(Ed. Note: As the Stanley Cup Playoffs continue, we're bound to lose some friends along the journey. We've asked for these losers, gone but not forgotten, to be eulogized by the people who knew the teams best: The bloggers who hated them the most. Here is Nashville’s own J.R. Lind from III Communication, the Internet's preeminent Conference III blog, remembering the 2012-13 Detroit Red Wings. Again, this was not written by us. Also: This is a roast and you will be offended by it, so don't take it so seriously.)

By J.R. Lind

This is not a normal eulogy.

This is not simply goodbye to the 2013 Detroit Red Wings.

This is also goodbye forever from the Central Division and from the Western Conference and a valediction from Conference III, a group Detroit will never join, never wanted to join and which never wanted Detroit to join, despite what they'll tell you ad nauseam.

It is fitting that the Red Wings get two eulogies in one, powered as they are by money made from the brilliant idea that people want twice as much for the same price.

You see, one day, roughly 149 years ago, Mike IIitch, at the time a sprightly 82-year-old entrepreneur, said "People really seem to tolerate terrible pizza. I bet they will really get a kick out of two terrible pizzas!"

Of course, he said it in Latin, the language of his youth, and only Mikael Samuelsson could understand him, remembering the tongue from the first interview he ever gave, to Tacitus for his Germania in AD 98.

OK, OK.

"The Red Wings are old" jokes are as old as Drew Miller looks, I know.

And while retreading has-been jokes is as easy as re-treading has-been wingers, Wings fans deserve more from their Eulogy, just as they absolutely deserve to be forced into cheering for Todd Bertuzzi, the Pavel Datsyuk of the out-of-court settlement.

And Detroit always gets what it deserves. Never in the history of professional sports — and not in human history since the Hansa agreed to give precedence to the Council of Lübeck — has one member been so coddled by its league.

How could we, in this age of rapid intercontinental travel, four-star hotels and medical advances so amazing they make your head spin faster than if you got blind sided by a leaping Justin Abdelkader, expect the Wings to suffer through multiple trips to the West Coast?

How dare we force their fans to watch games that start at 10 PM local time?

They didn't deserve such mistreatment and it was an obvious detriment to their success, with their run of 22 consecutive post-season appearances and…wait, how many Cups have they won?

I keep forgetting, but there is one sure-fire way to get the answer.

[clears throat, turns north towards Michigan]

"You gave up home ice advantage and blew a 3-1 series lead to Chicago!"

[cups hand over ears…waits…calculates for the speed of sound…and…]

"HOW MANY CUPS HAVE YOU WON? IS IT 11?"

Ah, yes, there it is — the unofficial motto of the city of Detroit.

Detroit actually has two official mottoes, by the way: Speramus Meliora — "We Hope For Better Things," because maybe this is the summer a genuine, in-his-prime top-flight free agent finally signs in Motown — and Resurget Cineribus, "It Shall Rise From The Ashes," because sometimes the jokes make themselves.

In any case, "HOW MANY CUPS HAVE YOU WON?" is the lone reply to any suggestion that the Red Wings have some kind of shortcoming.

"Dan Cleary is in your top six?"

"HOW MANY CUPS HAVE YOU WON?"

"You signed Jordin Tootoo and Jonas Gustavsson in the same off-season? On purpose?"