Deciding Which Teams Have Had a Successful Season (With some History Too) 

If you only view your team winning the Cup as success and everything else as failure you will be completely miserable 99.9 percent of the time.

Winning the cup is the objective measure of complete success, but success comes in steps, and each team is different

Sabres not being dead last in the league is a success. That’s how low expectations are here.

I think as a cup contender if you’re not in the final four it’s hard to say it was a success.

As a Habs fan, Slafkovsky being to emerge as a Star and (hopefully) landing a new member of our core at 5th, makes this season as success combined with more wins after losing our #2 centre the entire season.

Those who say Cup or Failure often miss the fact that teams that win Cups usually need to build toward it. Behind every cup winner is at least one story of them coming up short and adapting.

You legit have no idea how badly I wanted the habs to win a cup with a sub .500 record that would be the funniest shit on planet earth

Sens in 2017 to me is a Cinderella run imo

The idea that you can fix an outcome over 82 regular season games, 20+ playoff games in 4 series requiring 16 wins, dozens of different refs and all the dedicated people in each organization. Yea right.

Winning the Cup or not being the measure of success reminds me of people who say a player can only be a hall of famer if he has a Cup, which is nuts.

I would argue Tampa had some mild success being the reached the same number of regular season points at the end and that's with starting with an injured number 1 goalie, having AHL come play a good amount of games while other injuries happened too, and we made it to the playoffs with a team that had players making records for themselves. Definitely a bit more successful than 2022-23 season

Any team that has a much better season than last has to be considered a success. As long as improvement keeps moving forward.

Granted ...winning the cup is Success! But generally any team making it through the 1st round is always a success to me.

montreal should be interesting over the next 3,4,5 years. they're stacking up a lot of talent.

If Detroit is considered a success, then so should the Flyers. Before the season, NO ONE would have bet on the Flyers being only 4 points behind the Wings at year end and 4 points out of a playoff spot.

I really like some of these videos over random topics as the off-season gets closer

By the argument of the Blues competing for a wildcard in a year where the tram was expected to be bad, I consider the season a success. Next year is a question mark though.

Edmonton Oilers doing pretty well now, no first round exits past three years and that is something.

The '16 Cinderella run by the Sharks still haunts me to this day...

Caps season was definitely a success. Playoffs with a rookie head coach and new identity, and young players showed flashes. Hoping they can continue to help Ovi with backstrom and oshie’s contracts likely going to LTIR

I think realistically if you make forward progress each year it’s a success

Teams that are considered successful are the regular/repetitive playoff appearances. If the inverse is true, then that team is looked down upon (looking at my Jackets as an example). So with that as a measuring metric, bare minimum of an objective success is making playoffs. I think both Objective and Relative can be argued for success or failure. Example of both being applicable: the Capitals IMO are objectively successful, but relatively failing. They made the playoffs, but they are definitely falling off. Things that are a Relative Success, but not an Objective Success. - Playing Better - Just ask Buffalo who are "doing better than last year" over and over, but where are the results - Improved Ranking on Last Year - Ranking only matter on who is in the playoffs. Until you cross the playoff line, your ranking doesn't matter - Progressing on the Rebuild - If a team says they are in a state of rebuilding, then they just said "we are planning on being successful" with different words

It all depends on expectations, just like in manager mode in sports video games : you have goals at the start of the season, how many of these goals you achieve tells you if your season was a success. If you're a cup contending team, maybe winning the cup, finishing with home ice advantage in the playoffs, and having a top 10 PP would be your goals. If you're rebuilding, maybe you just need your young core to take another step, finish with a better record than the prior year

I do really love the Bruins centennial jerseys!!

I've decided the proper way to consider each team's season is to make it two questions. Was the regular season a success? Were the playoffs a success?

Success is dependant on achieving the goals one sets for oneself. Team success depends on whether or not the team achieves the goals they set going into the season. If an organization’s goal is only to make money then they could be successful without making the playoffs. If the stated goal is the Stanley Cup even a finals appearance could be a failure if they loose. This is why teams are often tight lipped about setting goals going into a season: if they don’t define a goal they can manipulate expectations and retroactively claim success even if they didn’t achieve what they really hoped or were capable of.

