FanPost

Is the presidents trophy a curse?



I was reading through comments in a few recent articles in this site and noticed a repeating argument; is is bad thing to win a presidents trophy according to history? I decided to go through a bit about the events of recent years, but not just for presidents trophy winners. I went through how any standing would turn into playoff success, or lack there of, in a span of 10 years, 2010-2019. I skipped the most recent as 2020 playoff was quite the anomaly in comparison of the previous years. And, well, so is 2020 playoffs due to intra divisional regular season.

Bow before the numbers

I will first present the numbers and then lets discuss about them.

First graph shows how many out of the 10 playoff runs ends in what round. L stands for "Lost".

Table 1

L 1st

L 2nd

L 3rd

L Fin

Cup

1

3

4

1

1

1

2

1

5

3

0

1

3

3

2

3

1

1

4

8

1

0

0

1

5

3

3

1

3

0

6

4

3

2

0

1

7

5

1

2

0

2

8

7

2

1

0

0

9

6

2

1

1

0

10

5

4

0

0

1

11

3

5

1

1

0

12

5

1

2

1

1

13

7

2

0

0

1

14

6

4

0

0

0

15

8

1

0

1

0

16

6

2

1

1

0

From table 1 it can be seen that the numbers are quite even, but leaning towards higher placing teams to do generally better. As there are multiple variants this kind of simple data does not take into account, like injuries during regular season, injuries during playoffs and the always seeked for momentum, it is not as clear as best teams in regular season is the best team in the league or that the results of regular season will translate to playoffs, in good and bad. The players are only human and the performance of humans fluctuates. Especially when the said humans should try to do the performing as a big group.

Few funny/interesting notes from table one.

If you want to get out of first round, the presidents runner up is the way to go, as only 1 out of 10 dropped there. Sorry (not sorry), Calgary.

So close, but yet so far. 5th place teams have reached finals 3 times, only position to reach it more than twice, and lost all of those series.

All or nothing! 4th placed teams are tied in the most first round outings with 8 out of 10, but one managed to win it all from the same position. Congrats Pittsburgh.

Scoring per position

For Table 2 i wanted to create a number for overall playoff success per position. The formula for the number is [1*x1+2*x2+3*x3+4*x4+5*x5], where the multiplier is the round reached, for the cup the number is 5, and xy is determined by the amount of appearances in the round. It could be argued that Stanley cups should be weighted heavier, as it is the only one that really matters at the end, but I wanted to see the overall numbers in a more linear progression, which shows more that all or nothing.

Table 2


Pos

Points

2

25

3

25

5

24

1

23

7

23

12

22

6

21

11

20

10

18

9

17

16

17

13

16

4

15

8

14

14

14

15

14

There is somewhat of a correlation (0,63) of high finish in regular season predicting playoff success. But not that much that lower seeded teams should be discouraged or that higher seeded teams could get complacent. Hockey is a fast sport with many variables. Anything can happen.

As an analysis of this all I could say: If you are winning, keep winning. If you are losing, start winning.

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