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The Detroit Red Wings are currently in the midst of a seven-game losing streak and without their best player (and captain), and it’s hard to ignore the fact that the current woes began around the same time the team unveiled the first jersey ad in the history of the franchise.
No one really thought the Detroit Red Wings would be top contenders for the Stanley Cup heading into the current NHL season, and the team didn’t exactly defy expectations when you consider it was sitting at 26-24 heading into the All-Star Break.
However, things took a very interesting turn midway through February when the Red Wings rattled off a six-game winning streak to improve to 33-26 and headed into March with a 76% chance of making the playoffs.
The Red Wings were one of the 15 teams in the league that declined to link up with a corporate partner for a jersey ad when the season kicked off, but on February 29th, they announced they’d inked a deal with Priority (a Michigan-based waste management company) before debuting the new patches in their showdown with the Islanders.
Welcome to Hockeytown, Priority. pic.twitter.com/xbsFMVWYBq
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) February 29, 2024
Detroit lost that contest by a score of 5-3, and a couple of days later, center and captain Dylan Larkin was knocked out of contention for at least a couple of weeks after sustaining a lower-body injury in a 4-0 loss to the Panthers.
Larkin has been sorely missed, as those two losses marked the beginning of the aforementioned seven-game skid that’s drastically altered the team’s postseason hopes; the Red Wings are in contention for a wild card spot, but MoneyPuck currently pegs their chances of making the postseason at 26.9%.
I obviously can’t prove the Red Wings have fallen victim to The Curse of the Jersey Patch, but with that said, I challenge anyone to definitively prove that isn’t actually the case.