What year has the "best" team won the Cup?

[66871]

If the best team won the cup every year, then every series would be a sweep (or we wouldn't need a seven game series). Sometimes a team who isn't the 'best' manages to win it.

Two of the best examples of this (though not from the NHL) would be the US Olympic team of 1980 and the Pittsburgh Pirates World Series victory in 1960.

 

[garnetpalmetto]

I think it's the simple fact that fans don't see any superstar names on the roster. And so they instinctively downgrade the team.

I think that's plausible to an extent as well but at some point Herb Brooks' approach to building 1980's Team USA has to be applied - Rutherford put together the right mix of talent that year. Maybe not the biggest names but he put together a strong squad that had the right mix of depth, skill, and resilience to be a contender all season.

 

[Paxton Fettel]

2001 Avs
2002 Wings

 

[1865]

Can you really even make a case that a Cup winner isn't by necessity the best team?

Easily, form comes and goes. A mediocre team can catch fire and go all the way past legitimately better teams.

 

[HandshakeLine]

I think that's plausible to an extent as well but at some point Herb Brooks' approach to building 1980's Team USA has to be applied - Rutherford put together the right mix of talent that year. Maybe not the biggest names but he put together a strong squad that had the right mix of depth, skill, and resilience to be a contender all season.

Rutherford is a far more savvy GM than many people, myself included, thought.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Rutherford is a far more savvy GM than many people, myself included, thought.

I said this after he moved to the Pens. He's the right GM for a team that is more veteran, talented and he needs to make moves to get them over the top. The moves he made both for the Canes cup win and in Pittsburgh reflect that.

He's not the right GM to rebuild/build a team from the ground up. How much of that was JR vs. Karmanos, we'll never know, but JR treated draft picks as disposable and never showed the patience to build/rebuild a team from the ground up.

 

[Akrapovince]

Wasn't alive to witness the Islanders and Oilers dominant eras,

what was the margin between those teams and the rest of the league?

Was it to the point of knowing Warriors and Cavs would be in finals every year?

 

[GordieHowsUrBreath]

Usually, but not always. Pittsburgh's 09 team is a classic example of this. They were not the better team. They got incredibly lucky. Which is fine - I'll happily take it. But no one in their right mind will tell you that they were the better team vs Detroit that year. Usually in a 7 game series, the better team always wins. Not always, but usually thats the case. Pittsburgh in 09 was one of those few exceptions.

no one in their right mind would call detroit the better team when they couldn't even win game 7 on home ice with crosby out

 

[nbwingsfan]

All of the cup winners were the best the season they won. Only on HF would a thread like this exist. Ridiculous. Shoulda woulda coulda as a sens fan, Ill tell you one thing in 2003 and 2006 when they didnt win despite being considered the best teams I didnt feel any remorse about who the victor was. You have to actually win the games to be called the best.

I disagree. Let's say for example that the Pens this season lose game 7 in the SCF 2-1, but were missing Letang, Crosby and Malkin all series. Would you really say that didn't have a barring on the results and those 3 players wouldn't of made a difference and led to a Pens win?

It's not as simple as the "Cup winner is always best".

2009 Detroit was significantly weaker defensively though, not nearly as tight of a team as 2008. They gave up 244 goals in 08-09 compared to 184 goals in 07-08.

I'm not someone who thinks we should of won that series (we didn't play well) but I think a big factor in this was Osgood being garbage most of the season and Babcock refusing to play Conklin more.

 

[nbwingsfan]

Another good example would be teams like Columbus and Philly going on inexplicable hot streaks this season where essentially every player was at the top of their game. This could just as easily happen at the right time in the playoffs. Doesn't mean they should be considered the best team.

 

[JaegerDice]

no one in their right mind would call detroit the better team when they couldn't even win game 7 on home ice with crosby out

A healthy Detroit 2009 roster soundly beats that Penguins squad. And even the injured squad soundly outplayed them for the bulk of that Final.

The 2016 Penguins were genuinely the best team that year. The 2009 Penguins were NOT a particularly great team.

 

[danaluvsthekings]

The Kings are actually an interesting case, because the 2014 team was clearly superior in most areas. But they ran into three much tougher opponents than the 2012 team did, and Quick wasnt as good, so they werent as dominant as 2012. Plus, the 2014 Blackhawks were right there with them, so its hard to say definitively that they were absolutely the best team that year, without a doubt.

I think every Kings fan will tell you 2014 took a good 5 years off their life expectancy. They were a good team but I don't know if I would say great. 2012 was amazing, especially as a first Cup run. It was nerve-racking, just from the standpoint that you were waiting for the Kings to be the Kings and screw it up somehow. But on the other hand it was pretty darn anti-climatic at the same time as the real nervousness didn't hit until game 5 of the finals.

