Is the Presidents’ Trophy curse real?

Credit: © Bob DeChiara

Every season, as the playoffs approach and a team secures the Presidents’ Trophy as the best regular season team, there’s always talk about the “Presidents’ Trophy curse.”

For those uninformed, the curse basically implies that the team that wins the Presidents’ Trophy won’t win the Stanley Cup that season, even with the supposed advantage of home ice.

In general, that isn’t really true. While they obviously don’t win the Cup more than they do, they still have the most success out of all the seeds. I took a look at each seed’s success since 1980 (which is when the playoffs expanded to 16 teams for the sake of keeping things even), and the Presidents’ Trophy winner has won more than a quarter of the Cups.

Stanley Cup wins by seed (since 1980)

Seed	Cup Wins	Percentage
1st	11	26.19%
2nd	5	11.9%
3rd	3	7.14%
4th	6	14.29%
5th	3	7.14%
6th	4	9.52%
7th	4	9.52%
8th	2	4.76%
9th	1	2.38%
10th	1	2.38%
11th	0	0%
12th	1	2.38%
13th	1	2.38%
14th	0	0%
15th	0	0%
16th	0	0%

Seeds are decided based on where they ranked among the 16 teams after the regular season.

Now, there are some important factors to note with these data. For starters, the number for Presidents’ Trophy winners almost drops in half once you hit 1990, with the 80s’ spawning five dual winners of the Presidents’ Trophy and the Stanley Cup. On top of that, four of the remaining six come from 1990 to 2005, with the salary cap era providing us with just two.

So there is some reasoning as to why it appears to fans that a curse may be afoot: recently, there has been a struggle for top-seeded teams to win the Cup.

Some of that can be accredited to the fact that the salary cap has created some parity. There have been plenty of repeat championships over the course of this new era of hockey, but at the very least, their success in the regular season isn’t as consistently dominant, as the lack of true super teams like we’ve seen with the Montreal Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers, and Detroit Red Wings in past eras has allowed a bit more variance on who wins in the regular season.

So at this point, what the Presidents’ Trophy does to teams is put a target on their backs, at least as far as attention from fans and media goes. People hyper-focus on their playoff success because we need to see if they can “get it done when the games matter,” while teams 2-5 get a pass because they didn’t win a trophy for it (unless you’re a team with consistent playoff disappointment like the Toronto Maple Leafs).

That plays a big part because in today’s NHL, the top five, sometimes even top 10 teams are all close enough that they can take each other out in a playoff series, and this is where I propose my biggest argument for the Presidents’ Trophy “curse.”

My belief is that the Presidents’ Trophy winner is not the definitive best team of the regular season, but one of the 5-10 best teams that got a few more bounces in the regular season, and the reason they fail in the playoffs is because we are witnessing their regression, especially in comparison to teams on their level that are getting a few more bounces for their playoff run instead of the regular season. And the numbers do back this up. Not every time, as there are always a few outliers, but enough that there may be a case.

Normally when we think about a team regressing, we think about a team that consistently gets outplayed yet still wins games for a lengthy stretch with high shooting/save percentages, and then falls back down to earth when the percentages dry up and they get the losing results that they probably should have gotten in the first place. But there are other ways that you can rely on luck and then regress afterwards.

Sometimes, you can have a team that has really good underlying numbers, but is still overperforming their metrics to a point that it puts them above other teams at their level for a stretch, or for a full season.

I took a look at all of the Presidents’ Trophy winners since 2007-08, and looked at their underlying numbers and where they ranked in the league that year, along with the point margin of victory for their Presidents’ Trophy win and the outcome of their playoff runs for some extra context. Why since 2007-08? Well, that’s the farthest back that most advanced stats go.

5v5 shot share, expected goal share, and PDO of Presidents’ Trophy winning teams

Team	Point Margin	5v5 CF%	5v5 xGF%	5v5 PDO	Playoff Outcome
’23 Bruins*	22	52.81% (8th)	54.54% (4th)	103.3 (1st)	TBD
’22 Panthers	3	57.21% (1st)	56.3% (2nd)	100.3 (t-12th)	Lost in 2nd round
’21 Avalanche	0	60.33% (1st)	61% (1st)	100.3 (t-13th)	Lost in 2nd round
’20 Bruins	6	51.96% (8th)	52.86% (5th)	101.6 (3rd)	Lost in 2nd round
’19 Lightning	21	52.73% (7th)	53.71% (6th)	101.7 (4th)	Lost in 1st round
’18 Predators	3	52.63% (4th)	51.58% (12th)	101.6 (4th)	Lost in 2nd round
’17 Capitals	7	53.22% (3rd)	51.31% (10th)	102.7 (1st)	Lost in 2nd round
’16 Capitals	11	51.54% (10th)	52.17% (9th)	101.1 (4th)	Lost in 2nd round
’15 Rangers	3	50.48% (18th)	50.6% (19th)	101.7 (1st)	Lost in 3rd round
’14 Bruins	1	55.22% (3rd)	54.58% (5th)	102.3 (1st)	Lost in 2nd round
’13 Blackhawks	5	55.65% (2nd)	54.03% (5th)	101.7 (3rd)	Won Stanley Cup
’12 Canucks	2	53.68% (6th)	49.27% (16th)	101.2 (3rd)	Lost in 1st round
’11 Canucks	10	53.27% (4th)	50.94% (13th)	101.3 (3rd)	Lost in Cup Final
’10 Capitals	8	54.07% (2nd)	52.49% (5th)	103 (1st)	Lost in 1st round
’09 Sharks	1	54.93% (5th)	55.45% (2nd)	99 (25th)	Lost in 1st round
’08 Red Wings		59.76% (1st)	57.24% (2nd)	99.8 (18th)	Won Stanley Cup

*does not include the ’23 Bruins’ final game of the season

As you can see, there are very few teams on this list that were the definitive best team that season, and a majority of them ranked top five in PDO that year, a stat that combines a team’s shooting percentage and save percentage to measure their luck, with 100 being the mark of a team playing to their actual abilities, while anything higher is considered good luck, and anything lower is considered bad luck.

