The Curse Of The President’s Trophy

In an otherwise excellent column this morning, The Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell stated, “Only seven of 23 Presidents' Trophy winners have won the Cup.” Wikipedia, where all good politicians and history professors go for information, put the same information similarly, “… only seven of all the Presidents' Trophy winners have gone on to win the Stanley Cup in their respective years.” (Guess where Boswell came up with that tidbit.)

The word “only” caught my attention. Seven out of twenty three doesn’t sound so bad as to require the qualifier “only”? I decided to look into it.

Through the black magic of Hockey-Reference.com, I learned that the President’s trophy has been around for twenty-three seasons. Thus I looked up all the last twenty-three Stanley Cup winners to see where they finished the regular season.

During that time, seven president’s trophy winners (30% of all President’s Trophy winners) have gone on to win the Stanley Cup. That is the most of any of the possible sixteen seedings. The seed with the next highest success rate is, counter intuitively enough, third. Five of the last 23 Cup winners (23%) have finished third. Only two teams that finished with the second best regular season record went on to win the Cup (Tampa Bay in 2003-04 and Colorado in 1995-96).

Only one team has finished the regular season ranked lower than seventh and gone on to win the Stanley Cup. That would be the 1994-95 New Jersey Devils, who were the tenth best team in the NHL in the regular season. No team who qualified for the playoffs ranked eighth, ninth, or eleventh through sixteenth has won a cup in the President’s Trophy era.

If you start with the presupposition that each seed has an equal chance to win the Cup then each playoff team has a 6.25% chance of hoisting the Cup at the end of the tournament. Going from a 6% chance to a 30% chance is, to throw more percentages at you, a 500% improvement. That ain’t peanuts, people.

Of course, this is hardly definitive. The Caps, who are the likely President’s Trophy winners this season may or may not have a 30% chance at winning the Cup. Even if it’s 40% though, the field has a better shot.

In any case, winning the President’s Trophy, as you might logically expect, is as good a harbinger of greatness as can be bestowed in the NHL regular season.

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