I tried telling myself that anything after the Kings-Sharks series in 2014 was bonus hockey, because they shouldn't have come back from the 3-0 defecit. It didn't work. Game 7 after game 7 after game 7 on the road including a game 7 OT plus all the OT games in the final take a toll on a fan.

It was like the hockey gods said, "oh, you were supposed to have some adversity in 2012 but we forgot it. You get the most stressful run ever instead."

 

[MtlBoxFan]

All of em.

 

[Kranix]

Every Year

 

[GordieHowsUrBreath]

A healthy Detroit 2009 roster soundly beats that Penguins squad. And even the injured squad soundly outplayed them for the bulk of that Final.

The 2016 Penguins were genuinely the best team that year. The 2009 Penguins were NOT a particularly great team.

the pens weren't healthy, sick of the excuses

how is a team that made it to back to back finals not a great team?

 

[DesertPenguin]

Usually, but not always. Pittsburgh's 09 team is a classic example of this. They were not the better team. They got incredibly lucky. Which is fine - I'll happily take it. But no one in their right mind will tell you that they were the better team vs Detroit that year. Usually in a 7 game series, the better team always wins. Not always, but usually thats the case. Pittsburgh in 09 was one of those few exceptions.

As a Pens fan I agree with this. Detroit limped into the finals after what I think was a much harder path to the Finals than the Pens had. They were also an older team that was feeling the effects of back to back trips to the finals more than the young horses on the Pens. I also recall there being back to back games in that series to fit NBC's schedule, which again hurt banged up Detroit.

That's one of the things that makes the Stanley Cup so special though. It takes so so much to win it, luck included. This year, if Nashville doesn't win, will there be an asterisk because they lost Johansen? If they do win, will there be an asterisk because they didn't have to face Gibson in their last game vs Anaheim? What about the Pens and their myriad of injuries? Columbus - Washington - Ottawa has been a meat grinder for them and they started the whole thing with one leg missing from the barstool already without Letang.

 

[GordieHowsUrBreath]

As a Pens fan I agree with this. Detroit limped into the finals after what I think was a much harder path to the Finals than the Pens had. They were also an older team that was feeling the effects of back to back trips to the finals more than the young horses on the Pens. I also recall there being back to back games in that series to fit NBC's schedule, which again hurt banged up Detroit.

.

the pens played in back to back finals too, if you are going to say the pens had the advantage because they were younger than you have to say the pens had a disadvantage being less experienced and battle tested

detroit won those back to back games so if anything it hurt the pens

 

[nowhereman]

Can you really even make a case that a Cup winner isn't by necessity the best team?

Of course you can.

There's a lot of luck that goes into winning a Stanley Cup and avoiding injuries is a big part of that. Plenty of Cup contenders have been eliminated because they were missing 1-2 or even more of their best players. Many people think that injuries aren't an excuse but that's ridiculous logic. A great team is a great team because of the quality of the players on that roster and if you remove a few key performers, what separates them from the lottery teams who didn't even make the playoffs? Yes, a team can overcome those injuries on adrenaline and some lucky bounces but that doesn't necessarily make them the better team, when you're drawing from a small sample size in a quick best of 7 series. If Crosby didn't come back from his head injury and Malkin gets knocked out with a knee injury, along with the already injured Letang, Pittsburgh isn't really all that much better than the teams picking top 5 in this year's draft. Hell, all it takes is for a team to get hit by the flu bug or even the mumps, during a series, and they'd quickly find themselves on the golf course. Does that automatically mean they're worse than the team who stayed healthy?

A great example of this is 2011, where a Vancouver team that was on life-support got man-handled by the Bruins in the Finals. If both teams are healthy, the result is likely quite different. Even Pittsburgh benefited, during their first Cup win, from major injuries to Datsyuk and Lidstrom. And as a fan of the Penguins, I can still admit that.

 

[deytookerjaabs]

The closest post cap was the 2010 Hawks IMO. Or, at least, they're the closest thing to the days when a GM would take a big gamble and load up on top dollar FA's one summer to go for a cup. The cap really killed that element of having one team to watch after every offseason.

 

[JaegerDice]

The closest post cap was the 2010 Hawks IMO. Or, at least, they're the closest thing to the days when a GM would take a big gamble and load up on top dollar FA's one summer to go for a cup. The cap really killed that element of having one team to watch after every offseason.

The 2010 Blackhawks arent even the Blackhawks team that outperformed the field by the widest margin.

Let alone the cap-era NHL team.

Let alone the NHL team.

 

[deytookerjaabs]

The 2010 Blackhawks arent even the Blackhawks team that outperformed the field by the widest margin.

