Quote:
Originally Posted by traptor
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but your takeaway from Tampa's history is that playoffs are random and any team that gets in can win it??
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No, my takeaway is that playoffs have a big random element and even the best team can fall flat on its face. Winning the Stanley Cup is not a goal, it's a dream. There is no sure-fire way to do it. When big, tough teams win, all the copycat GMs try to make their own teams big and tough, and guess what? They never win. When fast, skilled teams win, the copycats chase that. When a team wins the Cup with a generational player, the really stupid organizations try to fail their way into landing the next one – and end up like Edmonton with McDavid, if they're lucky. (If not, they end up like Buffalo with Eichel.) All the pundits say you have to build a champion through the draft – and then along came Vegas. The only hard and fast rule is that there is no hard and fast rule.
The Lightning got swept in the first round the year they won the Presidents' Trophy – but that did not make them a bad team. They were distinctly worse in each of the regular seasons when they made the Cup finals. This was not by design: they would have finished first overall every year if they could. Losing to Columbus was the kind of bad luck that can happen to any team. Winning the Cup is something that
cannot happen to any team without good luck.
(Sometimes the good luck takes the form of some other team knocking off your most dangerous opponent. You can bet the Golden Knights thanked their lucky stars they did not have to face Boston in the finals.)
What I am saying is that you can't judge the quality of a team by playoff success, because winning the Cup requires catching lightning in a bottle and nobody can count on that.