Patrick Kane back to Chicago so he could score yet another overtime goal and take a few victory laps. It was the high-water mark of a campaign that has been overt in reminding everyone that this place straight-up adores a winning hockey team.

Forgive me if you already know this because your market hasn't been beaten into obvlivion by a decade-plus of losing but it's awesome. Discovering the NFL for the first time was wonderful yet that's a once-a-week endeavor. Now there's appointment viewing three, even four times per week.

Something about having no expectations makes the beginning stages of rebirth so pure. A sane person safely guards their joy because it feels like empty calories until there's a legitimate body of work to suggest the recent success isn't a fluke. The Wings have now played 58 games and have 70 points, good for sixth-most in the Eastern Conference. If the season ended today they would be in comfortable possession of a wild card spot. If we know anything about playoff puck it's that seeding is nothing more than a number.

Through the years the public has been beaten to a pulp by the idea that only one or two teams can matter in a sport and that not winning it all renders everything meaningless. But this is such a stupid and self-defeating way to follow things. It leaves so much genuine sports enjoyment on the table. The little things, the small yet steady steps are there to be appreciated and savored.

And I'm not trying to sound like some crazed zealot or even dictate anyone else's relationship with the games they love. But I do feel qualified to say that appreciating even a modicum of success feels better than always looking for the negative.

Odds are that this Wings season ends without a banner or even a foray into the conference finals. That doesn't mean it was a waste of time or it didn't matter. Because goddamn is this more fun than losing, which is not a small thing.

Few things better than seeing the pieces come together and finally beginning to believe. Everyone should have more of that in their lives.