Your unpopular playoff retrospective opinion

[Raccoon Jesus]

Drew Doughty should have won the 2014 Conn Smythe and hate what missing that has done for his legacy vs. his future HOF peers.

 

[Fire Sweeney]

Playoffs hockey has sucked for a bout a decade.

 

[DitchMarner]

2) The Lightning were a great team in 2020 and 2021 but they didn't beat any great teams in their Cup runs. They don't deserve asterisks or anything and saying the "COVID Cups don't count" is a meathead move, but they weren't ever truly tested until 2022 and as I expected they lost.

2020: Jackets, Bruins, Isles, and Stars
2021: Panthers, Canes, Isles, and the LOL Habs

.

The Bruins were a great team back then. They had 100 points in 70 games in 2020. If they weren't that good, who was better from the EC that season? PHI?

 

[Fire Sweeney]

The Bruins were a great team back then. They had 100 points in 70 games in 2020. If they weren't that good, who was better from the EC that season? PHI?

It was over when Rask had to attend his daughter's medical emergency and couldn't come back thanks to the ridiculous flu "bubble" rules stupidity they had.

 

[Baberham Lincoln]

The GM is the most important member of a team because cap management wins cups. That's why McDavid will never win a cup in Edmonton while Holland's in charge.

 

[The Real JT]

Because goalies exist.

The job of the team defense is the limit the volume and quality of shots and chances faced by the goalie. The job of the goalie is to stop the shots and chances that do get through, because every team makes mistakes and no game ever has zero shots or chances against.

The Vancouver Canucks did a poor job of limiting the volume of shots and chances against, both at 5v5 and on the PK.

Hence, they were a poor defensive team bailed out by elite goaltending.




Wow, an NHL award was inaccurate? Crazy! That never happens! I, for one, cannot believe that NHL GMs, who routinely vote on the Vezina based on WINS and repeatedly demonstrate their inability to properly evaluate goalies based on the contracts and trades made involving them, would fail to accurately assess the best goalie performances. Really, I'm shocked. Lol

For the record, I never claimed Luongo was the best goalie in the league that season. Tim Thomas was. He had the highest even-strength SV% in the leaguer AND the highest GSAx. Luongo certainly deserved to be nominated, however. The correct nominees would have been Thomas, Lundqvist and Luongo, as they had the highest 5v5 SV% and GSAx.



Good for them. If the Stanley Cup were awarded based on the most goals scored and/or fewest allowed, they'd have been a shoe-in.

NHL history is littered with President's Trophy winners that ultimately accomplished nothing, not only failing to win a cup, but failing to contend, and disappearing into irrelevance soon after.

If we're interested in what defines a great team, shouldn't we look at the teams that not only contend, but win and then continue to contend and even win again?

And shouldn't we look at the stats that predict sustained success rather than stats that merely reflect a flash-in-the-pan single season where everything lined up, but ultimately a flawed team was exposed?

Winning as power-play merchants that are mediocre at driving play 5v5, poor are suppressing shots and chances both 5v5 and on the PK, and leaning almost entirely on elite goaltending to keep the goals allowed down, is a provably unreliable formula for winning championships. Once the playoffs start, pretty much every team has at least a 'good' goalie, so that advantage is immediately mitigated to some degree. Likewise, the average PK competency goes up, mitigating PP efficacy, if you're even lucky enough to get PPs called.

It is not a surprise then that the 2011 Canucks almost lost in the first round, ultimately were defeated, and never made it out of the first round again with the same core. Because the formula behind their flash-in-the-pan season was inherently weak, fragile, and difficult to replicate. Whereas cup winners like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, returned to the final 4, finals and championships again during extended runs of excellence, Vancouver was a sad little one-off, a team that had a spike of luck, but whose success was ultimately unreplicable by the same players.



It's cute that you conveniently ignore them getting pushed to 7 in the first round by Chicago, another team that their goaltending faltered against and their PP struggled against. It's almost like a team with such a weak foundation has some clear weaknesses to be exploited.

Also, then what happened? Let's pretend the Canucks were some juggernaut that lost because of injury (they didn't). What happened the next year? And the year after that? Were these injuries 3-years long? Surely a team as 'great' as the 2011 Vancouver Canucks didn't simply forget how to play hockey? While the Kings and Blackhawks went through 3 final-4s in a row each (plus 2 cups), and Boston won went back the finals two years later and won the apparently all-important Presidents trophy the year after, etc... surely this elite team would challenge again, right?

No?


Oh wait, I think I know the difference.... Let's take a look at the next 3 years....



