You'll forgive me if I'm not too sympathetic when they pulled Gaudreau out of the 4th of the same draft.I guess the Flames should have selected Kucherov instead of Tyler Wotherspoon.
Maybe we need to consider making the Win In The Bank available during the regular season instead?
More Stanley Cup past winners than President Trophy past winners.
)Don't necessarily disagree with most of the post.... But I do disagree about the NFL part. Being a one game, single elimination playoff allows for a team to get hot and upset better teams more easily than a series.I agree that the setup for disappointment goes along with the President's Trophy since the likelihood of any team winning the Cup really isn't more than say 25-30% even as the favorite. So with higher expectations as the best team, yeah, there is more room for disappointment.
But that said, I disagree that it means nothing. In fact, I think it's a huge accomplishment and I'm proud of our President's Trophies, division titles, etc. The emphasizing of the Cup over ALL ELSE is a little out of whack. It's certainly the most sought thing, but for example in the Premiership, the season title IS the championship. And honestly, the LARGER sample is the truer test of how good a team is. Tampa Bay is undoubtedly the best team in the NHL this year. That should be celebrated. But they may not win the Cup, and the narrative will become something that may not be very accurate. A "fatal flaw" will be delved into over something that may be nothing more than a small sample size or the fact that they don't match up with one particular team who is, in truth, not as good as them on the whole.
The Caps team of last year was undoubtedly not one of their best teams of the past decade. This whole narrative that played out about how OV learned what was so important was an absolute and total crock of shit. You could have applied that oversimplified narrative to 2009 or 2010 teams, sure. But they've played pretty great hockey for a long time. You get enough bites at the apple playing at that level and you're bound to get through at some point. And given that hot streaks and puck luck play a factor in hockey FAR more than any other sport, from the perspective of finalizing who the best team really is, the Stanley Cup is probably the least reliable measuring stick of the best team in all of professional sports.
The NBA and NFL almost ALWAYS reward one of the best 2-3 teams with the championship. Baseball doesn't even let many teams in the mix to begin with. Hockey playoffs are the best because of the exciting possibilities. But this also should be a reason in support of season accomplishments being valued more. I don't even think the "conference trophies" should be in the playoffs, that should be decided in the season. It's the Stanley Cup playoffs, not the Wales/Campbell/Stanley Cup playoffs. You can disagree with this, but it's absolutely correct in that the playoffs reward a season designation to a playoff format. That doesn't make any sense.
All of this doesn't mean the playoffs aren't awesome. It's how American sports are run. The seven-game series grew from a time in baseball when the two leagues didn't play each other so they needed a series to decide it. It has evolved from there. It's capitalistic both in it's revenue generation and in the winner-take-all mentality it creates.
All of this is to say, the President's Trophy and other season accomplishments should mean more than they do, and perhaps the Stanley Cup should mean a little less.
(thanks for helping me get my brain going this morning
I was curious, so I looked up some results. Since the 2010 Superbowl, there have been 3 teams that weren't likely top 4 teams in the league and won it. There were 6 for the Stanley cup (went back to 2009 to make it even).
The recent winners have been 12 -14 game winners, so the better seeds. For a while there it was pretty open, though. Interesting.Interesting. Here's a nice chart for the NFL (missing a few recent years that shows the seed of the eventual winner);
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