I mean I feel like you can’t say that success is always a cup. I think Vancouver has a successful season this year. No one expected them to make the playoffs let alone be one win away from a conference final. San Jose won the draft lottery I’d call that success for them. Some teams have the mindset of if you don’t win a cup it’s not success (Vegas since they end of year 1 in the league) but there is no definitive measure of success because not every team starts at the same position in the league.

I think looking at a season as a success based on “Winning a Cup” takes away so much nuance from dissecting a team’s season. There are so many things that can and cannot go your way that can completely derail a season or push you further. Loosing a key player or two in a playoff series can make all the difference when teams are so close to each other. Doesn’t make a playoff loss any less or more disappointing but all things that should be taken into consideration.

Many are saying that the 2021 Habs run was a fluke. I wouldn’t say that, because I think the Canadian division that year had tougher schedule and travel than the other 3 divisions. The Eastern division were basically travelling in buses wearing flip flops.

any team, regardless of place, that's building, growing and improving could be said to have had a successful season. teams that are stagnant or declining have some soul searching to do.

I think success is a season that your fans enjoy. In theory that should be a fun team to watch that wins a good number of games. Any time you have that I don't think you should scoff at it and you especially shouldn't discard it lightly because as a fan (or even as the organization itself) you might not get it back, at least not quickly. I'd argue winning a round of the playoffs helps a lot towards that goal since it gives you that extra bit of the team to watch in exciting circumstances. I don't understand fixating on round 2 vs round 3 exits since so much of that just comes down to matchups.

Depends on the team, of course the Cup is the ultimate goal and should be the goal for some teams but for a rebuilding team success may be winning the draft lottery

Minnesota is absolutely a success. Doing as well as they did with the resources they had is mind boggling

Coyotes/Utah got a new owner, I would term that as success.

I think some have not adjusted to the 32 team reality. Statistically throw them into the hat and any team only has a 3% chance of winning the cup. That means 6% chance of making the final, and 12% chance of making final 4. If you looked at this year and rated teams on talent, that likely excludes 1/3 of the teams in the league, so that bumps the number. Do some rough weighting and you likely have 8 teams that have a good shot at the cup (call it 2x probability) and the remaining 12 or so that had a good shot at the playoffs (call it 1x probability). That means if you cheer for one of the top 8 good teams you still only have a 7% chance of winning it all, and some of these team are the best they are ever going to be for a while. Winning The Stanley Cup is harder than it ever has been. If your team was one of the 8 cup "contenders" that means you had what, a 15% chance of making the final? Even if you want to argue the weighting and say "my team is stronger than that" and we shift it to 20%, that means you are a favorite and 4 out of 5 years you will bust out without even making the finals. 32 teams. Winning is hard. A lot of good teams will go home early.

I concur, Marty will have those Canadiens purring like he did the Catamounts back in the day . Marty is a players Coach who came up the hard way and has everyones respect . And as a Somewhat Montreal Homeboy he's Going to need that good will .

