Ice hockey award
The
Presidents' Trophy
(
French
:
Trophee des presidents
) is an award presented by the
National Hockey League
(NHL) to the team that finishes with the most points (i.e., best overall record) during the regular season. If two teams are tied for the most points, then the Trophy goes to the team with the most regulation wins (RW). The Presidents' Trophy has been awarded 37 times to 18 different teams since its inception during the
1985?86 NHL season
.
[1]
As the team with the best regular season record, the Presidents' Trophy winner is normally guaranteed home-ice advantage throughout the entire
Stanley Cup playoffs
.
[nb 1]
However, winning the award does not assure playoff success, as there have been only eight instances where the Presidents' Trophy winner has gone on to win the
Stanley Cup
in the same season, while three Presidents' Trophy winners have been defeated in the
Stanley Cup Finals
. The most recent team to win both the Presidents' Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season is the
2012?13 Chicago Blackhawks
. The only team to accomplish this feat more than once is the
Detroit Red Wings
.
History
[
edit
]
The Trophy was introduced at the start of the
1985?86 season
by the League's Board of Governors to recognize the best team in the regular season, informally known as the regular season championship. Prior to this, the team that finished in first place when the regular season concluded was allowed to hang a banner reading "NHL League Champions."
[2]
A total of 18 teams have won the Presidents' Trophy. The
Detroit Red Wings
have won six Presidents' Trophies, the most of any team. The
Boston Bruins
and
New York Rangers
are tied for second with four. The
Colorado Avalanche
and
Washington Capitals
are tied for third with three. Five teams (
Calgary Flames
,
Chicago Blackhawks
,
Dallas Stars
,
Edmonton Oilers
,
Vancouver Canucks
) are tied for fourth most with two Presidents' Trophy wins apiece. Among these multiple winners, Calgary, Dallas, Detroit, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Washington have won it in consecutive seasons. Out of these teams, Edmonton, Calgary, and Dallas have captured a Stanley Cup along with their second straight Presidents' Trophy.
If there are two or more teams tied for first in points in the League, then the NHL's standard
tiebreaking procedure
is applied, with the first tiebreaker being the team with the most regulation wins (that is, all games won except those won in overtime or in a shootout). During the shortened
2020?21 season
, both the
Colorado Avalanche
and
Vegas Golden Knights
finished tied for first with 82 points in 56 games, with Colorado winning the trophy since they had 35 regulation wins while Vegas had 30. From the
2010?11
through
2018?19
seasons, the first tiebreaker was most regulation and overtime wins. Before
2010?11
, the first tiebreaker was the most wins including both overtime and shootout wins. The most notable of the pre-2010?11 protocol is from the
2006?07 season
, where both the
Buffalo Sabres
and Detroit Red Wings finished tied first with 113 points, with the Sabres winning the Trophy since they had 53 wins, three more than Detroit, who had 50.
Past trophies
[
edit
]
From 1937 to 1967, the same criterion now observed for winning the Presidents' Trophy was used to award the
Prince of Wales Trophy
.
[3]
With the Modern Era expansion in the
1967?68
season and the creation of the
West Division
, the Wales Trophy was awarded to the team that finished in first place in the
East Division
during the regular season.
[3]
However, no trophy was awarded to the team that finished with the best overall record in the entire League during this period, and no trophy at all was awarded based on the results of the regular season from the
1981?82
through
1984?85
seasons. A cash bonus of $350,000 was awarded to the winning team with the NHL's best regular season record during these years, to which the Presidents' Trophy was added in
1985?86
.
[1]
[4]
The cash bonus is split amongst the players on the active roster of the winning team.
Factoring all NHL seasons prior to the introduction of the Presidents' Trophy, the
Montreal Canadiens
have finished first overall 21 times, the most times in League history (although this was most recently accomplished in
1977?78
, before the Trophy was introduced; since its inception, the Canadiens have been Presidents' runners-up three times, in
1987?88
,
1988?89
, and
2014?15
). Detroit is second with 18 first-overall finishes.
