Presidents' Trophy

The Presidents' Trophy (french: Trophée des présidents) is an award presented by the National Hockey League (NHL) to the team that finishes with the most points (i.e. best record) during the NHL 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 35 times to 18 different teams since its inception during the 1985–86 NHL season.

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. However, it does not guarantee playoff success, as the winner of the Presidents' Trophy has won the Stanley Cup only eight times. Three other teams reached the Stanley Cup Finals, but failed to win. The most recent team to win both the Presidents' Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season were the 2012–13 Chicago Blackhawks. The only team to accomplish this more than once is the Detroit Red Wings.

History

The Trophy was introduced at the start of the NHL season by the League's Board of Governors. Prior to this, the best team in the League during the regular season was allowed to hang a banner reading "NHL League Champions."

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, Colorado Avalanche, New York Rangers and Washington Capitals are second with three. Five teams (Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Dallas Stars, Edmonton Oilers, Vancouver Canucks) are tied for third most with two Presidents' Trophy wins apiece. Among these multiple winners, Calgary, Dallas, Detroit, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Washington have won it in consecutive seasons.

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 , 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 through seasons, the first tiebreaker was most regulation and overtime wins. Before , 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 , 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

From 1937 to 1967, the same criterion now observed for winning the Presidents' Trophy was used to award the Prince of Wales Trophy. With the Modern Era expansion in the 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. 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 through 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 . 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 , before the Trophy was introduced; since its inception, the Canadiens have been Presidents' runners-up three times, in , , and ). Detroit is second with 18 first-overall finishes.

Playoff implications

The Presidents' Trophy winner is normally guaranteed home-ice advantage throughout the Stanley Cup playoffs. This does not necessarily correlate to success in the playoffs, however. The Trophy has been awarded 33 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. In addition, seven 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.

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. 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. 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. Another example of the curse is the 2018–19 Tampa Bay Lightning, who 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 President's Trophy winner to suffer this fate. Adding to the ignominy was the Blue Jackets' previous lack of post-season success: their sweep of the Lightning was their first playoff series victory in franchise history, with only four previous playoff qualifications. The 1995–96 Red Wings could also be 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.

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". 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.

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 season and missed the playoffs in (and then rebounded to win both the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup in ); the Buffalo Sabres, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in (in part because of a debacle in which the team lost both of its top stars to free agency); and the Boston Bruins, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in despite having a winning record.

Winners

Bold Team with the most points ever accumulated in a season during the trophy's existence.

Earlier best records

For reference, the following are teams that finished with the best records in the NHL for each season between and .

NHL vs. PCHA/WCHL/WHL Stanley Cup era (1917–1926)

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 , 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.

NHL takes control of the Stanley Cup (since 1927)

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 to 1967 for the entire league regular season.

Records

Presidents' Trophy winners

Combined pre-trophy/trophy era best records

* Defunct teams in ''italics''.

See also

* Continental Cup, a KHL trophy having the same function as the Presidents' Trophy.
* Maurice Podoloff Trophy, an NBA trophy having the same function as the Presidents' Trophy.
* Supporters' Shield, an MLS trophy having the same function as the Presidents' Trophy.

References

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National Hockey League trophies and awards