Let alone the cap-era NHL team.

Let alone the NHL team.

You're right. They were sloppy, sloppy as hell, in fact I don't remember seeing a team so poorly disciplined freight train their way to a cup without even a game 7.

Speaks volumes about the roster, it was an all-star like assembly and they played that way too.

I stand by my statement

 

[JaegerDice]

You're right. They were sloppy, sloppy as hell, in fact I don't remember seeing a team so poorly disciplined freight train their way to a cup without even a game 7.

Speaks volumes about the roster, it was an all-star like assembly and they played that way too.

I stand by my statement

Certainly, they were very lucky that their goaltender went god-mode in a WCF they were largely outplayed in, and faced off against a worse goaltender across the ice when their own goaltender crashed back to Earth for the SCF.

They threw 9 forwards and 4 D at their problems until they outscored them, and for the year they played, that certainly worked.

The 2013 Blackhawks beat the 2010 Blackhawks in 6.

No, sorry, I take that back. It would take 5 games.

 

[deytookerjaabs]

Certainly, they were very lucky that their goaltender went god-mode in a WCF they were largely outplayed in, and faced off against a worse goaltender across the ice when their own goaltender crashed back to Earth for the SCF.

They threw 9 forwards and 4 D at their problems until they outscored them, and for the year they played, that certainly worked.

The 2013 Blackhawks beat the 2010 Blackhawks in 6.

No, sorry, I take that back. It would take 5 games.

2010 Hawks woke up when they had to and that was it. They were literally one step ahead in almost every puck race shift to shift. The much more disciplined teams in Nashville & Vancouver with far better goaltending lost. IMO, 2010 Hawks take the 2013 in 6 games with a full season under their skates. 2010 was too fast, too young, and could dismantle the best neutral zone & defensive zone schemes in the game. Though I understand your point, I just think the 2010 team underperformed routinely and if they had to they'd beat about anyone post-lockout.

Most the playoff games are in HD on youtube, still blows my mind how fast their teams speed was, certainly faster than what we're seeing in these conference finals.

 

[JaegerDice]

2010 Hawks woke up when they had to and that was it. They were literally one step ahead in almost every puck race shift to shift. The much more disciplined teams in Nashville & Vancouver with far better goaltending lost. IMO, 2010 Hawks take the 2013 in 6 games with a full season under their skates. 2010 was too fast, too young, and could dismantle the best neutral zone & defensive zone schemes in the game. Though I understand your point, I just think the 2010 team underperformed routinely and if they had to they'd beat about anyone post-lockout.

Most the playoff games are in HD on youtube, still blows my mind how fast their teams speed was, certainly faster than what we're seeing in these conference finals.

The 2013 team was markedly faster, not only with the puck, but far more importantly, without it. Just constant, relentless pressure on puck carriers, outmanning other teams at the boards, completely unafraid to leave their positions to provide support, because they knew they could be back, ready to cut off the lane before the other team managed to process their options if they did manage to win a puck battle.

And if the other team DID manage to make a pass, the backcheck would render any attempt to enter the zone with numbers impotent.

Though not nearly as impotent as they rendered attempted forechecks, which were cut off at the balls before they got past the blue line.

The 2010 team was certainly more potent in the offensive zone, but by comparison they looked lost any time the opposition carried the puck past the red line.

Combine greater team speed with far better defensive play and far better goaltending: 2013 team in 5.

 

[deytookerjaabs]

The 2013 team was markedly faster, not only with the puck, but far more importantly, without it. Just constant, relentless pressure on puck carriers, outmanning other teams at the boards, completely unafraid to leave their positions to provide support, because they knew they could be back, ready to cut off the lane before the other team managed to process their options if they did manage to win a puck battle.

And if the other team DID manage to make a pass, the backcheck would render any attempt to enter the zone with numbers impotent.

Though not nearly as impotent as they rendered attempted forechecks, which were cut off at the balls before they got past the blue line.

The 2010 team was certainly more potent in the offensive zone, but by comparison they looked lost any time the opposition carried the puck past the red line.

Combine greater team speed with far better defensive play and far better goaltending: 2013 team in 5.

Take Niemi for example, he was good in San Jose, in the SCF he was just plain BAD. Some of the softest goals you'd expect in the playoffs he gave up that post season. Then, consider how good the 2010 Preds, Nucks, Sharks and especially the Flyers were I'd say I rest my case. Compared to 2013 when LA collapsed, they got major puck luck against the Bruins, Minny was an afterthought and a weak Detroit took them to 7th game OT (barring a horrible call). If Thomas hadn't gone awol the B's could have had the cup in 2013.