Pain is coming to the Detroit Red Wings.



The coming transition is not a one-year rebuild. The golden years aren’t coming back anytime soon and the reality of what the next three, five and maybe even 10 years could be is something the fan base should quickly come to grips with.



The Red Wings probably should have faced this reality a long time ago. In a hard salary cap, without a ton of talent differential between the 31 management groups, the NHL is built to be cyclical.



The Red Wings avoided that cycle for an additional decade because of the Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg draft picks as well as other ones along the way such as Valtteri Filppula, Jonathan Ericsson and Johan Franzen. The two star centers drove the most value, by far, while suppressing average cap hits during the previous CBA through front-loaded long deals.



This delayed the inevitable rebuild, and helped deliver two Stanley Cup Finals runs and one more championship to...