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1980–81 Detroit Red Wings season

national Hockey League team season

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ4579600 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1980–81 Detroit Red Wings season was the Red Wings' 49th season, the first full season at Joe Louis Arena, and 55th overall for the franchise.

The team missed the playoffs for the third year in a row since the 1974–75 season and the 1976–77 season it is also the first time since the 1978–79 season that they finished last in the conference.

Regular season

Final standings

Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals againstNote: Teams that qualified for the playoffs are highlighted in bold.

Divisions: ADM – Adams, NRS – Norris, PTK – Patrick, SMY – Smythe

bold – The top 16 teams in the league qualified for the playoffs, regardless of division or conference.x – Won division; y – Won Conference (and division); p – Won Presidents' Trophy (and conference and division)

Record vs. opponents

Schedule and results

Player statistics

Regular season

Scoring

Goaltending

Note: GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; +/- = Plus-minus PIM = Penalty minutes; PPG = Power-play goals; SHG = Short-handed goals; GWG = Game-winning goals;

MIN = Minutes played; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; GA = Goals against; GAA = Goals-against average; SO = Shutouts;

Transactions

The Red Wings were involved in the following transactions during the 1980–81 season.

Trades

Waivers

Free agent signings

Draft picks

Detroit's draft picks at the 1980 NHL entry draft held at the Montreal Forum in Montreal.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1980–81 Detroit Red Wings season” is national Hockey League team season. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Detroit, Wings and season, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1980, 1974, 1976, 1978—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Detroit, Wings and season is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “national Hockey League team season” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4579600. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1974, 1976 and 1978.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1980–81 Detroit Red Wings season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.