Planes, Wings, and playing cards

How many Red Wings players pass the time on flights during the NHL season

When the Detroit Red Wings travel, they bring the essentials.

Clothes, hockey equipment and sticks, and decks of playing cards.

Once the plane takes off, and players are free to move about the cabin, the card games start. There’s typically two or three card tables setup on a given flight, depending on the time in the air, nearly half the roster is partaking in some sort of card game while the Wings are in transit.

“The long plane ride, the flight, it helps build the team,” Pius Suter said. “At home it’s a bit more family stuff, so when you are on the road and doing things like that, you get to know the guys, you become closer as a team.”

Suter is typically at one of the tables playing Seven Up, a game that he says, “you can still do something if you have bad cards.” In Seven Up the goal is to create a sequence from ace to seven, points are often assigned to the winner of each round for a tournament feel.