LAK 2012: 55.16 CF% (2nd), 54.26 SF% (4th), 52.55 xGF% (6th)*
BOS 2012: 54.36 CF% (4th), 52.84 SF% (6th), 53.71 xGF% (5th)
CHI 2012: 52.93 CF% (7th), 52.79 SF% (7th), 52.22 xGF% (7th)
VAN 2012: 53.62 CF% (6th), 50.66 SF% (11th), 48.65 xGF% (18th)
LAK 2013: 56.83 CF% (1st), 55.40 SF% (2nd), 55.63 xGF% (1st)
CHI 2013: 55.68 CF% (2nd), 56.17 SF% (1st), 54.39 xGF% (4th)
BOS 2013: 55.40 CF% (3rd), 54.48 SF% (3rd), 53.55 xGF% (6th)
VAN 2013: 52.14 CF% (9th), 49.57 SF% (17th), 50.03 xGF% (14th)
LAK 2014: 57.39 CF% (1st), 56.01 SF% (2nd), 55.40 xGF% (4th)
CHI 2014: 56.15 CF% (2nd), 56.04 SF% (1st), 55.90 xGF% (2nd)
BOS 2014: 55.25 CF% (3rd), 53.97 SF% (4th), 54.76 xGF% (5th)
VAN 2014: 51.00 CF% (11th), 51.34 SF% (12th), 49.40 xGF% (18th)

*And this was for the full season. Isolated to just games after the coaching change they were tops in the league.


Psssssssst..... I think I know which 'irrelevant stats' are a better indicatory of legit great teams that are legit threats for the cup year after year year, vs flash-in-the-pan, one-and-done nobody teams that need everything to come together once in a blue moon to have a shot.







I never made the argument that their team defense was bad BECAUSE their goaltending was good. I made the opposite argument. Their goaltending was obviously elite BECASE their team defense and PK was obviously, measurably bad.




Dominik Hasek disproved this in the 90s, and others disproved it before him and since. It is absolutely possible for a goalie to cover for a poor defensive team, be it for a single period, a single game, a single series, and sometimes, VERY rarely, even a whole playoff run. What is true is that it's not particularly reliable. Generally speaking, a goalie can't consistently put up those SV% numbers in front of an incompetent defensive team year over year over year. The goalies that routinely, year after year, bail out bad defensive teams belong in the hall of fame.





Again, their PK stats in the regular season were almost entirely goalie-driven.

Let's pretend the skaters on the ice were unchanged and completely uninjured. We'll use the regular season numbers and compare them to the numbers the other 15 teams put up in the 2011 playoffs.

By their RS numbers, the Vancouver Canucks would have been 8th out of 16 teams in Shots Against per 60 short-handed (50.87 SA/60), they would have been 7th out of 16 teams in Expected Goals Against per 60 short handed (6.48 xGA/60). So, by your estimation, had they performed as well as they had in the RS with a fully healthy lineup, they would have been...*gasp*...my god.... middle of the pack of the playoff teams.

Truly, what force could hope to contend with such excellence?!

Their regular season PP numbers as far as shots and chances generated would have made a difference in the playoffs. But then, that's why teams that rely on their PP tend to fail. Even if you were to take injuries out of it, your PP is simply going to do worse against a run of teams that have better-than-average to great PKs than they did against a bunch of tomato cans in your weak division.

For the rest of humanity I’d just like to say TLDR.

 

[Nadal On Clay]

Playoffs hockey has sucked for a bout a decade.

Translation: Your team has been disappointing in the playoffs for about a decade.

 

[JaegerDice]

For the rest of humanity I’d just like to say TLDR.

Lol

He made a bunch of inaccurate statements, I wanted to tackle each of them.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

1- Habs were f***ed by Kreider when he decided to dropkick Price on the knee,
What a dirtbag


2- Habs 2020-2021 is underrated: the forwards talent was lacking (Danault and a younger Suzuki were pretty much the two best players we had upfront) but the defensive squad was solid af and Price was for one last time, the best goaltender in the World

This is a very popular opinion by Habs fans for 10 straight years.

 

[VivaLasVegas]

A general one that I tend to be alone on an island about:

The fanatical tribalism of hockey/sports in general is by far the worst and most insufferable thing about following the game (which itself is a blast), and people who take this stuff seriously enough to be as emotionally affected by it as they often are (or worse yet, act like they're owed/entitled to something from the organizations due to their years of investment, or characterize fans of other teams as just about anything dismissive) are silly and ridiculous people.

I get that to some degree, that's intended to be the whole point of all this, and it's clearly encouraged and marketed that way by the organizations, but it's one of the things about it that I find stupid and merely tolerate rather than embrace or enjoy in any way.