[5]
Playoff implications
[
edit
]
"It is the reality of the sport. If your particular strength happens to be that you're really good offensively, and you come up against a hot goaltender and a team that is stout defensively, it might not matter that you were good on a nightly basis scoring goals. And that one particular opponent: you'll have to beat them four times."
NHL broadcaster
Darren Eliot
explaining the lack of success of Presidents' Trophy winners winning the Stanley Cup.
[6]
The Presidents' Trophy winner is normally guaranteed home-ice advantage throughout the
Stanley Cup playoffs
.
[nb 1]
[7]
This does not necessarily correlate to success in the playoffs, however. The Trophy has been awarded 36 times, but only eight of the winners have gone on to win the Stanley Cup in their respective years, leading to a popular superstition that the Trophy may be cursed.
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
In addition, eight Presidents' Trophy winners have been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, with first-round upsets being common in the NHL compared to other major professional sports.
[12]
[13]
Since the salary cap era of the NHL from 2005?06 onwards the first-placed NHL team has had the lowest probability of winning the playoff championship, compared to the other three North American major professional sports leagues (NBA, MLB, and NFL).
[14]
NHL broadcaster
Darren Eliot
attributes the apparent lack of playoff success to the different style of competition compared to the regular season: instead of playing different teams every night, the goal is to advance through four
best-of-seven playoff series
.
[6]
The Presidents' Trophy winner may have to go through other playoff clubs who might have a hotter goaltender, a better defensive team or other players that pose match-up problems. If the regular season champion's primary success was merely outscoring others, they may be out of luck facing goaltenders that can shut them out.
[6]
The lack of playoff experience may have been to blame in the examples of the
1999?2000 St. Louis Blues
and
2008?09 San Jose Sharks
, as neither team had advanced past the second round for five or more seasons. Teams have often given up pursuit of finishing first in the League in order to avoid injuries and rest key players for the postseason.
[15]
Ian Cooper, writing for the
Toronto Star
, noted that "of 11 Presidents' Trophy winners to lose in the first two rounds, seven came from divisions that were among the league's weaker half ... If a team dominates a weak division, its shortcomings should become apparent once it faces stiffer competition from the rest of the conference".
[16]
Jonathan Weiss, writing for the Bleacher Report in 2010, also noted that of the teams between 1982 and 2009 that led the League in points during the regular season, 12 of them (45 per cent) reached the Cup Finals, while of the other 405 teams during that same time period, only 42 (10 per cent) advanced to the final round, concluding that "the team that leads the NHL in regular season points is four to five times more likely than any other team in the playoffs to make it into the Stanley Cup finals, and seven to eight times more likely to win the Cup".
[17]
The 1995?96 Red Wings were considered a "cursed" team, as their record-setting season was cut short by the newly relocated
Colorado Avalanche
in the Conference Finals, sparking a
particularly vicious rivalry between the two teams
in subsequent seasons. In the 1996?97 season, the Avalanche were the defending Cup champions and won the Presidents' Trophy but lost the Conference Finals which was a rematch against the Red Wings, the Red Wings went on to win the Cup. The Red Wings would go onto the defeat the Presidents' Trophy-winning Dallas Stars in 1998, en route to the Red Wings' second straight Cup win. Thereafter, in three of four seasons, the Presidents' Trophy winning team went on to win the Stanley Cup (Stars in 1999, Avalanche in 2001, and Red Wings in 2002).
Since the Blackhawks won the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup in the lockout-shortened 2012?13 season, the "curse" has been more pronounced. The
2018?19 Tampa Bay Lightning
were swept in the first round by the Wild Card
Columbus Blue Jackets
after a dominant season in which they tied the
1995?96 Detroit Red Wings
' record for regular season wins, becoming the first Presidents' Trophy winner to suffer this fate. Adding to the ignominy was the Blue Jackets' previous lack of postseason success, as their sweep of the Lightning was their first playoff series victory in franchise history, with only four previous playoff qualifications. By contrast, the Lightning had made several deep playoff runs in the previous seasons (including a Cup Finals appearance in 2015). Over the next three years, the Lightning did not win the Presidents' Trophy but nevertheless won two consecutive Stanley Cups while reaching a third consecutive Stanley Cup Finals. For the
2022?23 Boston Bruins
; after setting new records for single-season wins and points, they proceeded to lose in the first round in seven games to the
Florida Panthers
after having led the series three games to one. The Panthers were incidentally the previous season's Presidents' Trophy winners, where their 2021?22 season ended when they were swept in the second round by the Lightning (en route to the Lightning's third consecutive Finals appearance).
[17]
Only three times in the history of the Presidents' Trophy has a team missed the playoffs the season after winning the award: the New York Rangers, who won the Trophy in the
1991?92
season and missed the playoffs in
1992?93
(and then rebounded to win both the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup in
1993?94
); the Buffalo Sabres, who won the Trophy in the
2006?07
season and missed the playoffs in
2007?08
; and the
Boston Bruins
, who won the Trophy in the
2013?14
season and missed the playoffs in
2014?15
despite having a winning record.
Winners
[
edit
]
Team lost in the first round of the playoffs.
[nb 2]
Bold
Team with the most points ever accumulated in a season during the trophy's existence.
- ^
a
b
c
Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
, the Bruins only played 70 games when the 2019?20 season regular season was curtailed. Under the special
2020 playoff format
that was then conducted, with a round-robin tournament for the top four teams in each conference, the Bruins were not guaranteed home-ice advantage in all postseason rounds. Boston's 100 points in 70 games extrapolates to 117 points in an 82-game regular season.
- ^
The playoff format has changed over the years. See
Stanley Cup playoffs
for more information.
- ^
Only 48 games were played in the 1994?95 season due to a lockout. Detroit's 70 points in 48 games extrapolates to 122 points in 84 games, which was the standard season length at the time.
- ^
Only 48 games were played in the 2012?13 season due to a lockout. Chicago's 77 points in 48 games extrapolates to 132 points in an 82-game season; this number would have eclipsed Detroit's record by one, and would have tied the record-high of points held by the
1976?77 Montreal Canadiens
(the trophy did not exist at the time, also, Montreal accomplished the feat in only 80 games and without the benefit of current overtime rules that award one point to teams losing in overtime or shootouts).
- ^
Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
, the 2020?21 NHL season was shortened to 56 games. Colorado's 82 points in 56 games extrapolates to 120 points in an 82-game season.
Earlier best records
[
edit
]
For reference, the following are teams that finished with the best records in the NHL for each season between
1917?18
and
1984?85
.
NHL vs. PCHA/WCHL/WHL Stanley Cup era (1917?1926)
[
edit
]
Prior to 1926?27, the
Stanley Cup
was then awarded as a "World Series" trophy between the champions of the NHL and a rival league (first the
Pacific Coast Hockey Association
, then the
Western Canada Hockey League
). Instead, the NHL championship trophy during this era was the
O'Brien Trophy
.
From 1917?18 to
1920?21
, the NHL season was split, requiring separate standings, with a single playoff series between the winner of the first half of the season and the winner of the second half of the season.
† Team won both the O'Brien Trophy and the
Stanley Cup
.
^ Team lost in the NHL Championship/Final round.
- ^
For the 1917?18 to 1920?21 seasons, this figure is the sum of the points accumulated during both halves of the season.
- ^
A labour dispute between the Hamilton Tigers' owner and its players forced the team to be suspended from the playoffs.
NHL takes control of the Stanley Cup (since 1927)
[
edit
]
After the 1925?26 season, the NHL became the only league left competing for the Stanley Cup. The Stanley Cup thus became the
de facto
NHL championship trophy, though the league did not take formal control of the trophy until 1947.
The
Prince of Wales Trophy
was awarded from
1938?39
to
1966?67
for the entire league regular season.
^ Team lost in the Stanley Cup Finals.
# Team lost in a preliminary round of the playoffs.
- ^
Notwithstanding seasons shortened by labour or other similar issues, the regular season consisted of 44 games from
1926?27
to
1930?31
seasons, 48 games from
1931?32
to
1941?42
, 50 games from
1942?43
to
1945?46
, 60 games from
1946?47
to
1948?49
, 70 games from
1949?50
to
1966?67
, 74 games from
1967?68
to
1968?69
, 76 games during the
1969?70
season, 78 games from
1970?71
to
1973?74
, and 80 games from
1974?75
to
1991?92
. The
1992?93
and
1993?94
seasons had 84 games, with two games played at neutral sites; neutral-site games were eliminated for the
1995?96
season.
Records
[
edit
]
Presidents' Trophy winners
[
edit
]
Team
|
Winners
|
Year(s) won
|
Detroit Red Wings
|
6
|
1994?95, 1995?96, 2001?02, 2003?04, 2005?06, 2007?08
|
Boston Bruins
|
4
|
1989?90, 2013?14, 2019?20, 2022?23
|
New York Rangers
|
4
|
1991?92, 1993?94, 2014?15, 2023?24
|
Colorado Avalanche
|
3
|
1996?97, 2000?01, 2020?21
|
Washington Capitals
|
3
|
2009?10, 2015?16, 2016?17
|
Edmonton Oilers
|
2
|
1985?86, 1986?87
|
Calgary Flames
|
2
|
1987?88, 1988?89
|
Chicago Blackhawks
|
2
|
1990?91, 2012?13
|
Dallas Stars
|
2
|
1997?98, 1998?99
|
Vancouver Canucks
|
2
|
2010?11, 2011?12
|
Pittsburgh Penguins
|
1
|
1992?93
|
St. Louis Blues
|
1
|
1999?2000
|
Ottawa Senators
|
1
|
2002?03
|
Buffalo Sabres
|
1
|
2006?07
|
San Jose Sharks
|
1
|
2008?09
|
Nashville Predators
|
1
|
2017?18
|
Tampa Bay Lightning
|
1
|
2018?19
|
Florida Panthers
|
1
|
2021?22
|
Combined pre-trophy/trophy era best records
[
edit
]
Team
|
Best record
|
Year(s) won
|
Montreal Canadiens
|
21
|
1927?28, 1928?29, 1931?32, 1943?44, 1944?45, 1945?46, 1946?47, 1955?56, 1957?58, 1958?59, 1959?60, 1960?61, 1961?62, 1963?64, 1965?66, 1967?68, 1968?69, 1972?73, 1975?76, 1976?77, 1977?78
|
Detroit Red Wings
|
18
|
1935?36, 1936?37, 1942?43, 1948?49, 1949?50, 1950?51, 1951?52, 1952?53, 1953?54, 1954?55, 1956?57, 1964?65, 1994?95, 1995?96, 2001?02, 2003?04, 2005?06, 2007?08
|
Boston Bruins
|
15
|
1929?30, 1930?31, 1932?33, 1937?38, 1938?39, 1939?40, 1940?41, 1970?71, 1971?72, 1973?74, 1982?83, 1989?90, 2013?14, 2019?20, 2022?23
|
Ottawa Senators (1883?1934)
|
7
|
1918?19, 1919?20, 1921?22, 1922?23, 1923?24, 1925?26, 1926?27
|
Toronto Hockey Club/St. Patricks/Maple Leafs
|
6
|
1917?18, 1920?21, 1933?34, 1934?35, 1947?48, 1962?63
|
New York Rangers
|
5
|
1941?42, 1991?92, 1993?94, 2014?15, 2023?24
|
Chicago Blackhawks
|
4
|
1966?67, 1969?70, 1990?91, 2012?13
|
Philadelphia Flyers
|
3
|
1974?75, 1979?80, 1984?85
|
New York Islanders
|
3
|
1978?79, 1980?81, 1981?82
|
Edmonton Oilers
|
3
|
1983?84, 1985?86, 1986?87
|
Colorado Avalanche
|
3
|
1996?97, 2000?01, 2020?21
|
Washington Capitals
|
3
|
2009?10, 2015?16, 2016?17
|
Calgary Flames
|
2
|
1987?88, 1988?89
|
Dallas Stars
|
2
|
1997?98, 1998?99
|
Vancouver Canucks
|
2
|
2010?11, 2011?12
|
Hamilton Tigers
|
1
|
1924?25
|
Pittsburgh Penguins
|
1
|
1992?93
|
St. Louis Blues
|
1
|
1999?2000
|
Ottawa Senators
|
1
|
2002?03
|
Buffalo Sabres
|
1
|
2006?07
|
San Jose Sharks
|
1
|
2008?09
|
Nashville Predators
|
1
|
2017?18
|
Tampa Bay Lightning
|
1
|
2018?19
|
Florida Panthers
|
1
|
2021?22
|
- Defunct teams in
italics
.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- Specific
- ^
a
b
"Presidents' Trophy history"
. NHL.com
. Retrieved
September 5,
2007
.
