NHL has thorny issue gauging teams' regular-season worth

There’s a dirty little secret that the handlers who carry the Stanley Cup around every summer don’t necessarily want hockey fans to know.

Most years, the best hockey team in the world doesn’t take the famous 35-pound silver trophy home.

The NHL started handing out the Presidents Trophy to the team with the best record in the regular season in 1985-86. Since then, the winner has gone on to capture the Stanley Cup eight times.

Any statistician worth his salt will say the larger the sample size, the truer the outcome. The team that has the best record over a long 82-game season, by all accounts, probably deserves to be recognized as the most complete, consistent, successful team around.

Yet, 26 of the 34 teams that brought home the Presidents Trophy had a pretty sad banner-raising ceremony to celebrate it the following fall.

Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford knows a thing or two about the Stanley Cup. He’s hoisted it three times. Each of his championship teams entered the playoffs with the second-best record in the Eastern Conference.

“Teams go through peaks and valleys during the season, and it’s important to peak going into the playoffs,” Rutherford said. “You could have the best team that could have injuries, or they’re tired or a couple of their key players may be tired. Based on that, they could fall off a little bit. Not necessarily the best team wins.”

This topic has become an important one because of the situation the NHL finds itself in as the season is suspended because of a coronavirus pandemic.

When the league announced its “pause” March 12, its stated goal was to award the Stanley Cup this season. The league also has said it will not “endanger or interfere” with the 2020-21 season.

Take those two statements at face value, then look at the calendar, and it’s clear that if play resumes, the playoff format almost certainly will have to be modified or truncated in some way.

According to reports, the field could be expanded to 20 or even 24 teams with the bottom teams in each conference competing in a play-in scenario.

The case for expansion of the field is made most forcefully by the teams just barely out of the playoff picture when play was suspended.

“You want to keep the integrity of what we’re doing intact,” said defenseman Marc Staal, whose New York Rangers sit two points out of an Eastern Conference berth. “You want to get as many games in as possible to get your true tournament, whether that’s opening up to get a few more teams in or a play-in.”

Expanding the field would feel fair, and it undoubtedly would supply some early-round drama, but it probably wouldn’t have much of an impact on the eventual Stanley Cup champion.

Twelve of the last 14 Stanley Cup champs finished in the top four in their conference in the regular season. Both exceptions were provided by the Los Angeles Kings, who won from the sixth seed in 2013-14 and the eighth seed in ’11-12.

Given those facts, the best way to crown a champion in a limited amount of time might simply be to cut the field down to four teams per conference and proceed as usual.

This, of course, wouldn’t be popular in Pittsburgh, where the Penguins sit in third place in the Metropolitan Division, three points behind Philadelphia.

“Whatever’s the fairest,” Flyers forward Claude Giroux said, “I think everybody would kind of accept that.”