The way I see it is the goal in any season is to win the Stanley cup, but for teams just beginning that journey years in which they fall short can be successes in terms of progress. The seasons themselves aren’t really successes but the distinction is there not failures. If a season is a failure then changes have to be made to make sure that does not happen next year, if a year is not a failure then changes don’t have to be immediately forced to shake things up. However there comes a point where a season can no longer be in that middle ground for teams. A perfect example beings these Florida Panthers. In 2021 the Panthers had a good season that ended in bitter defeat to the Lightning, that season was not a failure because it turned what was a middling franchise into a contender, but it wasn’t a major success either. Just a step in the right direction. In 2022 the Panthers became the president trophy winners and yet that season is a failure. They won a playoff round this time so by all accounts that season seems like a object success in comparison to the 2021 season but due to them getting swept by the Lightning in round two it showed that there was something wrong with the team and a decision needed to be made on how to fix things because of how terrible they looked in those playoffs. 2023 season saw them reach the Stanley Cup final and lose, however that season in no way appears to be a failure. It was a major step, proving that this team can win in the playoffs and has a real chance with this core. Every season a team does not win a Stanley Cup effects that teams stability, if the stability is improved and odds are increased to win a cup next year from what happened the year prior then we can call it not a failure. If a season has a negative effect on a team’s stability then it is a failure. So what of the four remaining teams? At this point I’d say not winning a cup would be a failure for each of these teams(with some stipulations) because they’ve all been here before. The Dallas Stars and Florida Panthers have both lost Stanley cup finals in recent memory with a lot of the players on those teams being on the team now. The Stars made a conference finals run last year and the Panthers have been a consistent regular season team the past four years. So with that in mind failure to capture the cup is a failure as they would’ve made no progress towards winning another one while there players are likely to be more tired and injury prone the following year given that they’ve had to make it through consecutive deep playoff runs which has a pretty major toll on a teams health. The Rangers would also be a failure because they’ve been to the conference finals before in very recent memory and they won the presidents trophy. The Oilers are the only team with a bit of a distinction, they are a team that many have doubted and while losing again this year would be a failure because they’ve made a conference finals in recent memory if they do make the finals then that at least shows that it’s worth keeping this core around and that they only really need some retooling. So a finals loss would be a failure but it would be a positive step for the franchise. This to me is different from the Rangers simply because the Oilers window has been open for a much longer time which means they’ve had several chances that have turned into failed seasons while the Rangers really only have since 2022 which is not that long ago. Now as for these teams I don’t really believe any of them show blow it up even if they get swept. They are all young and they all have really strong cores in their primes. However failure this year would at least show that none of these teams can afford to simply coast next year and not make any moves to get better. There is value in waiting and not overreacting, the Lightning are an amazing example of this. However the Bolts also never coasted, even with a strapped cap they always tried to get as good as they possibly could every year.

who thought the canucks would make it to the second round not me new coach new system same players at the begining of the season success time 3 in my opinion now next year my expectations are going to be much higher go canucks go

i think that a team going to a CF or won their division had a sucessful season even if they got eliminated in the end. as for rebuild, since it takes a while to see if the rebuild was a success, that's something that can take 3-5 years to process. example is Toronto. Their rebuild is a success. for seasons, they won the canadian division and that's it.

I am a San Jose Sharks fan who considers their 2023/2024 season as a success. The hockey was horrendous, but we got the #1 pick in the draft and pretty much all of our young players took steps forward in their development this season. Hard for me to call that anything but successful.

My measure for success: Did I enjoy watching my favorite team this season?

Being from the city of Vancouver's echl team (kalamazoo), I was pulling for them. I wanted to see them go farther.

Every year 32 teams start playing for the Stanley Cup until Bettman decides who's allowed to win it that year.

I think Arizona moving to Utah is a massive success for the franchise and the NHL as a whole. They have a new owner that already owns another team, a real stadium (sure it has issues for hockey but its better than the joke that is Mullet), and they got out of an area that voted to keep a garbage dump instead of them.

Whats more important is how impressive that you managed to put 6 teams in each column on the left, while covering 8 years and it makes sense lol

I think the highest results based goal you can reasonably set is conference final appearance or winning your division. Anything beyond that is so luck based and out of your control. However if you make the final 4 3/5 years you’re probably going to have a real chance at winning the cup

I agree that it depends on the team. But I do think for about 6-12 teams every year that are considered in their "cup window" and are mortgaging their future in trades to go for a cup. Success is a cup, and anything else is failure. That said, looking at Oilers right now, I think if they're a much more mature team because of past playoff failures. Getting swept by Colorado in the WCFs 2 years ago, and losing to Vegas last year gave them experience they could build on. And now they're are reaping the rewards of those experiences. So while 2023 and 2022 might have felt kinda like busts for Oilers fans, I think it was all part of building towards this run. But at the end of the day, if they don't win a cup, it's going to be a failure.