Only four teams on this list won the Presidents’ Trophy without being lucky, and there’s a pretty easy explanation for all of them didn’t need good luck. Three of them are the only teams that ranked 1st in either corsi or expected goal share that season on this list, so they were actually playing to their abilities that season, and as a result they either won the Stanley Cup (’08 Red Wings) or lost to an equally competitive team in the playoffs (’21 Avalanche and ’22 Panthers, who lost to the second-place Vegas Golden Knights and back-to-back defending Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning, respectively). The other one, the ’09 Sharks, won it in spite of the third-worst 5v5 shooting percentage that year, which is honestly really impressive.

That leaves 12 of the 16 teams that won the Presidents’ Trophy with a bit of help from some extra good luck, and only one team went on to still win the Stanley Cup, that being the ’13 Blackhawks. And that doesn’t even disprove my theory, as that team played in a shortened 48-game regular season, so regression wouldn’t have really had a chance to kick in before they won their Cup.

Now, that’s not to say that these teams are bad. Not even close. They were all still elite teams that were deserving of being considered a contender, as most of them ranked in the top five in either corsi or expected goal share that season. They just got that little bit of extra luck that put them over the top in the regular season, the same bit of luck that, come playoff time, helps the eventual Cup-winning team, and not them.

PDO of “lucky” Presidents’ Trophy winning teams and the Cup winner that season

Team	5v5 Playoff PDO	5v5 Playoff PDO of that season’s Cup winner
’20 Bruins	95.9 (17th)	100.9 (10th)
’19 Lightning	96.7 (15th)	102.3 (1st)
’18 Predators	99.7 (9th)	102 (3rd)
’17 Capitals	99.1 (11th)	101.8 (3rd)
’16 Capitals	99.5 (8th)	99.7 (7th)
’15 Rangers	100.6 (3rd)	100 (7th)
’14 Bruins	100 (8th)	100.8 (3rd)
’12 Canucks	98.5 (10th)	102.2 (2nd)
’11 Canucks	98.7% (8th)	104.7 (1st)
’10 Capitals	99 (10th)	100.7 (7th)

All teams were ranked out of 16 playoff teams except for ’20 Bruins, which was 24 playoff teams

Of the 10 teams that benefitted from luck in the regular season but didn’t win a Cup, only one team was still one of the luckiest teams in the playoffs, and the ’15 Rangers had the best goaltender of the late 00’s and early 10’s in Henrik Lundqvist (we’ll save the conversation of him over Carey Price for another day), who played a big role in that PDO spike all season. Otherwise, the Presidents’ Trophy winners stepped back in the luck department, and it played a role in their eventual elimination. In fact, seven of those 10 would lose to the team that eventually won the Cup, which should probably paint that picture even more.

So, is there a Presidents’ Trophy curse? No, because a curse would imply that some unexplainable force continuously screws them over every playoff run. The reality is that there is a fair amount of randomness with hockey, and the teams that win awards usually need that randomness to go their way to win unless they are a class above the rest.

Sometimes, that randomness goes their way in the regular season, and sometimes it goes their way in the playoffs, but rarely does it happen to a team for both, but the fact that it is somewhat predictable at least implies that it isn’t an unexplainable force. And unfortunately for the Presidents’ Trophy winner, they usually have all eyes on them in the playoffs as a result of being the best regular season team, especially if they have a more historic season like the 2018-19 Lightning and this season’s Bruins.

It’s not the only reason; there are plenty of other factors involved as well. On top of getting goalied, the ’22 Panthers lost to the Lightning due to an inability to adapt to a new offensive strategy when the Lightning figured out the Cats’ usual strategy. Or there’s the ’11 Canucks, who seemingly let the Bruins get in their head once they travelled to Boston and just couldn’t shake the bogeyman after that, letting the Bruins take over and embarrass them for four of the final five games.

But, the “curse” is at least a solid indicator that their success may run out of steam earlier than expected. This year’s Bruins may seem unstoppable now, but between a recently struggling power play, having the third-highest team shooting percentage, and the highest save percentage by a wide margin (for reference, the second-place Minnesota Wild have a .9296 while the Bruins have .9389), and that save percentage coming from a massive upswing from Linus Ullmark, it’s easy to see how this Cinderella story can turn back into a pumpkin.

Will the trend continue this year? Who knows! The unpredictability of the playoffs is what makes the magic for them, so maybe we needed several years of surprises for the least surprising Cup pick to win one. Or maybe they get swept in the first round. We’ve seen it happen before, so let’s see what happens this time around.

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Is the Presidents’ Trophy curse real?

Stanley Cup wins by seed (since 1980)

5v5 shot share, expected goal share, and PDO of Presidents’ Trophy winning teams

PDO of “lucky” Presidents’ Trophy winning teams and the Cup winner that season

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