Of course they belong, the issue was somebody foolishly claiming they would be the favorite in any series. I think it's debatable if they are elite. I guess it depends on how loosely you define elite. Detroit was clearly among the better playoff teams, so I guess you can call them that, along with a team like Pittsburgh. Who is elite then? I know sneaky made a homerish remark about the Wings being "favorites" but Truffle also made a comment earlier downplaying how good the Wings are. Truth be told the Wings were probably not as great as they were portrayed to be a couple of years ago and they have not fallen that far from that point. It takes some "good bounces" to win the cup and the Wings got them a few years ago and they seem to have all the bounces go against them in this series and pretty much this entire season. Talent wise I still believe they are a top 5 team...which is pretty elite if you ask me It depends on the sport and the season, but typically I would think there's 2-3 elite teams every year in any league. This season it was pretty clearly Washington, Chicago and San Jose. There's a group below them with Vancouver, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, Detroit that were among the best teams, but that's widening it to 7 teams, or top 25% of the league. I'm not sure you can definitively put Detroit ahead of any of those teams mentioned, save maybe Jersey. There's reason to think Phoenix was right there with Detroit, given their superior record, superior goal differential and taking them to 7 games. Just saying "talent wise" is a cop-out. A team is more than just a collection of talent. And I'm not just talking about something like chemstry. There are plenty of talented players who don't live up to their talent. But Detroit is pretty clearly an older lesser version of what it was the past few years. Not the same elite team. A threat, sure. Quite good, of course. But elite means something much more than just being in the picture.