A little generous declaring Edmonton a success at this stage. If they get swept by Dallas that’ll put a real damper on the season. I also think hindsight and context can be 20/20 on this. Two examples: Vancouver, by having such a successful regular season and getting 7 of the 16 playoff wins before going out, have had a successful season-it’s especially successful factoring in that they had a new head coach and no one expected them to even make the playoffs going into the season. If they come out next year and lay an egg, and don’t get back to the playoffs under this core, then this season will be an exception in an overall unsuccessful era for the team-and the fact that they failed to ride that fire into a Stanley Cup championship will make it an unsuccessful year, IMO Getting back to Edmonton: if they take Dallas to six or more games, or make it to the finals and lose, we can still consider this a successful season for them for the time being. But if future seasons they continue to lose in the playoffs, they’ll go down in history as the team that wasted McDavid’s prime; this may be considered a high watermark for the McDavid-era Oilers, but it’ll be hard to argue “successful” if it doesn’t lead to a championship. Basically as long as you’re building a team around a generational talent, nothing less than a Stanley Cup championship is going to look successful to posterity. If you’re an underdog exceeding expectations like the Canucks were this year, but the success doesn’t continue into the future years, then that one year of almost making the conference final will just look like a fluke

None of us are elite hockey players, so it’s easy to throw shade (looking at Avs fans on X). Good vid.

Vegas didn't remove Cinderella status until the sweep of the Kings. Even with the division win, no one was picking Vegas to come out of the west.

Oh!

While Buffalo fell off and definitely should not be considered a success, it's mildly encouraging that they took a big step forward in their overall defensive play, as well as the emergence of UPL. But as a whole, dropping from 91 points to 84 was disappointing.

Like you, I wear the Canucks Jersey the day after they're eliminated. Still a favourite team

I still think the lightning had an amazing season in 2015 . Young team crazy record and made to the final with the dynasty chicago blackhawks.

I think Vegas has some success in regards to retooling and extensions. The Hanafin trade felt like a succes, not enough data to feel comfortable calling the Hertl trade a win, and there's become some obvious pieces to move. The only team I'd move is Carolina due to their UFA situation and new GM. I think those problems are going to be difficult to overcome.

It's all about expectations going into the year. If the Oilers had lost Game 7, it would be a brutal disappointment. But I think Canucks fans believe this season was a successful one as they had pretty low expectations at the start of the year, yet managed to win the division and win a round, almost two.

2:16. "A fluke is one the most common fish in the sea. So if you go fishing for a fluke, chances are, you just might catch one." -Kevin

I reckon from an owners point of view a successful season is one which results in profits. Edmonton fans will consider anything less than a Cup to be a total McFailure.

Here's my scale for President's Trophy winners, based on depth of playoff penetration: 1st round loss = instant meme 2nd round loss = routine disappointment 3rd round loss = Bare minimum of expectation Finals loss = Qualified Decency Cup = OK, fine, they really were the best in the league I don't know if this really helps measure successful seasons in any way, but it feels like it could be relevant.

does this qualify as a madness board?

i don't disagree with most of what you said about NYI, but you can't judge a team's success this season by what you expect from them in the future.

I can rest easy tonight knowing the only Stanley Cup championships that count are the ones my team won. The true one and only Stanley Cup champsions!

I'd disagree about Philly. They had the worst thing possible: didn't go low enough and didn't make the playoffs.

Success to me is just making the playoffs

For my Winnipeg Jets I call the season a success. Yes they lost in the first round, but I think they overachieved a little in the regular season which might have artificially raised expectations of a deep run.

For me it depends on the context. I thought the Rangers 2022 run to the ECF was a success. It was our first trip to the playoffs in 4 years and just making the playoffs was enough to make this a successful season. Then they made that deep run to the ECF which set high expectations for the future. 2023 as a result was a failure because they set themselves for that deep Cup run and instead failed to match last seasons run, getting bounced in Round 1. This year is the same thing. They're setting themselves for that Cup run and they have the President's Trophy which added to the high expectations.

