Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
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.
|
I understand your point and generally agree. However, a team has to be good enough to make the playoffs in decent seeding multiple times in a row to get an opportunity to have a run like Tampa did. The Gaudreau Flames teams weren’t that because they have one year in the playoffs and one year out. That feels closer to a bubble team - even if they are high seeds on good years. They cannot play consistently well enough to be an upper echelon team. It was that consistency that was maddening.
They missed several years with just terrible seasons. Except for the last playoffs they really didn’t seem all that dangerous in the playoffs. We will see if this retooled Flames has any success, but it will be hard to track as so many key players may turn over.
I’m not that down on what they are trying to do. If the resign Lindholm then I think they’ll be competitive next year.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk