9th National Hockey League All-Star Game

Lore & Background

The 9th NHL All-Star Game was the first played under the league's reversed uniform rule, which required home teams to wear dark jerseys and visitors to wear white. The Red Wings wore their red uniforms, while the All-Stars wore the white uniforms previously used by the Second Team All-Stars in 1951 and 1952. That white All-Star uniform with blue and red trim continued to be worn through 1959 and was later adapted into a throwback worn by the Wales Conference All-Stars in the 1992 All-Star Game.

Reader's Guide

The 9th NHL All-Star Game is significant as the first All-Star Game under the NHL's reversed uniform designation, which mandated that home teams wear dark jerseys and visitors wear white. This rule change, implemented prior to the 1955–56 season, reversed the previous policy from the 1951–52 season that had made white the home uniform. The game also marked the first use of the white All-Star uniform with blue and red trim, a design that remained in use through 1959 and later inspired a throwback jersey for the Wales Conference All-Stars in 1992. The contest itself saw the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings defeat a team of All-Stars 3–1 at the Detroit Olympia, with Frank Udvari serving as referee and George Hayes and Scotty Morrison as linesmen.

Did You Know?

• The 9th NHL All-Star Game was played at the Detroit Olympia, home of the Detroit Red Wings.
• The Red Wings won the 1955 Stanley Cup Final and then defeated the All-Stars 3–1.

From Cougars to Wings: Forging a Motor City Identity

The Detroit franchise traces its roots to April 1926, when NHL owners voted to grant a new expansion team to the Townsend-Seyburn group. With the Western Hockey League on the brink of collapse, the new club acquired the players of the Victoria Cougars and inherited that nickname. Lacking a ready-made home rink, the team opened its inaugural campaign in Windsor, Ontario, before settling into the newly built Detroit Olympia for the 1927–28 season. The moniker shifted again in 1930 to the Falcons, but it was grain merchant James E. Norris who, upon purchasing the club in October 1932, gave it the name that would endure. Norris drew inspiration from the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association's winged-wheel crest, a symbol tied to cycling and to the team that captured the very first Stanley Cup in 1893. A red rendition of that emblem, he reasoned, suited the Motor City perfectly. Over the decades the identity deepened: by 1996 the franchise had registered the nickname "Hockeytown" as a trademark, cementing a bond between the club and its fan base that remains one of the strongest in North American sport.

Eleven Cups and a Place in the Pantheon

No American-based NHL franchise has lifted the Stanley Cup more often than the Red Wings, whose eleven championships place them third among all active clubs, trailing only the Montreal Canadiens with twenty-four and the Toronto Maple Leafs with thirteen. The first two titles came back-to-back in 1936 and 1937, with Detroit dispatching Toronto in four games and then outlasting the New York Rangers in a full five-game battle. A third crown followed in 1943, when Mud Bruneteau and Syd Howe powered a four-game sweep of Boston. The modern era added four more: 1997, 1998, 2002, and 2008, all achieved while the team also collected six regular-season first-place finishes since 1983–84. The franchise's sustained excellence is further underscored by its playoff consistency. From 1931–32 through 1965–66, Detroit missed the postseason a mere four times, and from 1983–84 to 2015–16 it qualified thirty times in thirty-two seasons. That run of twenty-five consecutive appearances, spanning 1990–91 to 2015–16, stood as the longest active postseason streak across all of North American professional sport as of 2006 and remains tied for the third-longest in NHL history.

Jack Adams and the Forging of a Franchise

Jack Adams first took charge behind the bench for the 1927–28 season at the new Detroit Olympia, and for the next thirty-six years he served as either head coach or general manager, becoming the defining figure of the franchise. The early years were rough: the Cougars' first playoff bid in 1929 ended in a 7–2 two-game series loss to Toronto, and the rebranded Falcons continued to hover near the bottom of the standings through the early 1930s. When James Norris purchased the club in 1932, he retained Adams on a one-year probationary deal. Adams answered by guiding Detroit to its first-ever playoff series victory, beating the Montreal Maroons before falling to the New York Rangers in the semifinals. The 1934 season brought the franchise's first Stanley Cup Final, though Chicago's Black Hawks prevailed in four of five games. A landmark moment came in 1938, when the Red Wings and the Canadiens became the first two NHL teams to tour Europe, playing nine games across Paris and London. Detroit went 3–5–1 in that series, a modest record that nonetheless marked a historic first for the league.

The Long Streak and the Long Drought

The Red Wings' playoff history reads like a tale of two eras separated by a dark middle chapter. After the early dominance of the 1930s through the 1960s, the club entered a prolonged slump: between 1966–67 and 1982–83 it reached the postseason only twice. The turnaround began in 1983–84, and from that point through 2015–16 Detroit made the playoffs thirty times in thirty-two seasons. The stretch of twenty-five straight appearances from 1990–91 to 2015–16, excluding the lockout-cancelled 2004–05 campaign, became in 2006 the longest active postseason streak in all of North American professional sports and sits tied for third in NHL history. Yet the story takes a sharp turn after 2016. Since that season the Red Wings have failed to qualify for the playoffs in each of the past ten campaigns, a stretch that now represents the longest active playoff drought in the entire league. The contrast between the quarter-century of near-constant contention and the current decade of absence underscores just how volatile the modern NHL landscape can be, even for a franchise with eleven Stanley Cups in its trophy case.