Current Blackhawks vs. past dynasties

[vadim sharifijanov]

It's bad enough we already use 'adjusted stats' -- do we have to adjust dynasties now?

I can see the day coming: "The Black Hawks in 2010-2015 won four out of five adjusted Cups!"

Can something that actually happened (or didn't) just be what it is?

3 in 4 is a dynasty, at least in a salary capped world. You still have the team winning back to back + 1. You still have the team winning more Cups than other teams combined over a period of time. In the salary capped NFL, everyone considers the New England Patriots a dynasty.

actually, i'm with panther here. if you have to qualify it with "at least in a ..." then maybe it isn't really a dynasty.

i'm not saying this definitively, because i hold out that three is enough, or that four in 7, 8, maybe 9 years is enough. i left it up for debate because i haven't thought about it enough, and honestly that word and what it means isn't so important to me.

i'm just saying that it's okay if dynasties don't or can't exist anymore. we don't need to change the definition of the word to accommodate changes in the game.

 

[rfournier103]

It's bad enough we already use 'adjusted stats' -- do we have to adjust dynasties now?

I can see the day coming: "The Black Hawks in 2010-2015 won four out of five adjusted Cups!"

Can something that actually happened (or didn't) just be what it is?

Unless the sport undergoes a RADICAL change in rules or fundamental way that the game is played; there should be NO adjustment.

Does the NBA, NFL, and MLB adjust ANYTHING because players are bigger/stronger/faster than they used to be? Or that there's a salary cap/luxury tax now? NO. Why should the NHL? Are we grading the NHL on a curve now??? WTF?

To "adjust" would be to take away from the Maple Leafs, Canadiens, Islanders, Oilers and other TRUE dynasties... If the Blackhawk fans want Chicago to be a dynasty - they should pray that they win more. The Blackhawks would be a very successful team in any era. They just need to get their mitts on the Cup as much as some of the other teams.

I've also said this in another thread - SOMEONE at the NHL or the HHOF should put down in black and white what EXACTLY a dynasty IS. If there are "official" dynasties, there HAS to be some kind of set criteria.

 

[ThorntonFightClub*]

3 in 4 is a dynasty, at least in a salary capped world. You still have the team winning back to back + 1. You still have the team winning more Cups than other teams combined over a period of time. In the salary capped NFL, everyone considers the New England Patriots a dynasty.

People consider the Pats a dynasty because beyond the titles, they have dominated the league for 13 years

2001-2014:

4 Superbowls
6 AFC Titles
9 AFC Title Game Appearances
12 AFC East Division Titles
.751 winning %. Let me say that again, they have won 75% of their games over a 13 year period

Also, the NFL is different from the NHL. In football, no franchise has more than 6 Superbowls and 3 out of 4 is the best run any team has been able to accomplish.

 

[rfournier103]

People consider the Pats a dynasty because beyond the titles, they have dominated the league for 13 years

2001-2014:

4 Superbowls
6 AFC Titles
9 AFC Title Game Appearances
12 AFC East Division Titles
.751 winning %. Let me say that again, they have won 75% of their games over a 13 year period

Also, the NFL is different from the NHL. In football, no franchise has more than 6 Superbowls and 3 out of 4 is the best run any team has been able to accomplish.

True.

I'll admit that I was/am a little uncomfortable with the term "dynasty" when it comes to the Pats. The NFL loves to throw around "Team of the Decade" a lot, and that's how I tend to view the NFL. I think that's at least as good a way to measure dominance. And it spans both pre and post Super Bowl eras.

1920s - Canton Bulldogs
1930s - Green Bay Packers
1940s - Chicago Bears
1950s - Cleveland Browns
1960s - Green Bay Packers
1970s - Pittsburgh Steelers
1980s - San Francisco 49ers
1990s - Dallas Cowboys
2000s - New England Patriots
2010s - TBD

In each case the "Team of the Decade" was/is determined by who wins the most championships. The Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions both won three titles in the 1950s, but the Browns get the nod by way of having appeared in more Championship Games.

Of course, there can be debate over who is the best of the best; but nobody ever debates who a "team of the decade" is. It's pretty objective, and a good way of recognizing excellence. In my opinion, anyway...

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

That chance of winning 1 series thing is a hypothetical situation

Well- yes... I did say that my '70%' figure was arbitrary, and for illustrative purposes only

in which odds decrease after winning each series,

Nah, you kind of lost the thread here. The odds DO NOT decrease after winning each series- the odds stayed the same. My whole point is that a single result that's highly likely becomes a somewhat unlikely event-horizon if one expects a four-time repeat of that outcome at the starting-point of said event-horizon. Follow?

It takes some internet-search archeology to look at the odds of past seasons- but that's okay- recent events will suffice. At the start of this year's Stanley Cup Final, the odds of Chicago winning the series were c. 7-5. Well- what does this mean in ordinal terms? It means that (discounting the wagering spread) that if one ran 12 repeats of the Final, one would expect Tampa Bay to win 5 times. [And, for amusement purposes, it would be interesting to see if anyone could research the odds as they stood prior to game 4, with Tampa Bay leading the series 2-1.] To frame Chicago's Eastern Conference opponents as just this side of chanceless is borderline disrespect of their opposition. I, for one, recognize the huge role puck-luck played in the win over Boston in 2013, for instance.

