Strictly for hardcore hockey wonks: The detailed formula for Stanley Cup winning

[Pink Freud]

Somebody really put a ton of research into this, and it's impressive, but it's so wonky that only a hardcore puckhead will love it.

Beware; there may be a paywall. If there is, try this: Open the link, but quickly hit CTRL + A; then CTRL + C before the paywall popup appears. Paste the text into a Word doc if you want to read it.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/627253 ... Id=7541559

[Harry S Deals]

Boy thats a lot! In my many years of watching this league there have been outliers, hot goalies, unstoppable PPs, but ultimately in my view the team that has the best checking game going is in the playoffs is likely to win it all. The team that is limiting the most shots against, goals against, imposing their game on everyone else. You saw this with STL in '19. LV is good at this, Florida. I dont buy the notion that a team absolutely needs a top 5 NHL player to win a Cup it never hurts but if a team has three lines going a really good 4th line the kind of team like Tampa where you cant tell whos on the ice because they all play the same way, these teams are really hard to handle

[Hazelwood72]

Boy thats a lot! In my many years of watching this league there have been outliers, hot goalies, unstoppable PPs, but ultimately in my view the team that has the best checking game going is in the playoffs is likely to win it all. The team that is limiting the most shots against, goals against, imposing their game on everyone else. You saw this with STL in '19. LV is good at this, Florida. I dont buy the notion that a team absolutely needs a top 5 NHL player to win a Cup it never hurts but if a team has three lines going a really good 4th line the kind of team like Tampa where you cant tell whos on the ice because they all play the same way, these teams are really hard to handle

Good take, Harry. I agree that you don’t need a top 5 player. We didn’t have one in 2019, but we had 4 lines who all could score. Plus we had a great, skilled, and large physical defense. One key that folks don’t recognize was that when JayBo finally healed from his injuries, he was a force on the blueline.

And, of course, some no-name goalie who wasn’t nervous. I still think either Binner or Schwartzy should have won the Conn Smythe rather than ROR, but the voters seem to ignore the first 3 rounds and only pay attention to the Finals. And, even at that, Binner deserved it just for his performance in the first period of Game 7 when the Bruins badly outplayed us.

[Hazelwood72]

Somebody really put a ton of research into this, and it's impressive, but it's so wonky that only a hardcore puckhead will love it.

Beware; there may be a paywall. If there is, try this: Open the link, but quickly hit CTRL + A; then CTRL + C before the paywall popup appears. Paste the text into a Word doc if you want to read it.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/627253 ... Id=7541559

Thanks for the article, PF! Very interesting, and they made real good points.

[seattleblue]

I saw a list once that said we had a few top 5 picks on the 2019 team. I think three of them? a third, a fourth and a fifth overall pick.

(current team has a top 5 pick, one of the same guys)

[PPG]

All of these are very good posts. You win in the playoffs with depth, balanced scoring, defense, and goaltending. It's been said and proven that you can win in the playoffs without a dominating power play, BUT you can't win without outstanding penalty killing.
A hot goaltender will usually negate almost any top 5 talent player.
There are elite players all over the league with just one or no Stanley Cups. I'd rather have the depth than 2-3 star players.
Remember the Blues teams in the 90's- Hull, Shanahan, Gretzky, Pronger, MacInnis, Turgeon, Fuhr and they made it as far as round 3 just once. Look at the supporting cast on most of those teams.

[bud white]

For me, the key is sticking to the game plan and having the depth to take advantage of scoring opportunities. The defense leads to offense.

That '19 team had the Steen 4th line. They were shut down - but had the talent in Steen, Sunny and Barbashev to counter and inflict damage when they created that opportunity to score.

But staying with the game plan for a full 60 is critical. I look at it this way - even if your line doesn't get a scoring opportunity, be so relentless that the opposition has to ice the puck ... That is always a winning shift in my book because you're eventually going to tilt the line match ups in your favor, let alone get a fresh line set up against a tired group. Ever since that rule was put into place, it has been a crucial strategic advantage. And managing the ebbs and flows of a series is important. That hard forecheck wears defenseman down - likewise the ability to negate a forecheck (Binnington puck management) absolutely frustrates the opposition. It forces them out of their comfort zone. We saw this against San Jose in 19 where the Blues had them just worn out by Game 6.

[seattleblue]

Unfortunately the 90s teams had goaltending that would collapse. Joseph's celebrated 1993 run of winning a single series before a staggering Game 7 collapse to the Leafs is similar to Turek winning two rounds in 99-00 then falling apart against the Avs.

Except in 96 when the backup took one of the greatest teams in hockey history scoreless for 80 minutes and gave them every chance to win such as the Corson breakaway in OT1, the Blues didn't get the goaltending.

That is why Binnington is so special. I think he would have won multiple Cups with those teams playing his playoff A game IMO but of course it's purely speculative. All I know is as a Blues fan I craved the Blues goalie doing what Binnington did in 2019 for a long long time and I saw goalies for other teams do it so it was technically possible.

The 2010s teams, they won the most regular season games in the West in that decade so a Cup should have been won in that era with those teams. but they had playoff Allen. They were on the verge of a repeat. Binnington stopped the wheels of history repeating and made his own. Everyone has their own moment in Game 7 when they "knew" and for me it was after 1 period. We had been on the Boston side of that game so many times, and it was finally reversed.

[Pierre McGuire]

When the Kings were winning their cups, there was a lot of people complaining here how dirty they were . I said when the other fans around the league are calling the Blues the dirtiest team..that’s when we will be close to our cup. That’s exactly what we saw in 2019. If you want to win the cup, you have to have players willing to cross those lines.

[seattleblue]

Even though fans do say that, it's mostly Shark and Bruin fans. I take your point and agree with you, just noting there were no Seabrook level dirty hits, just more generalized grumbling about an elbow here or there. Our centers weren't out there throwing flying elbows like Dustin Brown. I didn't even see a hit that rose to the level of King' hit on Petro that badly undercut the 2012 run. Even the Shark fans are coping because the Blues got to the physical dominance they did in that series through a series of relentless body blows and finishing checks rather than "incidents." But like I said I agree that the 2019 Blues completely adopted a mentality of "we are going to grind you down physically" and it was crucial to winning.