That's not exclusive to playoffs, but playoffs sure do bring out the worst of it.

You are not alone. You are really not alone. Some folks take all this way too seriously, since at the end of the day it is just a game which is itself merely a subset of entertainment that is something meant to occupy time with pleasure. When it no longer brings pleasure, one really should find something else.

IMHO, the fair weather fans have it right and those who suffer through the bad times for misguided notions of loyalty to a product they are paying for (if nothing else with their time) have it all completely wrong.

 

[Shareefruck]

You are not alone. You are really not alone. Some folks take all this way too seriously, since at the end of the day it is just a game which is itself merely a subset of entertainment that is something meant to occupy time with pleasure. When it no longer brings pleasure, one really should find something else.

IMHO, the fair weather fans have it right and those who suffer through the bad times for misguided notions of loyalty to a product they are paying for (if nothing else with their time) have it all completely wrong.

To be honest, I was even softening my opinion a bit. To take it a bit further, I would say that even as entertainment, I think it's a bit on the vapid side, and should probably be seen as more of an effective time-wasting guilty pleasure kind of thing than anything. As a kid, it had this illusion of importance that still admittedly has its hooks in me in a force of habit kind of way (otherwise I wouldn't still be posting here-- when the team I follow does well, it always pulls me back in), but its actual value is pretty limited, in my opinion, and the sheer number of hours it convinces you to invest in it does sort of feel like a bit of sucker's game.

It serves a purpose effectively (especially if you've got some void in your life, it can certainly fill it in some way), but I don't think anyone who's deeply into the sports fan rabbit hole should be scoffing at things like k-pop stans or people who are overly into reality TV or soap operas and things like that, anyways. Very pot calling the kettle black and all that.

Guess this is all slightly off-topic considering that it's not playoffs-specific, though. It's just a thought that's always in the back of my head.

 

[647Hockey]

1. Playoffs should be top 16 teams.

Playoffs should be ranked 1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, etc.... I dont care how much travel there is and if it goes against maximizing rivalry revenue. And no division winner getting ranked higher than a another team who has more pts just because they won a division.

It's boring having traditional playoff formats because it's mostly the same matchups every year, and some better regular season teams miss out.

2. Starting from the top, each team picks who they want to play

Best team picks first, then second best team etc... It would be awesome since you'd get different match ups and would be fun as everyone can be armchair quarterback and analyze why the top team picked the #12 team to play first.

 

[Bouboumaster]

This is a very popular opinion by Habs fans for 10 straight years.

This is a fact and Habs fans will resent Kreider as long as he plays for that shit

 

[paragon]

Should just rename the thread to your popular opinions.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

This is a fact and Habs fans will resent Kreider as long as he plays for that shit

Habs fans need to get a life then.

 

[Makar Oni 4 formaggi]

2. Starting from the top, each team picks who they want to play

Best team picks first, then second best team etc... It would be awesome since you'd get different match ups and would be fun as everyone can be armchair quarterback and analyze why the top team picked the #12 team to play first.

This is by far the best playoff-modus, as there would be really much curiosity, interest and interaction by fanbase, who to pick, who to avoid etc. You could also organize a big live TV show with Gm's or most important players of the first 8 teams announcing their choice/pick (well the eighth team has not to pick anymore).

The Rangers could choose Caps (ohh, wait...) but also Isles.

 

[Bouboumaster]

Habs fans need to get a life then.

We can both have a life and hate a motherf***er a the same time

 

[Kamus]

There is no formula to winning the Stanley Cup.

Don’t lose the last game

This is by far the best playoff-modus, as there would be really much curiosity, interest and interaction by fanbase, who to pick, who to avoid etc. You could also organize a big live TV show with Gm's or most important players of the first 8 teams announcing their choice/pick (well the eighth team has not to pick anymore).

The Rangers could choose Caps (ohh, wait...) but also Isles.

I like to see upsets and I think this eliminates that to an extent.

 

[Nogatco Rd]

If the Isles score on that Powerplay instead of letting in the SHG to Yanni Gourde in Game 7, they beat Montreal for the Cup.

The Habs beat the Isles all year, though.

Habs didn’t play the islanders that year, that was the year of the North Division

 

[Kimota]

Habs didn’t play the islanders that year, that was the year of the North Division

Oh right. But around the time, they would constantly beat them.

 

[Gormo]

Cancel the national anthems, we know the damn words, just cut to the chase

 

[Gormo]

Definitely have IMO but on another thought

I Always felt like if Toronto played in the west like in the 90s, they'd already have a cup by now lol

I think this post wins the unpopularity contest