Is the Presidents' Trophy Curse Real? 

The curse isn't a curse it's just simple statistics. At first glance maybe it seems odd that the best team in the league only wins the cup ~20% of the time, but if the playoffs were completely random then with 16 teams in the playoffs your chances of winning are 1/16 which is only ~6% for each team. So the president's trophy winner is just over 3x more likely to win the cup than if you were just pulling one name out of 16 from a hat to choose the winner. If the best team in the league always won the cup then what would the point of the offseason be?

There's also the fact that officiating and play is so different in the postseason that regular season success doesn't always carry over And then we've got teams trying to circumvent the cap by adding some of their most expensive/best players to their injury lists and sitting them for the rest of the regular season, meaning you get absolutely loaded teams who can fall in the standings near the end of the year

21.6 percent chance is pretty good... a 1/5 chance when you start the playoffs as 1/16 teams.

Playoff hockey is SO MUCH DIFFERENT then regular season. The game becomes way more physical and strategic. It’s always been like that. Team mentality’s change when it’s playoff time and some can’t cut it even tho they crush the regular season. So different then most other sports in that way.

1-8, 2-7, 3-6, 4-5…I mean the old playoff format just made sense because it was simple, fair and clean! 🤷🏼‍♂️

I think it’s an issue of psychology; if you win the President’s Trophy, all of the expectations of making a championship run are placed squarely on your shoulders. If you start a series flat, or build a lead and can’t close it out, a huge seed of doubt gets planted in the player’s minds, and that can be detrimental. The team that doesn’t have the expectations feels they have nothing to lose, they go out and play a much looser game. I also think when you rack up 120+ points in the standings, you’ve expended a lot more energy. Look at the 2010 Caps, the 2019 Bolts and the ‘23 Bruins; they racked up absurd amounts of points and ran out of gas. Going on a deep run requires teams to pace themselves.

What would happen if they got rid of east and west conferencing, and went back to seeding? Like Round 1: President’s trophy winners vs. 16th seed, 2nd vs. 15th, etc. And then reseed after each round so the top team remaining always plays the lowest team remaining in the second and third rounds too

A fellow Ranger fan! Not worried about seeding since the playoffs are a gauntlet, regardless of the regular season performance. If anything I would rather have home ice advantage

It's a curse when only 8 teams have won the Presidents Trophy and then went on to win the Stanley Cup. Curse - maybe change the name..😅

I doubted the curse bc it’s just basic statistics. That was until I saw the number of series won by the presidents trophy winners and it changed my mind Edit: it also has to do with the fact that all teams in the NHL are good enough to win any night, so bad bounces/puck luck and off nights can cost big time

They should just go back to the old playoff format-seriously what the f-k it should’ve never been changed in first place…very stupid!

Also, a goal makes a huge impact. In a 2-1 game, one goal is all the difference. And it makes up 33% of all the scoring. You don't get as many chances to score and go up on your opponent. In basketball, a bad play or lucky play only results in 2 or 3 points or 1% of the total points scored for both teams. You need a lot more than that to win a game. Football and baseball tends to have more scoring and more ways to score too. So it is the value of a goal, a well-timed goal, an overtime goal, a lucky bounce goal, that can make so much of a difference. One team can be completely better in all the stats, but that will not matter if the puck bounces right for the underdog late in the 3rd period and helps them eek out a win. Or perhaps a goalie that's able to keep the puck out all game and help his weaker offensive team win 1-0. So wins can be a lot more random. Working twice as hard may not result in twice as many goals. It is primed for upsets.

i think it should be called the ‘President’s Trophy Learning Curve’ 😂

There's no curse. People are idiots.

Truly insightful work

Another note is that the NHL is more "random" than other leagues and it has a lot more disparity... making it a lot harder for the president trophy winners to win the cup

To really analyze the curse i think it would be interesting to look at what place has the highest percent chance of winning the cup. It seems much less like a "curse" and more like a return to even statistics between placements meaning anyone can win in playoffs.