- ^
"Presidents Trophy Buffalo Bound"
. NHL.com
. Retrieved
October 10,
2009
.
- ^
a
b
"History of the Prince of Wales Trophy"
. Legends of Hockey.net. Archived from
the original
on September 29, 2007
. Retrieved
September 5,
2007
.
- ^
"Presidents' Trophy"
. NHL.com
. Retrieved
September 15,
2007
.
- ^
"Final Standings"
. NHL.com. Archived from
the original
on April 3, 2009
. Retrieved
September 15,
2007
.
- ^
a
b
c
Darren Eliot
(April 7, 2010).
Inside Report: Presidents' Trophy to curse Caps?
. SI.com
. Retrieved
March 30,
2011
.
- ^
McGourty, John (June 11, 2009).
"Keenan knows Game 7 pressure"
.
NHL.com
. Archived from
the original
on January 8, 2010
. Retrieved
October 22,
2010
.
- ^
Rosen, Dan (April 12, 2009).
"A short-term celebration"
. NHL.com
. Retrieved
April 29,
2010
.
- ^
Bialik, Carl (April 20, 2009).
"The Count: The Myth of the President's Trophy Curse"
. Wall Street Journal
. Retrieved
April 1,
2011
.
- ^
"
'Irritated' Caps look for answers"
.
Washington Times
. March 31, 2010
. Retrieved
April 1,
2011
.
Then there's the so-called Presidents' Trophy curse: Only seven of 23 teams that have won that piece of hardware have gone on to win the Stanley Cup.
- ^
Nivison, Austin (April 30, 2023).
"Presidents' Trophy curse: Bruins' collapse extends Stanley Cup drought for regular-season champions"
.
CBSSports.com
. Retrieved
August 26,
2023
.
- ^
Klein, Jeff Z.; Hackel, Stu (April 12, 2009).
"First-Round Upsets Common in N.H.L"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
"Expect the unexpected in NHL playoffs"
.
The Globe and Mail
. Toronto. April 27, 2013.
- ^
Shilton, Kristen (April 17, 2023).
"Can the Bruins avoid the Presidents' Trophy curse?"
.
ESPN.com
. Retrieved
August 26,
2023
.
- ^
"NHL on Yahoo! Sports - News, Scores, Standings, Rumors, Fantasy Games"
.
- ^
Ian Cooper (April 10, 2014).
"Why the NHL Presidents' Trophy curse is a myth: Department of Hockey Analytics"
.
Toronto Star
. Retrieved
April 14,
2015
.
- ^
a
b
Jonathan Weiss (April 4, 2010).
"The Curse of the Presidents' Trophy: Fact or Fiction?"
.
Bleacher Report
. Retrieved
April 14,
2015
.
|
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Suspended teams
| |
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Events
| |
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History
| |
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Others
| |
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|
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