Concocted Canucks Curse

Sports curses are generally fun in my opinion. For those who truly believe, they might provide an excuse for an under performing for years on end. For others, it provides sports and teams with a sort of lore usually saved for Greek mythology. The media certainly enjoys the hype of these curses as well as it provides a story for themselves. The Curse of the Bambino being broken by a Yankees collapse at the hands of the Red Sox? It has cinema written all over it. In any event, it seems like with most stories that drama needs to be provided where it is not. Teams rarely go undefeated, no matter how good they are. When they actually do, there is no curse because they did what the vast majority expected. When they lose a regular season game, it generally isn't a big deal because it rarely means the team is no longer elite. On the other hand, suffer a loss in a championship or playoff game when you're the favorite to win, and fans have to find some way to legitimize an explanation. What better way to explain something than using an unexplained curse? It wasn't until I stumbled across a Wikipedia page this week that I realized just how many are out there, and I'm sure there are plenty more than have yet to make it that far. 

One that I only began to hear of a few weeks ago is that of the NHL's Presidents' Trophy, and mainly how it has haunted the Vancouver Canucks for a long history of two years. I may be exaggerating these stories slightly, but to be fair various media outlets characterized it before the playoffs began based only on the Canucks failing to win a Stanley Cup last season. On Wednesday night, the Los Angeles Kings will host the Vancouver Canucks in Game 4 of their series in an attempt to sweep them out of the playoffs in the first round. It was only a couple days before the playoffs began that the Canucks clinched the Presidents' Trophy for a second straight year.

The President's Trophy has only been around for 26 NHL seasons has a way of awarding the NHL team with the best overall regular season, and the Canucks won it for the first time only last year. Vancouver only narrowly won their first round series last year against the Chicago Blackhawks, and made it to the Stanley Cup that went a full seven games before deciding a champion. Worth noting that home-ice seemed to mean a lot more than a curse seeing that the home team won each of the first six games, leaving only the Bruins to win Game 7 on the road. My point isn't that we need to ignore the stories of curses. I think most would agree they are fun to a degree. The point is that if we don't want them to lose the lore than provide sports, then maybe we should give it more than one season before curses begin to get doled out to every upset. I'm not a Bruins fan, but I would be remiss in suggesting they were not a very good team last year.

 Anyway, while looking at the list of 26 winners of the Presidents' Trophy, it would appear that it does provide a good job of determining the best team. Out of the 26 years it has been awarded, it has been given to the eventual Stanley Cup Champion 7 times. Seven out of twenty-six might not sound that impressive, but when you have 16 teams all starting fresh in the playoffs, it is a very high percentage. Based on the argument that NHL fans provide (that I mentioned in my first post), the NHL Playoffs act as a second season in hockey. Well using that logic, the winner of the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup should coincide once every sixteen years. 17 of the 26 winners have made it to at least the Conference Finals. Alas, when you pile 16 teams into a playoff tree, you can't expect there to be no chaos, aka upsets.

The last team to win both were the 2008 Detroit Red Wings, and the 2002 Red Wings before that. Other teams to win both include the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, New York Rangers, Calgary Flames, and Edmonton Oilers. Again, this isn't intended to rain on the parade of those who enjoy sports curses, merely that sometimes credit should be given where it is due. Sometimes, that it to the team that you hate sharing the ice with you that is holding the Cup above their heads. Note that this isn't directed at Canucks fans by any stretch, but to fans in general who get a little ahead of themselves with this stuff.