Now, let's look to this coming season. The Blackhawks have again been installed as the favorites to win The Cup, with odds of 6-1. They have been judged more likely than any other single team to win the prize again. Now- at the risk of belaboring, the odds-setting means that, according to current reckoning- if you ran the complete 2015-16 season 6 times, it's figured one could expect the Blackhawks to win the Cup once, and some team other than the Blackhawks to win at least FIVE TIMES.

 

[adsfan]

People consider the Pats a dynasty because beyond the titles, they have dominated the league for 13 years

2001-2014:

4 Superbowls
6 AFC Titles
9 AFC Title Game Appearances
12 AFC East Division Titles
.751 winning %. Let me say that again, they have won 75% of their games over a 13 year period

Also, the NFL is different from the NHL. In football, no franchise has more than 6 Superbowls and 3 out of 4 is the best run any team has been able to accomplish.

While the Pats have dominated, especially 2002-05, over many of the same years 1995 to 2014, you have the Packers winning 2 SBs, losing one, 3 NFC titles, 6 appearances and 11 Division titles.

From 2001 to 2014, the AFC has had only 6 different teams appear in the Super Bowl, New England with 6, Pittsburgh 3, Indy 2 and Baltimore 2. The NFC has had
11 different teams in the Super Bowl with the Giants 3 times and Seattle 2 times.
You can make a case that it is harder to make the Super Bowl from the NFC or that the Pats have dominated the AFC.

The Blackhawks have won 3 titles in 6 years. If they win next year, with back to back titles, they will meet my definition of a dynasty with 3 in 4 years.
The Devils won 3 Cups in 8 years under 3 different coaches, nobody that I know thinks that was a dynasty.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Odds cited for entertainment purposes only...

What's the defining characteristic for an overachieving team? Exceeding expectations by defying the odds. Now, as I've said, the odds for half-a-dozen years ago require some internet-search archeology... but I've done the work, so that you don't have to.

I think it's reasonable to have expected Chicago to win the West 3 times in 7 tries since they became a contender in 2009. And we've been in a situation where winning the West makes you a prohibitive favorite for the Cup in most years.

For the sake of consistency, let's take your 7 year time horizon, say you got 1400 chips in your stack, and are willing to put 200 chips on the Blackhawks to win the Cup- each of the past seven years. These odds are based on the first set of pre-season odds that comes up on the world's most prominent search-engine:

2009- Hawks 18-1, Penguins win, we lose- we're down to 1200 chips.
2010- Hawks 8-1, Hawks win- ch'ching! we're now up to 2800 chips!
2011- Hawks 11-2 (favorite, sexy pick, defending champion), Bruins win, crapbaskets, we're now down to 2600 chips.
2012- Hawks 12-1 (not really a favorite anymore), Kings win, frickpeter-- we've lost again... we're down to 2400 chips.
2013- Hawks 14-1 (keep in mind that the Spring before, there's open musing around Chicagoland as to whether or not Crawford can get it done in The Playoffs, and it seems like every other Hockey-related call to the Peanut Gallery of Chicago Sports Talk Radio is advocating a ''Kane-for-Miller" trade [remember those days?!]). Rest is history- Chicago wins again. Cha-ching-ching-ching!! We now have 5200 chips!!
2014- Hawks 7-1- back to favorite status again, Kings win, we lose-- oh, well, down to 5000 chips.
2015- Hawks 8-1, among the favorites- but getting a little older, conference competition getting tougher- Hawks win. Ch'ching ching! We now have 6600 chips!!!

So, from a 1400 chip "stack," and never imperilling any more than one-sixth our principal, we've more than quadrupled our pile!!!

Just for fun, I also worked out this sequence on the "let-ride-half" wagering method, placing half our current stack on the proposition at the start of each season. When doing that, our stack grows to 11200 chips(!)

Anyone who saw this coming 7 or so years ago would be a lot wealthier, if they matched their lucre to their instincts.

 

[overg]

It seems like it has already become dogma that it is harder to build a dynasty in the Cap era. But is that true?

This theory seems to be born from the belief that teams are forced to trade away players due to the Cap. But even in the pre-cap era, many teams had to let players go simply because they couldn't afford to keep them. At best, it would seem this particular dynasty disadvantage only applies to "big market" teams. Small market teams are probably in a better position to keep potential dynasties intact.

Additionally, didn't the money gap which allowed certain teams to "buy a Cup" really only become a big deal in the 90's? At least I've never heard anyone argue that the Oilers, Islanders, or Canadians leveraged money into Cups. For that matter, even amongst the pre-Cap quasi-dynasties, I've never heard of money being considered a prime factor in the Devils, Avalanche, or Penguins winning their multiple Cups. So it seems to me the only real comparison where this becomes an issue is between the pre-Cap Wings versus the post-Cap Kings and Blackhawks.

Furthermore, even if you assume that a cap makes it harder to keep a potential dynasty together, it *also* makes it harder to quickly build a team to challenge a dynasty. For instance, it's harder for teams such as the Lightning, Ducks, or Rangers (to name just the 3 other Conference finalists) to "add a key piece" to their roster in order to challenge Chicago again next year. So while it may be harder to keep the best team together, it's also harder for the second best team to leapfrog the best.

Please don't think I'm dismissing the notion that the Cap presents challenges to building a dynasty, but I'm not convinced today's teams automatically have a harder path to a dynasty than the teams of old. A Cap may bring with it certain levels of parity, but I'm not sure a certain level of parity is actually a detriment to building a potential dynasty.