Edmonton fans though I think would want to see a final not a cup win but a finals appearance to say it’s a success. I’ll be okay if they get knocked out in round 3 but I know a lot of fans want to see a finals and I know McDavid and Draisaitl want that to.

The prototype Cinderella team of recent memory was my 2012 LA Kings, eighth seed all the way to the Cup. This year for Kings fans could be a successful year yet-the front office just has to fire the GM, Rob Blake.

Good teams: Stanley cup only. Bad teams:great overachieving or a rookie or a new trade making a big impact to improve on. But success (non cup winning) can’t really be judged unless in hindsight years down the road. If your performance ended up being built on to win later.

Depends on the team, when you achieve over your expectations. For Buffalo just making the playoffs would be a success at this point.

To we Leaf fans, playoff success matters a lot more than individual awards or having a great regular season. Get in the playoffs and win is what we want. Need to draft top-2 defencemen to do that, though, but they'll soon trade away picks for older defensive defencemen and then wonder why they can't win when only 5 players can score and nobody plans to stop even Rielly. Leafs don't need to deal Marner et al, but do need to figure out who is a good player but not essential to winning and trade those guys to move into the top 10 in drafts, 2024 they won't, maybe 2027?

Imagine doing this video just before NYR has the best season in 2000's

Man. Wings had success. The core is shaping up. A little more consistency and we'll be in the playoffs next year. I think we will keep up in the east. Caps seem on the decline, same with the penguins. Flyers might surprise next year. The division is tough though. Not sure if we can catch Florida, Tampa, Boston, Toronto. Living in Utah means the Yotes season was an absolute success 😂

Sharks 🦈 23/24 is best in years. Won the lottery!

Seems like success for Leafs fans is a season with 82 wins and a cup.

I think about the predators run and how it came to an end every day. Left a bad taste in our cities mouth

Money being made by the owner !

If the stars win, the Stanley cup, will you come to Dallas?

The Oilers are cup or bust so no.

Success is relative. I think the Sharks had a successful season when you look at the outcome. As a Rangers fan, I had no expectations for this season. Is it a success already? I'm not sure that I can say that without knowing the outcome.

18:34 is what you came for 💀

This is the same in principal as those guys who would say that a player is only elite if he leads his team to Stanley Cup victory. I had an argument with a guy on Instagram, who was stating that Connor McDavid is not an elite player, because he has not won yet. Just sit down. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. 🤦‍♂️

As a life long rangers fan I know that the NHL has been against the rangers for the last 30 years

While I do feel making the playoffs was a whoops for the Caps, I don't think they lost huge by doing it. Absolutely not mad. Do it again!

GO HOCKS

Not Florida expansion peria

I kinda get the logic, but I don't know if I could ever really say teams 25-32 had a successful season.

playoffs

It doesn't matter who wins the cup there are always fans of 31 teams who think the league is rigged 😂😂

Not sure why so much attention is given to the crazy comments from fans. Don’t let them get to you! Giving the crazy out to lunch comments attention fuels them to make even more!

Panthers in 5!

You gotta say San Jose in a way...

These are difficult to measure. For me if a team is in a win now mode and does not make a conference finals is not a success. And with Sharks. I know we got Celebrini. Out of the fact that we were worse team accompanied with luck in lottery. ~Ten game losing streaks.. lose of fan interest. Don´t hate the Hertl trade, but winner will be determined later. I would say it is definitely arguably succesful only.

I see more people claim that teams are "bad" when they lose in any round in the playoffs so why do people even care when a team wins a Stanley Cup? The only reason a team wins is because a team lost more.

Expectations ÷ Roster × Injuries + Refs = Your Season 🤔

Wait doesnt Anaheim come before Boston Alphabetically?

Utah should sign Hronek and Mikayev hahaha that would be a success for both utah and Vancouver :p hahah

Gotta disagree with you on Carolina. This team was built to win now. They have some serious cap issues this off season, and I don't think they will be as powerful in 24-25

successful season based on fan support?

None of the teams deserve to win the cup this year because their rosters are not purely Canadian.