I don't think it's unreasonable to think it is that much harder to win a Cup now than it was in the Original Six era. Just look at how much of a gauntlet the playoffs are these days. Back then, the playoffs were just a handful of games. Of course this comparison is completely subjective though and impossible to really quantify. With that said though, there are of course some variables that can't have numbers applied to them. The inspiration for this I believe was a little back and forth I read between a Devils fan and a Rangers fan over which team was more successful and the Rangers fan pointed at their 4 Cups and saying it's more than the Devils 3.Flawed may be on the harsh side for a description. Would definitely agree it is interesting, but with limitations, and not “final word” type stat.
It appears to be a straight mathematical calculation based on the number of teams participating each season. Based on this, it would be over 5x tougher to win a Stanley Cup now than in the 6 team days. I’ll never be convinced that is true.
As a comparison, the BIG didn’t get tougher to win just because its most recent expansion increased teams. Being declared the MNC in cfb didn’t get tougher when all the Sun Belt type teams moved up divisions.
It certainly didn’t get twice as tough to win the Stanley Cup with the first doubling of teams expansion in the late 60s.
I don't think the Big Ten comparison is really apples to apples here though because the NHL is designed to create parity with an entry draft, salary cap, etc. College sports tend to be on the opposite end of the spectrum where it's very difficult for the have-nots to compete because there's no entry draft, so the good players can just go to the teams that are always good. If the Big Ten added other teams that have a realistic chance of vying for the championship (Clemson, Alabama, etc.) then it most certainly would be tougher to win. Perhaps my point here disagrees with my point in the previous paragraph though because the NHL didn't have an entry draft until 1963.
No problem, I didn't take it as an insult at all. It wasn't all that much work, just had to look up what year each franchise started and how many Cups each team had, then set up a page in Excel to calculate the statistic for each team. I did that all while sitting in a car dealership's waiting room while getting that Tanaka airbag recall taken care of a few years ago, so it didn't really eat up any free time. Now it's just a matter of taking a few seconds at the end of each year's final to update the numbers.True on read back. Apologies, @robcac26 - didn’t mean to insult you. Thanks for putting this together, it was probably a bit of work. I for one really do appreciate it as fodder for thinking, conversation, and debate. This is supposed to be fun, right?
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