No curse. Basic stats. That graphic that you showed with how many times each team has won the Stanley Cup based on where they ranked at the end of the season explains everything. If being the President's Trophy winner is a curse, then being anywhere else in the seedings/rankings entering the playoffs is even more of curse. The other way of looking at it is that being #1 at the end of the regular season is still the luckiest spot to be in entering the playoffs, in spite of it not giving the team a major advantage. 8 winners and 11 total finals appearances for the President's Trophy winner in that time span. Still better than anyone else. If you seed teams 1 through 8 in each conference over the 37 years, then no #7 seed has won the Stanley Cup. That's more of a curse. The #6 and #8 seeds have only won once in that time. Both times it was the Kings. So, unless you are the Kings, you will be cursed in those spots as well. And of course, none of this is a curse either, just probabilities, stats, and obviously lower ranked teams having less of a shot at winning. It has been noted that 7 of 11 teams that won the President's trophy and then lost in either of the first 2 rounds, have come out of what were considered to be weaker divisions. Also, over the last 10 years, what else has happened? Restructuring of divisions and playoff formats. Some temporary and some permanent shuffling and changes. A few shortened seasons. And also Covid. This in addition to everything else all can make some odd difference. It's also hockey. Most people that follow sports know that it is less predictable, any team is capable of pulling an upset for at least a round, and it is really tough and grueling on the teams in the playoffs. Having a fast, high scoring team might translate well for getting easy wins during the regular season, but may not translate well in the playoffs and the more physical and scrappy type of play. There's just a lot of factors. But an actual curse is not one of them.

I'm just glad the bruins did not win presidents trophy again this year.

These sample sizes are pretty small to draw useful statistical conclusions. Moneyball only works when you have tons of data

Rangers will be this year’s Stanley Cup Champions when it’s all said and done 6-0 to start is no joke

Other sports have a bye into the second round up for grabs if you win your conference. Without seeding or anything, what is the point of teams trying to win the President’s trophy or even to win their conference? I’m sure most teams would rather have rested and healthy top line going into the playoffs as the second or third seed than a beat-up team having clinched the President’s trophy in game 82. With the bottom of the league being rewarded with higher draft lottery odds for losing, there’s really only a middle section of teams chasing the final playoff spots actually trying to win their final games. I’m surprised the NHL isn’t more concerned with how few teams actually have an incentive to win by the end of the season

I'd say no, it's not really a curse; it's just what happens when a team is fighting the highest expectations for playoff success (i.e. conference finals and beyond) and is supposed to be favored to win as a reward for good performance in the regular season. Two of the most infamous examples of the curse, the 2018-19 Lightning and 2022-23 Bruins, are so infamous BECAUSE they won all those games, only to be eliminated in the first round by 'lesser' opponents. Granted, Tampa's is FAR more embarrassing than Boston's, since they got swept by a team that literally had never won a playoff series on an all-in push that was going to end with them losing pretty much all their best players after, but the real point of it is that the Stanley Cup playoffs aren't easy to go far in. There's a reason the NHL's winning percentage is lower than every other big 4 sports'; NBA has the same amount of games required to win, MLB can have the same time equivalent (if not longer, hi there 12 inning playoff games), and NFL can have the same intensity, but the NHL combines all of them in a way to make it a trial just to reach the cup finals, let alone Lord Stanley itself. TL;DR: the numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for the New York Rangers at sacrifice /s

I think that the Presidents Tropy should be abolished. None of the other professional sports have a trophy for the best regular season record. It doesn’t mean shit in the playoffs.

The rangers copped, so I’m thinking we have the good bad luck

all the dislikes are bruins fans

Who is here after the rangers loss

I’m glad the Rangers won it this year. 😂

I’m not saying it because I’m a Ranger fan because obviously biased .They have a shot because they did not even expect to win it they were just trying to prove that last year was a fluke

Can you do one of these videos based on if a team touches a trophy? president trophy and conference trophy

amen

Rangers gonna win it all!

Curses are bullshit. Way too many factors to win a cup.

Rangers aren't winning the cup.

its real.

This is just someone putting words together because they sound good, like you only live once. But, to win the cup sometimes you must have your entire team doing their job, or you might depend on your goalie or the offense for a little luck. It helps is you won the Présidence trophy but in a game like hockey, in which many factors influence your result, it doesn’t mean everything!